Just wondering what people would think of a NFL style Division system in the NRL, we would have 4 Divisions of 4 teams, play everyone in your own division twice, and home & away vs one of the other divisions but it would rotate each year then the other 2 divisions you would play each team once making a total of 22 game season, the Divisions could split like this.
North Division
Brisbane
North Queensland
Gold Coast
Newcastle
City Division
South Sydney
Sydney Roosters
Manly
Cronulla
Country Division
Parramatta
Wests
Penrith
Canterbury
Tasman Division
New Zealand
Melbourne
Canberra
St.George Illawarra
For the Finals Top 4 places will go to the Division winners seeding based on record, with the remaining 4 qualifiers coming from the next 4 teams with the best record in the comp!!
All just a thought for debate also it would leave a lot of room for future Expansion and the Divisions can be re-aligned accordingly while protecting most rivalries!!
I've mentioned something similar a couple of times in fixturing threads.
I had the breakdown as follows:
Brisbane - Gold Coast - Melbourne - North Queensland
Manly - Newcastle - South Sydney - Roosters
Canberra - Parramatta - Penrith - Wests Tigers
Canterbury - Cronulla - Warriors - St George
The groups with Sydney clubs have 3 metro teams and one out of town team. Avoids a situation such as your Tasman division where a Sydney club is isolated. Evenly distributed for all Sydney clubs.
Intra group play twice, and inter group once with home & away conditions the same for each team within a group.
Automatic qualification for a group winners (because each group has its own fixture re playing same teams twice and the majority of h&a), but they're seeded based on comp points from 1 to 8. A group winner with .500 w/l ratio doesn't deserve double chance in finals. 4 best non-group winners from all groups seeded 2 to 8. All teams in a group can still qualify for finals.
Season is reduced to 18 games which probably kills this proposal, but it would certainly make every game more of an event than the drawn out regular season we currently have.