Where will the NRL be in 2030?

[siv]

It's about time the NSW Cup decided what it wants to be - does it wanna be a de facto reserve grade for NSW-based NRL clubs, or does it wanna be a truly statewide 2nd tier, akin to what the Qld Cup is?

Part of the puzzle is the NRL itself, and how it handles fringe players.

I'm inclined to push for an actual NRL reserve grade to come back, with the state leagues being kept for local youngsters coming up, journeyman local club players, and players "on loan" from NRL reserve grade squads, if not required.

Whether that's workable, or even viable.. I don't know.

Totally agree

It needs a dual solution not a single solution. Trying to make it a single solution will never be the end game in NSW

NRL RG for professional 30+6 players

NSW Cup for the part time players

I am not sure if the 2020 Presidents Cup is the right model. Though I could live with Maitland. I prefer the Qld Cup regional model. Where the bigger Tier 2 Sydney clubs compete with the NSW Regional districts of CC, North Coast, New England, Western Div, Riverina and maybe South Coast

Though I would drop NRL monikers from regional teams. Let them have their regional colours and emblems.

 

[flippikat]

Totally agree

It needs a dual solution not a single solution. Trying to make it a single solution will never be the end game in NSW

NRL RG for professional 30+6 players

NSW Cup for the part time players

I am not sure if the 2020 Presidents Cup is the right model. Though I could live with Maitland. I prefer the Qld Cup regional model. Where the bigger Tier 2 Sydney clubs compete with the NSW Regional districts of CC, North Coast, New England, Western Div, Riverina and maybe South Coast

Though I would drop NRL monikers from regional teams. Let them have their regional colours and emblems.

My dream is a NSW Cup that's effectively a mirror image of the Qld Cup - a mix of traditional Sydney clubs that aren't at NRL level, teams in regional NSW centres, and teams like PNG Hunters that aren't in NSW, but open pathways for players from other places.. crucially with the SAME number of teams in NSW and QLD Cup to allow for some "inter-league" rounds during the season (maybe during the NRLs break for Origin to put a little more spotlight on the 2nd tier and play on the "State vs State" theme?)

 

[Perth Red]

My dream is a NSW Cup that's effectively a mirror image of the Qld Cup - a mix of traditional Sydney clubs that aren't at NRL level, teams in regional NSW centres, and teams like PNG Hunters that aren't in NSW, but open pathways for players from other places.. crucially with the SAME number of teams in NSW and QLD Cup to allow for some "inter-league" rounds during the season (maybe during the NRLs break for Origin to put a little more spotlight on the 2nd tier and play on the "State vs State" theme?)

If you haven’t got pokies or a nrl club bank rolling it then it is unsustainable to have a qlnd or nsw cup team, that’s the reality of the second tier. Png are only still in it as the govt is paying to keep them afloat.

 

[The Great Dane]

If you haven’t got pokies or a nrl club bank rolling it then it is unsustainable to have a qlnd or nsw cup team, that’s the reality of the second tier.

It's only the reality of the second tier because we allow it to be so.

If you decoupled the second tier from the NRL clubs, targeted markets where there're gaps in the sport and entertainment market (i.e. most large regional centers), and got it a reasonable broadcast deal, then there's no reason why it couldn't become sustainable to have independent clubs running around in it.

The issues isn't that it's impossible, it's that there is no will to make that happen because the NRL clubs don't want to "split the pie" with more people and want total control over the talent pool, and the NRL either can't be bothered, thinks it's too hard, or doesn't think it's worth the effort.

There're professional/semi-professional Minor Leagues across world that manage to pull it off. If they can do it then we can, even if it's not on the same scale as them.

Png are only still in it as the govt is paying to keep them afloat.

I'm 99% sure that the NRL gave the Hunters a grant as well, but placing expensive teams in third world countries where a large percentage of the population live under the poverty line and broadcasting rights aren't worth dick was always going to have that problem.

 

[The Great Dane]

NRL RG for professional 30+6 players

An NRL reserve grade would be a total waste of resources that nobody needs or wants except for entitled fools whom think everything should be about them/their clubs, with thick pairs of rose-tinted glasses, that desperately need to realise that times have changed since the 80s.

There's no market for it, nothing to be gained from it financially, and all of the developmental benefits of it can be achieved by other cheaper means that are just effective.

It'd also murder any hope of any of your other ideas ever getting off the ground in any meaningful way.

 

[Perth Red]

It's only the reality of the second tier because we allow it to be so.

If you decoupled the second tier from the NRL clubs, targeted markets where there're gaps in the sport and entertainment market (i.e. most large regional centers), and got it a reasonable broadcast deal, then there's no reason why it couldn't become sustainable to have independent clubs running around in it.

The issues isn't that it's impossible, it's that there is no will to make that happen because the NRL clubs don't want to "split the pie" with more people and want total control over the talent pool, and the NRL either can't be bothered, thinks it's too hard, or doesn't think it's worth the effort.

There're professional/semi-professional Minor Leagues across world that manage to pull it off. If they can do it then we can, even if it's not on the same scale as them.

I'm 99% sure that the NRL gave the Hunters a grant as well, but placing expensive teams in third world countries where a large percentage of the population live under the poverty line and broadcasting rights aren't worth dick was always going to have that problem.

true, but then it makes these comps third tier as the decent players will be in the nrl reserve grade comp, which nrl clubs won’t fund. How does a third tier comp fund a semi professional set up and all the travel costs of expansion sides? No way nswrl or qrl are going to allow their premier comps to become third tier. Look how they baulked at Richardson’s strategy.

Not sure what the answer is but I can’t see these suggestions ever happening with clubs and 2 states holding the power over the commission.

I followed the Reds in the Jim beam/Bundaberg cup and whilst reds played in a modern stadium with crowds of around 1500 the Sydney clubs were playing in local parks in front of no one. Can’t see a third tier grabbing the interest of fans in any great number.

 

[siv]

An NRL reserve grade would be a total waste of resources that nobody needs or wants except for entitled fools whom think everything should be about them/their clubs, with thick pairs of rose-tinted glasses, that desperately need to realise that times have changed since the 80s.

There's no market for it, nothing to be gained from it financially, and all of the developmental benefits of it can be achieved by other cheaper means that are just effective.

It'd also murder any hope of any of your other ideas ever getting off the ground in any meaningful way.

There is a place for professional player development and part-time competitions

Especially in the covid bubble era

Putting players 18 to 30 in another clubs jersey alienates fans. Not sure why your opinion outways everyone else.

Part time fans are the same 100 odd who just turn up to have a beer and it doesnt matter who is playing. This group don't travel. They walk down the road from the pub to the game and walk back home

 

[blue bags]

all these ideas are great, but it comes down to money

 

[siv]

all these ideas are great, but it comes down to money

The trick for a part-time NSW Cup is to save costs

So that means all teams should operate in a home base that is 5h max from M7/M4 interesection

 

[Styles clash]

The ARLC wants people watching 8 NRL games a week. Professionalising a secondary/tertiary tier doesn't do that.

 

[The Great Dane]

true, but then it makes these comps third tier as the decent players will be in the nrl reserve grade comp, which nrl clubs won’t fund. How does a third tier comp fund a semi professional set up and all the travel costs of expansion sides? No way nswrl or qrl are going to allow their premier comps to become third tier. Look how they baulked at Richardson’s strategy.

Not sure what the answer is but I can’t see these suggestions ever happening with clubs and 2 states holding the power over the commission.

I followed the Reds in the Jim beam/Bundaberg cup and whilst reds played in a modern stadium with crowds of around 1500 the Sydney clubs were playing in local parks in front of no one. Can’t see a third tier grabbing the interest of fans in any great number.

How do you come to that conclusion!?

I never suggested an NRL reserve grade, and you don't need one... A system mush closer to minor leagues in Baseball or Ice Hockey, but modified for the Australian market, would work fine, and they are basically already doing that in the Q Cup which I think everybody with a brain agrees is a better system than NSW.

In other words there'd be no official NRL reserve grade, and the second tier would be built around the current state leagues. i.e. they'd act as both the reserve grade and be the second tier.

The NRL clubs would be banned from running their own teams in the lower tiers, which would then force them to partner with lower tier clubs and release their players to play for those clubs while they are reserves for the NRL team. In other words every club would be forced to make partnerships with independent lower tier clubs like happens in Qld, and with the Mounties, Newtown, North Sydney, etc, which would give you a viable reserve grade, spread the talent to more clubs instead of hoarding it all between 16, and give you the opportunity to build a new product to sell to broadcasters and a new means of spreading the game.

 

[The Great Dane]

There is a place for professional player development and part-time competitions

Especially in the covid bubble era

Putting players 18 to 30 in another clubs jersey alienates fans. Not sure why your opinion outways everyone else.

Part time fans are the same 100 odd who just turn up to have a beer and it doesnt matter who is playing. This group don't travel. They walk down the road from the pub to the game and walk back home

In most sports leagues around the world (including the SL BTW) it is the standard practice that most players that don't make the top team list play in another club's jersey, and if there're any fans that are alienated by that (I've never met one, in fact most either don't care or like the verity of tiers and clubs in my experience, as it keeps things interesting) they would be only the most entitled few whom can't comprehend that not everything is about them or their club!

Further more if those sports leagues in other nations did things the way you suggest then they would be killing dozens of viable clubs, all with their own fan-bases, and some of them more famous and successful than a lot of NRL clubs could ever dream of.

I think that you could learn a lot from two documentaries on Netflix; The Battered Bastards of Baseball and Sunderland 'Til I Die.
I'd love to see what you think of the potential of the lower tiers after watching them.

 

[The Great Dane]

The ARLC wants people watching 8 NRL games a week. Professionalising a secondary/tertiary tier doesn't do that.

Talk of reserve grades aside, nobody has suggested fulltime professionalism of the lower tiers.

But you are touching on one of the NRL's biggest problems; it's extremely top heavy and doesn't realise that there're a lot of negatives to that.

 

[siv]

In most sports leagues around the world (including the SL BTW) it is the standard practice that most players that don't make the top team list play in another club's jersey, and if there're any fans that are alienated by that (I've never met one, in fact most either don't care or like the verity of tiers and clubs in my experience, as it keeps things interesting) they would be only the most entitled few whom can't comprehend that not everything is about them or their club!

Further more if those sports leagues in other nations did things the way you suggest then they would be killing dozens of viable clubs, all with their own fan-bases, and some of them more famous and successful than a lot of NRL clubs could ever dream of.

I think that you could learn a lot from two documentaries on Netflix; The Battered Bastards of Baseball and Sunderland 'Til I Die.
I'd love to see what you think of the potential of the lower tiers after watching them.

I dont need to look at a failed UK model or USA movies

You just need to know that RL in Australia is district based and has been since 1908

Multiple attempts were made to run 2nd Grade and 3rd Grade comps

What you get is clubs who come and go constantly in these tiers. Thats why 2G and 3G were disbanded in the 1920s after trying that model for 20 to 30 years. We are seeing the same again.

Post Super League War brought it back and the Richo model you propose was tried from 2008. Then was dumped by over 50% of the NRL clubs within 10 years in favour of a return to the district professional development model

 

[siv]

The ARLC wants people watching 8 NRL games a week. Professionalising a secondary/tertiary tier doesn't do that.

What seems to the issue is that they dont want competition for the live TV viewing audience

Be it fans who like to attend games on the weekend

To RL internationals

Anything that undermines the viewing product - which includes the 45 min pre game ads period

It will be intereseting to see the impact of the movement of Qld and NSW Cups off Foxtel & Ch9 to Pay streaming services

 

[The Great Dane]

I dont need to look at a failed UK model or USA movies

You just need to know that RL in Australia is district based and has been since 1908

Multiple attempts were made to run 2nd Grade and 3rd Grade comps

What you get is clubs who come and go constantly in these tiers. Thats why 2G and 3G were disbanded in the 1920s after trying that model for 20 to 30 years. We are seeing the same again.

Post Super League War brought it back and the Richo model you propose was tried from 2008. Then was dumped by over 50% of the NRL clubs within 10 years in favour of a return to the district professional development model

How can you possibly have an informed opinion if you refuse to learn about how other leagues and clubs have done things? And calling the the English football pyramid a failed model is just ignorance of the highest order. The EPL is one of the most successful leagues in the world and their pyramid structure has been copied (with modifications) by most of the other soccer leagues in Europe (i.e. all the most successful ones in the world).

Saying 'RL in Australia is district based and has been since 1908 is just a blatant appeal to tradition. Just because we have always done something one way doesn't mean that is the best way to do it, or that we should continue doing it that way simply because we've always done it that way.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the economic and media landscape has changed quite a bit since the 1920s, so who gives a f**k what they were doing a hundred years ago as it's got no bearing on today now that we have mass media and the internet.

Saying that the 'Richo model' was 'dumped by over 50% of the NRL clubs' is not only (egregious) cherry picking, but is meaningless as the fact that they don't do it doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Most of the grand finalists over the past decade (Roosters, Storm, Rabbitohs, Raiders, Sharks, Broncos, and Cowboys) are using what you call 'the Richo model', you wouldn't expect that if it was negatively effecting the club's development, and if anything if that is the model that the most successful clubs are using then maybe it should be looked into to have a better understanding of it's pros and cons. And I'll say it again, everybody with a brain agrees that Qld Cup model is more competitive and successful than the NSW Cup model, so why wouldn't you want to replicate that success as much as possible in NSW?

Finally clubs coming and going isn't an indictment on the system, it's an indictment on the stability of the competition. That usually means that it's too expensive for clubs to run in it sustainably, and that is a problem that a large successful organisation like NRL could fix if they had the will to do so.

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

Soccer is kind of lucky because its scoring system allows shit teams to hang with great teams. The only time a team gets flogged by 10 or more goals is when a bunch of amateurs from a tiny Pacific Island plays against professionals from a large country.

RL requires teams to be evenly matched otherwise one will be flogged by 50-100 points. The NSW Cup model is shit because it requires teams be filled with professional athletes. Put a team filled with semi-pros in it and they'll be perennial wooden spooners. Richo's model would have allowed teams from regional NSW to compete.

 

[siv]

How can you possibly have an informed opinion if you refuse to learn about how other leagues and clubs have done things? And calling the the English football pyramid a failed model is just ignorance of the highest order. The EPL is one of the most successful leagues in the world and their pyramid structure has been copied (with modifications) by most of the other soccer leagues in Europe (i.e. all the most successful ones in the world).

Saying 'RL in Australia is district based and has been since 1908 is just a blatant appeal to tradition. Just because we have always done something one way doesn't mean that is the best way to do it, or that we should continue doing it that way simply because we've always done it that way.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the economic and media landscape has changed quite a bit since the 1920s, so who gives a f**k what they were doing a hundred years ago as it's got no bearing on today now that we have mass media and the internet.

Saying that the 'Richo model' was 'dumped by over 50% of the NRL clubs' is not only (egregious) cherry picking, but is meaningless as the fact that they don't do it doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Most of the grand finalists over the past decade (Roosters, Storm, Rabbitohs, Raiders, Sharks, Broncos, and Cowboys) are using what you call 'the Richo model', you wouldn't expect that if it was negatively effecting the club's development, and if anything if that is the model that the most successful clubs are using then maybe it should be looked into to have a better understanding of it's pros and cons. And I'll say it again, everybody with a brain agrees that Qld Cup model is more competitive and successful than the NSW Cup model, so why wouldn't you want to replicate that success as much as possible in NSW?

Finally clubs coming and going isn't an indictment on the system, it's an indictment on the stability of the competition. That usually means that it's too expensive for clubs to run in it sustainably, and that is a problem that a large successful organisation like NRL could fix if they had the will to do so.

Interesting how you ignore the 250,000 paying NRL club members most of which dont agree with your opinion

Or the demise of Qld NRL clubs after the end of NYC

Or that Souths dropped the Richo model after years of protests from the Juniors and club members

Or that Canberra dumped the Mounties. I will wait and see if Canberra follows the demise of Qld NRL clubs by their change

Or that Easts have actually become the North Sydney Roosters in the original CC Bears model

The Qld Cup model of Brisbane city regional rep team, Nth Qld regional rep team and Gold Coast regional rep team structure doesnt work on its own.

It needs professional development pathways. Spreading your RG and U21 talent into part time pathways produces part time standard players

But in studying RL from before SL war to what occurred after the solution required remains as two fold

- 1 - NRL professional development pathways whuch means NRL RG
- 2 - AND a revamp of the NSW/RM Cup for part-time pathway to include regional NSW

 

[Get Rid of The Donkeys]

The Interstate Championship should be ditched if the NSW Cup is going to remain a reserve grade competition for 10 NRL clubs, with teams being made up of professionals. The Queensland Cup cannot compete with that.

 

[The Great Dane]

Interesting how you ignore the 250,000 paying NRL club members most of which dont agree with your opinion

Or the demise of Qld NRL clubs after the end of NYC

Or that Souths dropped the Richo model after years of protests from the Juniors and club members

Or that Canberra dumped the Mounties. I will wait and see if Canberra follows the demise of Qld NRL clubs by their change

Or that Easts have actually become the North Sydney Roosters in the original CC Bears model

The Qld Cup model of Brisbane city regional rep team, Nth Qld regional rep team and Gold Coast regional rep team structure doesnt work on its own.

It needs professional development pathways. Spreading your RG and U21 talent into part time pathways produces part time standard players

But in studying RL from before SL war to what occurred after the solution required remains as two fold

- 1 - NRL professional development pathways whuch means NRL RG
- 2 - AND a revamp of the NSW/RM Cup for part-time pathway to include regional NSW

You are just lying at this point; for example the Raiders didn't 'dump' Mounties, their agreement ran out and the Mounties chose to take up a contract with the Bulldogs instead of resigning with the Raiders. This gave the Raiders the perfect opportunity to launch their own NSW Cup team, but they chose not to do that because the extra expense isn't worth the benefits and instead are running their reserves in the Canberra Raiders Cup next year (which shows how much they value reserve grade lol) while they try to find another club to partner with in the NSW cup because covid made it too hard to organise something for this year. They may still end up running their own NSW cup team, but it'll be as a last resort and not because they think it's a better model.

Claiming that most of the 250,000 paying NRL club members agree with you is a joke on the face of it, but it's especially silly considering that for the last 30+ years attendance to games that open for first grade have been an embarrassment. So for people that care so much they have a strange way of showing it considering that 99.99% of them never actually put in the effort to support anything other than the first grade team.

And blaming the Qld clubs poor recruiting and player retention on their professional pathways is a f**king joke as well. They are developing the players just fine, they are just struggling to keep all the best ones at their clubs. Part of that has just been incompetence, particularly in the Broncos and Titans case, but maybe if there were cap incentives for producing your own juniors that wouldn't be as much of an issue...

You know nothing about how anybody else does things (i.e. you don't know dick), you have no intellectual curiosity or will to learn about it, you don't give a f**k about what is best for the sport, only what you think is best for your club and your personal interests, and you almost never directly address points that I make.
You are just sitting here asserting that you are right because that's how things have always been done, meanwhile male participation numbers in the full contact version of the sport are stagnate at best, the sport is dying in most of the bush with no way to increase interest and cash flow, and the lower tiers are sitting there being wasted when they could be being used to further promote the sport, and none of what you suggest will do anything to change any of those problems, in fact it'll probably go a good way to further cementing those issues as it'll place even more resources that could be better spent elsewhere in the NRL club's control.