Bored of Super League??

Quote: McClennan "
That's a very selective memory you have there my friend. How are you defining entertaining because on one hand we have this "back in the day" crowd complaining about the lack of entertainment today, highlighting the poor quality of skill involved and decrying any increase in competitiveness about it and in the next sentence they are referring to times when the ball hit the grass more often than Bob Marley as being some kind of utopia.

Its not selective but I will admit it might be to do with my age at the time and being less informed about the sport than I am now. Under your namesake we did come close to winning, especially in the season i started (actually winning the premiership) but it was downhill in terms of challenging until 1995 & our failure in the last Regal Trophy final – however i still always enjoyed the rugby on show, yes we dropped ball (funnily enough we still do a lot) but it excited me.

I've never questioned that the modern game is more skillful and tactical, it is and hugely so but its still less exciting no matter how its compared to the past. Tighter, tenser today maybe but its not the hairs on your neck, edge of your seat thrill it used to be even some games in 2007/2008

You make it sound like the way the game is played now is something new. The Australians have been playing this sort of ball control tactics since before you started watching Saints. It has taken us, over here, nigh on 20+ years to get our sides in a position to think the same way. Wigoon dominated the sport on the back of being the only side in the competition able to behave in such a professional manner. Hoping for teams to try and score on every set is just naive. The game has moved on from such a freewheeling attitude. We need to increase awareness amongst players about being switched on to that opportunity (as witnessed by the Australians in last week's game) but you can't build a game plan on the back of looking to score from wherever you are on the field. If you're saying that's what it should be like then I should merely reference the days of when we'd give the ball some air in front of our sticks and cough it up because it was a ludicrous and expensive high-risk strategy. I'm sure you're not suggesting that.

To us in England it is something relatively new & I'm not suggesting we throw it about at every opportunity. I highlighted the Championship games merely because they were more exciting to watch than SL last year. The teams tried to score by varying their attack & looking for gaps, trying different kick plays, not throwing the ball about with gay abandon every set. We didn't have any of that in SL last year it was 5 drives and a kick (or Saints 5 drives & a dodgy throw it about badly).

What i want to see in SL is positive teams given the chance to attack, use speed & skill to break teams down rather than being forced to grind out a set, kick, grind a set tackling, grind out a set, ad nauseum hoping for a mistake.

Do you read Bert's posts more than others because I'm seeing a common thread here of people listening to closely to those that talk the loudest. This is all sounding a bit like a few heavyweight posters picking a point they wish to believe in and using their credibility to push a particular viewpoint no matter how perceptive it is. I mean, how often do you see teams kicking straight dead from their own half? I don't recall it happening that often as a deliberate tactic in this year's Grand Final, just as an example.

No my opinions are all my own - i've not read the other pages of the thread tbh it would take me all day in work!! As for the kicking the Grand Final was the best two teams in the league having a real go at each other, no team felt they needed to resort to the tactic and it was refreshing, you suggest its actually a rare occurance but Wigan did it 3 or 4 times in one half against us in July, and most other teams have done it to a lesser degree, I must have seen it at KR in nearly every game last season, even England did it at least 2 or 3 times on Saturday when under the cosh. Crikey for Phil Clarke to notice and bleat on about it all year penalizing good defense its got to be happening a lot!

I haven't argued against removing the slowing down of the PTB because it has closed the game down more. What I will argue against is this peddled opinion that because defences have improved so the game has become less exciting. I want to see good play rewarded as everyone does. What appears to be the difference between the two camps is that some appear happy to see players ghost through ordinary defence and then proclaim it as sheer brilliance which is exactly the sort of attitude that has led us to crumbling on the international stage against teams that can actually defend. We are not going to compete with the best when players are falling off tackles as they used to do (and still do but less often) over the past thirty years. We either accept that defences are getting better and focus on developing a game to counter that or we ignore those defensive improvements and complain about it not being the touch and pass that it's been described as in comparison to NRL standards. If we choose the latter then whatever creativity increases will be on the back of less remarkable defence. That's a false economy from where I'm sat.

I appreciate defences have improved, I am not complaining about having tight defense, if we want the best competition in the world and to compete Internationally we need them but we also need a domestic entertainment factor otherwise while diehards like ourselves will come back for more we’ll never get new fans in to the sport.

However rather than any great recent improvement I find it hard to believe this year is anything other than the PTB, all players have longer to get in position to tackle, form a solid defensive line, react to the direction of the next attack & be in their faces. This forces teams to play it safe up the middle, creating the illusion that everyone is remarkably better at tackling when in reality its just stifled most attacking play.

Australia (from the “up your jumper” defensively solid NRL) proved in 25mins any real defensive improvement was a myth, they threw the ball about from side to side and cut us apart with ease, put the game out of sight & had a nap. They proved the sport can have lightening quick play, give the ball some air attack from anywhere excitement & still have brutally tight defense. Notably on that day Ganson did not keep the PTB as slow as in SL games and it killed us, we couldn’t react & get in their faces in truth we looked lost.

Alibert kept it donkey like on Saturday and it was notable how much defensively this improved us, but while this works in SL unless all competitions are played under the same referreing directives we are always going to struggle to adapt Interntationally against bigger & better athletes unless they are refereed our way.'"