Rugby league is becoming unattractive

Quote: Psychedelic Casual "I agree with this, and this is just off the field.

On the field, bar the odd coach as an exception, both main leagues of RL in the world have started to offer up one-out wrestle tactic borefests for a few years now. While Union continues to come up with ideas to quicken the ruck up, RL has somehow decided that flamboyant rugby is a no-no and SL has become an infuriating joke around the ruck with diving and lying on (after a five second wrestle) like never seen before - throw in pretending to be injured to slow the game down even more - and the game is starting to become unwatchable even for the diehards, never mind someone who could be a new fan.

Has anybody watched a game in Super League in the last few years and been impressed with the speed of the ruck? Has anyone watched a game where there's been no diving or feigning injury? Has anyone watched a game where there has been more than one set of six in a game where less than half of the PTBs doesn't have players bending the rules (standing square, leaving a foot in/hand on the ball, players starting two metres offside somewhere on the defensive line...).

Fair play to the NRL, they have two refs and their rucks are far tidier. But why have all the coahes down their decided to play this boring style of rugby. When Cronulla and Brisbane came over here early in the season both teams said in defeat, well the English teams like to throw the ball around and we didn't cope well with it (obviously they would if they weren't still in pre-season, mind), because they don't really see that down there anymore.

We have no money and we are becoming boring so how on Earth are we supposed to promote that?'"

Have you watched the NRL this season? the amount of moaning about 2 refs is amazing, as well as the constant slagging off of the Bunker. Just in the playoffs down under there's been 10's of 1000's of dollars in fines been dished out, over Coaches slagging off the refs. Even Bill Harrigan, the inventor of the dual-referee model, says it's time to revert back to one ref. He says he's observed this season that inconsistency with policing the 10 metres & interference by the pocket ref at the ruck has become unacceptable. With dummy-halves forced to push them out of the way and throw passes over their ducking heads. The England Coach Wayne Bennett has also been saying similar for sometime. My relatives down under hate it tbh and when we talk about RL, it's one of the first things that they bring up.
I also watched one of their RL shows on Fox online the other day and they were saying the NRL were thinking off going back to one ref and scrapping the Bunker, whether they do who knows. It was also interesting listening to them go on about all the issues in the NRL atm (wish I could remember which it was to watch it again), which in many cases mirrored ours, including unbelievebly money issues.

On the subject of both leagues playing one-out wrestle tactic borefests - I think it's mainly been a symptom of what the succesful teams do works, then others copy them. Hopefully Cas go on and win the GF, playing their same brand of RL. Then hopefully it has the knock on affect & all other teams will see that's now the way to go & start to try to copy that style of expansive RL play. I think it's what my team Trinity has tried to do this year (although obviously not as good as Cas at it). Chester has seen what Powell has done while at Cas and in some ways has tried to emulate it and it's worked for us & made us generally a really decent team to watch.

Also don't get me started on players milking penalties, pleading with the refs on and off the floor, throwing themsleves on the ground, while supposedly trying to get up and slinging the ball at the oppo who are offside. It needs the refs to stamp it out at the start of the year. They've all been watching too much football and when that started in football , it turned plenty of diehard fans off, me included.

As for speeding the PTB up, do things like get the refs to shout hold quicker, when a player isn't going any further forward, isntead of waiting till a 3rd or 4th man comes in and takes the player to the floor. You see that all the time and it just wastes time and slows the game down, If we really want to sppeed the game up, simply get the refs to be harsh on holding down, wrestling & trying to get the attacker on his back by any means etc. The RFL could even put out a directive saying this is how they want the game played at the start of the season, so everyone knows where they stand & that they're gonna get penalised. Alright you'll always get players at the start seeing how far they can push things & it might take a few games of silly amounts of penalties but the players will soon learn. It will obviously need the Coaches to buy into all this and use the off season to train and set structures to play this way.