Quote: Clearwing "The league's just becoming too devalued IMO. Too many games spent pursuing a third-rate trophy, bigger clubs putting their focus into aus-based friendlies when it suits, a fixture list skewed by the magic fixture, games shuffled randomly between Thursday-Sunday and tackling techniques coached so thoroughly that it's easy to interpret injury avoidance as a lack of commitment. Even the attacking side is now coached to be low risk. It's very miss-able these days.
That said, I suspect that involvement with the Hearns would actually worsen some of these factors.'"
I agree about the value of each league game in Super League now. Whilst the Grand Final is obviously a pretty good event as a standalone and there have been some terrific matches over the years, you have to look at what it does to the quality and intensity of the rest of the season.
The NRL has a Grand Final and turns out high quality intense matches every week throughout the season over there however they have genuine squad depth leading to genuine competition for places, as well as potentially lucrative contract rewards for playing well regularly.
Over here we seriously lack squad depth, there is often little competition for places in teams and everyone knows that they only have to peak for the last 3 weeks of the year to win the grand prize. Difficult to sell a mid-season game lacking intensity and enthusiasm, the apathy of the teams spreads to supporters and they turn their backs.
