The way we play the game seems to have changed over the years. At junior level kids are told to look for the gaps in the defence and run through it; at Superleague level they seem to be told run at the biggest guy in front of you.

here here..was thinking the same..best times watching the wire i.e workington mid week lancs cup game kick off 6ish cos of no floodlights..york away cup game in the snow..widnes after they won wcc..widnes away in premership when all hell broke out and the many battles with saints and wigan..and the game was far less complicated them days

When we see videos of early SL games the defenders seemed to be able to tackle one on one & the ball was back in play within seconds & full games were end to end action. What we are seeing now is endless "game management" with long kicks into touch ,our equivalent of the endless punts to touch that we criticise the other code for, & all these kicks to to the corner are no more than a line out on the try line.
Rugby Union has improved its game over the last few years while ours has gone backwards . It's a simple game ,keep it simple & entertaining.

Agree with every bit of that.

Only Cas playing the rugby I like to watch, find that very sad tbh, I really hope the win the Grand Final if that's what it takes to be classed as champions.

The game has started to believe it's own press and forgotten what made it s great - in esscence, it was a simple game that anyone could watch and marvel at.

Now we have a situation where grunt, pushing the laws to their limit, conservatism and in some cases, blatant cheating, are preferred to entertainment. Due to the inadequacy of the refs, the RFL and the overly pedantic rules, however, this approach often gives success (Hello Mr Wane).

Fans are apathetic because they have no faith in the ruling bodies abiliity or willingness to change, the ruling body have their collective heads buried in the sand and the media view the game as a joke - a view that is increasingly becoming hard to argue with.

The answer? Only wholesale changes at the RFL will bring about change, and that will require a collective revolution by fans and chairmen.

I'm very close to finding rugby union a better game to watch and i NEVER thought that possible. Its horrible to see the demise of the greatest game....which at the minute it's anything but.

Agree with a lot of this.

I would like to see

1. Contested scrums to encourage forwards to pack properly.
2. Reduced interchanges.
3. Some way of reducing the number of kick / catch / tries - they are boring.

I also agree with most of what has been said in previous posts, however, even though i take your point re the scrums don't think i want to see contested scrums back, we will probably have the game stopping and starting, scrum wheeling, collapsing, striking to early etc, i would get rid of scrums altogether really embarrassing.

I would also keep the water carriers/ trainers off the pitch, some are on more than the players.

Problem with contesting scrums is the players get naughty. Back in the day we rarely saw a scrum pack and ball in and out in one motion....it was often repack and even repack again, then eventually a penalty often given the way of the attacking team.
Scrums slowed the game down.
They are nothing more than a soft penalty. They still remain because no one has come up with a good enough idea of how to restart the game without one yet.

Another idea to reduce the reliance on the kick down field is to modify the "down town" rule. The change could be that the kicking side players are only onside if they are behind the kicker at the time it is kicked. This will give the receiving player more time and space, instead of facing 5 players 10 yards away from them when they collect the ball.