Quote Asgardian13="Asgardian13"They were all great players but had they played for a variety of clubs we would have had a more vibrant competition. When Wigan poached Andy Gregory from Wire I still recall the report by The Guardian RL correspondent at the time when he stated [iWhat do Wigan want with Gregory as they already have Shaun Edwards? [/i In the 1980s there was still a good deal of RL on terrestrial TV which also helped to put Wigan and their players in front of a wider audience. In the long run the most important factor in any sport is competition, and dominance by anyone destroys that. Sally appears to have a passing interest in NFL and they go to great lengths with 'the draft' to even up the teams every year. I believe that most US sports still 'pool' revenue and divide most of it up evenly between the teams. That's another policy to avoid domination by one side.'"
Yes the NFL is very striking in that way. It's a paradox that America is the bastion of unregulated free-market capitalism in so many ways, but when it comes to their sports they have a real attitude of putting the needs of the sport as a whole ahead of any one club. There isn't the selfishness and greed that you see in European sports - probably because the clubs know that having the NFL as a top class product results in huge revenues for every club.
But also the US has some other advantages which enable it to support a competitive league. The huge population and massive infrastructure for development, at high school and college football, means there is an enormous amount of talent to pick from and there is no need for NFL clubs to get involved with running academies. This is the prerequisite for the draft, and why you couldn't have it in rugby league here, because you need a separation between the professional clubs and the development of juniors, so players then "graduate" from the juniors and get picked up aged 21-23 as ready made players rather than picked up as schoolboys.
In Super League, I think the league is more competitive now, but it hasn't really improved as a product as the quality has dropped. I think what you really want for a good product is having at least 3 dominant forces, that create a balance at the top. Tennis has had it, with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic plus Murray at his best. The Premier League is benefiting from having City and Liverpool and prior to that possibly the best Premier League years were the years when Arsenal were strong but United were also at their peak. In Super League, we probably peaked mid 2000s when Bradford, Saints and Leeds were all top sides.
