Of course, but at least the benefits are there, if you get injured training for something real, you can deal with that, it happens.
But you get nothing out of the nines, nothing tangible can be translated to the 13 a side man. To my mind, that fact in itself very much makes a difference to how and where the injury happens
If im risking my star players, i want to be risking them for something that can HELP my side win a premiership, not risking them for something that even 5 days later most people have forgotten and moved on to more important things.
I was pleased when Stuart named a bare bones 9's team, i was pleased when the players selected played seemingly to avoid injury and for fun only, and i was pleased to hear they all returned home without so much as a bruised shin out of it. We got 110k for that. The knights got 130k and lost Mullen for maybe 4 months.
You reckon the knights wouldnt give that 20k back right now to get a healthy Mullen?
Naming a full strength team wouldnt even neccasarily result in a serious chance. The Dragons pretty much named every with an ounce of ability and they ran last.
These are the risks, some teams are willing to assume then, some aren't, im pleased Stuart was not willing to take that risk. The Raiders are going to be flat out winning football games full stength this year, let alone had we lost a player like Cornish or Wighton (had he played) for a long period.
But i want to make this clear, i am a fan of the concept, i want it to stick around. To me is was a good fun couple of days. But you've got to understand that some teams and coaches will take this thing seriously, and others wont. And their teams will deal with the consequences of that decision. That's the nature of the beast. Legislating like some have suggested to include more of the big stars is only going aliniate the teams and elite players who dont want to be involved, further from the idea and create more opposition to it.
If the product we saw last weekend is what we saw for the next 5 years, who would care? The product was great, basically every game was exciting, we got to see some young stars in the making in the place of older one.
The thing played itself out really well. I see no reason to change it but i wouldnt be suprised is a club like Newcastle change their attitude to it next year (i also wont be surprised if they dont), and that's the nature of it
