Bored of Super League??

Quote: D.D. "So if it wasn't an issue, why have people been flagging it up since before the end of the successful 2006 season?

Since the penny dropped that we were being short changed in terms of entertainment, we have actually won seven pieces of silverware.

Saints are playing little differently than we did under Anderson, contrary to belief. Our beef is not with the style we are playing per se, it's the overall change of the Rugby Leagie product from one where teams (generally) took risks, threw the ball about and entertained the public, rather than bashing it down the middle.

Teams and coaches no longer try to score from anywhere on the park, they merely try to attain field position so that they can be closer to the line to plough over.

Rugby League has effectively gone down the avenue that the Leeds United and Arsenal football teams did in the 70s and the way the Italians have always played that game. Whereas the emphasis used to be primarily on attack minded football, it is now defensive minded. The moves and set-plays are predictable, everyone knows what is going to happen next but no-one cares as long as they don't concede. No-one tries to outscore the opposition, they simply contain the opposition and just hope something eventually happens at the other end.

All as I know is that I know not just Saints supporters but a good sprinkling of Wigan and Warrington ones too and the complaint is always the same. For the first 18 years of me watching the game, from 1987 to 2005, I could count the number of games I was bored at on one hand. Even one-sided games provided thrilling bouts of spell-binding rugby. Over the last three or four years, at least half the games I have been to have bored me out of my skull and it's exactly the same when I watch other teams play on Sky. Watch a tries compilation and 95% are the same as the last one. Play-the-ball, one pass to the side, crash over. Hurrah! What fun.

The game is now every bit as boring as the one that Union fans used to accuse it of being. It's simply thirteen blokes bashing into each other. A bit of trench warfare where you can hope to gain a bit of territory now and again on the rare occasions that the skill-less fookers actually manage to keep hold of the ball or the one solitary pass to the side doesn't get hopelessly and needlessly mis-directed.

I enjoyed the game significantly more, when we won nothing in the early 90s, than I have done the last four seasons when we have won a significant amount of silverware. Trophies are not everything to us, as it would appear to be for you lot, and I don't get blinkered into thinking the game is fantastic entertainment just because we happen to finally have a properly succesful period for the first time since the late 1960s/early 1970s. I just want to enjoy the eighty minutes spectacle and not be bored rigid. We beat Wigan in the semi-final and I wasn't excited, I just felt disappointment that not even that game could bring some entertainment.

I am very disillusioned with the sport over here at the moment but there was some hope for me as I watched the latter NRL games where there was some attempt at least by some players to try something different.

My real hope is that the Aussies and Kiwis come here, show us a display of attacking football and give us a right royal thumping or two because the only way we will shake the game up in this country is for us to see that the sterile crap we are all producing is only going to take us further behind and drive the fans away in their droves. Whether they have the inclination to entertain while they can simply walk through us wih negative tactics, remains to be seen.

At the end of the day, negative, defensive Rugby League has been found to be more effective than positive, attacking, flair play and that's what frightens me with regard to the future of this game.

I've been in love with the sport for 22 years but I can see that, in a few years time, I may not be able to take what has happened to the former greatest game any more. It's too painful to see what has happened to the game I loved.'"