NRL split into divisions

[Eels Dude]

I agree, it just ensures that the traditional Sydney tribal emphasis can be grown rather than diluted and the national Big City rivalries can be grown.

Remember the 'Sydney Grandfinal' between Bulldogs and Eels. It is that Sydney centric 'feeling' that a Sydney conference playing for a Sydney only shield can help to grow.

What you don't realise is that we already have a conference system in place, it's just not so obvious. The way the NRL draw is done at the moment, clubs get to nominate which teams they play at home over the season, to maximise revenue and the NRL does the draw accordingly. Obviously there are slight changes every year and the NRL cannot accomodate all needs, but they do their best.

My club the Eels for example, are pretty much guarenteed to play Souths, Dogs, Tigers, Broncos twice a season. We even have a deal with ANZ stadium which the NRL accomodates, that we play 2 home games there per season, so we're practically guarenteed home games against Bulldogs and the Bunnies, and they are guarenteed home games against us.

But the idea of breaking table into two different conferences is just silly.

 

[Avenger]

Start the season in February, get rid of City - Country and the ANZAC test and play each other twice.

 

[Von]

+1. agree with that!!

 

[Hutty1986]

When does the season start again?

 

[joshreading]

Not soon enough

 

[joshreading]

How would it work anyway - the winner of either conference playing off in a grand final? so two Sydney sides couldn't play in the GF and vice-versa?

Not at all. It would work the same as it does now. The top 8 in the comp (or whatever number is chosen) would go through to the finals (based as it is now upon Points and for and against). Simple.

 

[juro]

Once the comp gets to 18-20 teams over the next 5-10 years conference system could be an option.

But I like and I think the NRL should do this...

• 18-20 Rounds, each team playing one another once with one extra game to level up the home and away schedule(make the extra game be drawn only live prior to round 1 like they do in the FA Cup so it builds excitement heading into the season and then play that game in Round 1)
• Stand Rep weekends, Friday Night North Island of NZ v South Island of NZ and Saturday Night NSW v QLD. ANZAC Test also stand alone in April
• Top 8 Finals System as is, but get with the times and introduce the AFL System.

As a result the competition will be played over the same length of the year and workload on the played wont be as heavy

I'd go with this one.

 

[Billythekid]

Hate conferences don't want one in the NRL. Same goes for a draft.

 

[Shorty]

The NRL is too small for this, the only reason the states does this is because of traveling time etc and stuff.
We don't need to.

Draft would be fantastic in the NRL if we had the numbers, but again America can do that sort of thing.

 

[anjado]

a conference should only be used for the draw

say we have a 20 team competition

4 added teams are Ipswich,Central Coast,Perth,Wellington

4 conferences

West

Penrith
Parramatta
Wests Tigers
Canterbury

North

Roosters
Manly
Central Coast
Newcastle

South

Dragons
Cronulla
South Sydney
Canberra

Queensland

Brisbane
Ipswich
Gold Coast
North Queensland

Rest

Warriors
Wellington
Perth
Melbourne

have everyone play each other once then have 3 extra conference games, giving us a 22 round season. You can have the same draw for every season with reverse home and away after every season.

You can keep the ladder as it is no need to separate into conferences.

Really if we did this we could really be set for a long time

Everyone will know who they are playing and where and in what order every season.

 

[1 Eyed TEZZA]

I dont think we need conferences until we reach 25+ teams.

Idealy the limit on rounds would be 24 (25 if there are byes), everyone plays everyone once. If the need for more matches, id have the biggest draw card matches and have them twice.

The comp doesn't need to be altered drastically in this respect. We do need to maximise our big matches more though.

 

[LineBall]

If we have 20 teams in the future, would much rather they play each other once, over 19 rounds, rather than play some teams twice to acheive an artifical 24 round competition.

Ideally it would be great if each team would play the other twice, home and away - but it ain't gonna happen.

 

[PB]

The NRL NEEDS conferences. Create more divisional rival games which can be better promoted and bring in bigger crowds. We can have clubs who are rivals not play at one teams home ground for over 18 months in the current system which is just ridiculous. Teams who don't currently have traditional rivals and thus don't get many highly publicised games would develop that under a conference system.

Under a conference system more teams are in the finals race for longer - that means more meaningful games for more fans for more of the season - that can only be good for generating interest!

Bring on a Conference System i say!

 

[madunit]

They tried a conferece style system back in1991 I think. They had pools where you played your pool team twice and the rest once from memory.......

it was 1995-96 when the comp had 20 teams and the groups of 4 system happening (everyone played other teams in their group twice)

 

[Shorty]

The NRL NEEDS conferences. Create more divisional rival games which can be better promoted and bring in bigger crowds. We can have clubs who are rivals not play at one teams home ground for over 18 months in the current system which is just ridiculous. Teams who don't currently have traditional rivals and thus don't get many highly publicised games would develop that under a conference system.

Under a conference system more teams are in the finals race for longer - that means more meaningful games for more fans for more of the season - that can only be good for generating interest!

Bring on a Conference System i say!

It has merit I'll give you that, I'm just not sure our comp is large enough yet.
An 18 team comp, perhaps this needs to be revisited.

 

[siv]

I don't votefor conferences as such but what I do go for is teh following

18 teams 25 rounds

where there are 2 pools of 9 who play each other twice and the opposite team once

where the home games alternate over 2 years when teams only play each other once

where one pool is mainly Sydney teams and the other pool mainly regional

 

[1 Eyed TEZZA]

As it stands, clubs need to play a certain number of games to draw in enough revenue. At the moment, clubs need about 12 home games in order to do that. That is not likely to change nor do I think it should much, 22 and 24 is about right to me.

The players would always like less football, but only by a few games and thats mostly rep players.

The way we play our finals series, it doesn't really matter if we dont play each team once or twice. We can have an uneven amount and it is still credible. Its credible now!

Divisions for creating a draw and nothing else.

 

[flippikat]

a conference should only be used for the draw

say we have a 20 team competition

4 added teams are Ipswich,Central Coast,Perth,Wellington

4 conferences

West

Penrith
Parramatta
Wests Tigers
Canterbury

North

Roosters
Manly
Central Coast
Newcastle

South

Dragons
Cronulla
South Sydney
Canberra

Queensland

Brisbane
Ipswich
Gold Coast
North Queensland

Rest

Warriors
Wellington
Perth
Melbourne

have everyone play each other once then have 3 extra conference games, giving us a 22 round season. You can have the same draw for every season with reverse home and away after every season.

You can keep the ladder as it is no need to separate into conferences.

Really if we did this we could really be set for a long time

Everyone will know who they are playing and where and in what order every season.

This (I think) is about right.

The thing I like is that the conferences have only 4 teams

This is important because the advantage that Sydney teams have over interstate teams (re: travel) is minimised, yet we still double some of the best derbies each season.

I know that a team from Perth, Melbourne or New Zealand is always going to face more travel than a Sydney team - but if poorly planned, a conference draw can exacerbate this problem.

It's a shame that some couldn't fit the model (eg Souths v Tigers), but geographically some of these would be tough to sort out while keeping the conferences down to 4.

 

[RL1908]

Back in the early/mid 1990s when culling of Sydney clubs was seen as a necessary evil, I used to think an all-Sydney conference of 8 teams was the way to go - as long as it came with a Sydney 2nd division comp, with promo/relegation between the two tiers.

On the positive side a prospective club like the Central Coast or a re-built Newtown could see a path into the top tier, but on the negative side the last placed Sydney club in the top tier could be as high as 8th in a 16 team national comp & still be relegated.

Can't see any way to make that Sydney conference promotion/relegation model work unfortunately.

 

[The Engineers Room]

The numbers work better in an 18 team comp. I have outlined this so many times before and what you end up with is more rivalry games and so bigger crowds. It is also a little fairer and if you make it top 2 guaranteed and the other 6 based on points make it, then you don't end up with the limping in of teams as much. Then they would make up the 8 as they do now based on points.