I bleed blue & gold
First Grade
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Pumped!!
Only 27 days until the 9's start, far out I can't wait for footy to start again.
The only rugby league I am interested in is the Eels winning the NRL comp.
The exhibition matches can be interesting - origin included - but as far as they affect the NRL comp I am well sick of them. The pre-season mid-season exhibition games are pointless and devalue the NRL competition which in my opinion is the pinnacle of league and should be promoted and protected as the pinnacle.
As it is, all sorts of crap is allowed to detract from the NRL comp.
It's a fair question. Personally I think the Nines are a great idea, and IMO the future of the game has less than 13 players from each team on the field. Either that or make wider fields, which is harder to do with stadiums as they are.
But anyway, the rules are that teams are to field one of their top five paid players. But what if they're all injured and can't play?
Either way, I'd happily watch if every team just fielded backups and under 20s, but I'm the type of tragic that records Wenty games if I can't be home for them.
Warren Ryan has been advocating that idea for years. If we trimmed it down to, say, 11 players, we could get rid of the wingers, move the inside centre across to the other side of the field and have the five-eight play like another half-back. Or something like that.
You could always get rid of two players and allow forward passes.
If you were going to drop to 11 then you'd just get rid of scrums altogether and really speed the game up.
You'd probably get rid of two big forwards to suit the faster game.
The inclusion/exclusion of Hoppa and Watmough were to be expected for mine. Wicks missing out is a disappointment but if I recall correctly, Steve Sharp mentioned that he was nursing a hamstring injury not long ago.