Switching seasons

[shaggy]

now i know that superleague wanted to allign the australian and english seasons so that they could play the world club challenge mid season (as the case in 97) i also know that superleague is in the 12th season playing in summer, now what i was wondering is wether people thoguht that the superleague season should/could switch back to being played in the winter?

 

[roughyedspud]

no.

 

[In-goal]

Never in a million years, if the era of summer rugby has proven anything it's that the fans love the warmer weather and the spectacle of the game is alot greater.

 

[roughyedspud]

exactly......


as much as i miss oldhams old watershedding i'll never miss stand on the terraces freezing my knackers off :lol:

 

[Evil Homer]

No, of course not. Why on earth would it?

You have obviously never been to Britain in the winter.

 

[deluded pom?]

We don't have summer now. The seasons just meld into one long grey dank depressing winter. We really knew what we were doing 200 years ago when we transported the convicts to Australia and stayed here on this overpopulated expensive anarchy ridden dump.

 

[bartman]

Indeed, the British summer is never really too hot for sport. Unlike Australia/New Zealand temperatures.

Winter however can get a bit too wet cold and bleak, and I'm not sure anyone would rather head out and watch a mid-afternoon game while the sun is setting - it it ever shone through that day's clouds?

 

[shaggy]

no ive never been to britain in the winter or summer for that matter

i was wondering because i was thinking of somethin else and i stared thinking about how the full mid-season tours between britain & australia stopped when the english season switched and the world club challenge became permantley hosted in england

 

[bartman]

Yeah, the big tours were something else, that I don't think we'll see again in the modern game.

I think the main driver in the stopping of tours was the Superleague split in Australia, where rep status of one comp or the other was never really established. And then the increased cost of running the game afterwards.

I think the seasons here used to be interrupted to allow for the kangaroo touring matches against clubs and regions, as well as the tests.

 

[Knight87]

Indeed, the British summer is never really too hot for sport. Unlike Australia/New Zealand temperatures.

Winter however can get a bit too wet cold and bleak, and I'm not sure anyone would rather head out and watch a mid-afternoon game while the sun is setting - it it ever shone through that day's clouds?

Well, the English Premier League Soccer manages to get very big crowds and that is played during Winter over there.

 

[KalgoorlieRed]

Well, the English Premier League Soccer manages to get very big crowds and that is played during Winter over there.

A different game demographically and culturally. Not to be compared with RL.

Never go back to the wet and windy winters.

 

[Knight87]

really? Was it that bad watching league circa September-April? You know it can also get cold playing league in Canberra and Melbourne on a Winter's night.

 

[deluded pom?]

Well, the English Premier League Soccer manages to get very big crowds and that is played during Winter over there.

And soccer also has ALL of the media fawning over it and the gullible public are told, and the majority believe, it's the be all and end all of British sport. Only, two thirds of the Premier league players aren't even British. The Premier league is vastly overrated, mostly by those with the biggest vested interest, and is purely and simply about three or four teams making money. If that's your bag, good luck to you.

 

[Quidgybo]

Well, the English Premier League Soccer manages to get very big crowds and that is played during Winter over there.

Exactly. And when RL was played in the winter as well it always lost out to the soccer juggernaught when it came to media exposure, ground availability, and the hearts and wallets. Now we compete with Cricket instead - an entirely different game with different venues, and a different pace. We can now share decent quality stadiums with the big money boys in soccer precisely because we're using them primarily during their off season. If SL was still running around at the same time as soccer, chopping up their pitches and turning them into mud piles every second week during the soggy winter months, then we'd find our choice of quality venues suddenly a lot smaller. Not to mention that the quality and spectacle of our game would suffer being played constantly on slow muddy fields instead of dry fast ones.

Live telecasts on Friday and Saturday nights? Only if there's no Premier League or even Coca-Cola Championship (second division) soccer on at those times. The networks can deal with the overlap for a few weeks at each end of the season but having to mount two outside broadcasts week after week instead of just one doubles costs. And the value of the television rights would probably be less given we'd be playing during the part of the year when Sky and the other networks are already quite well off for sports content. Summer is when they have a gap/need for a fast action sport in their schedules. English RL switched to summer for many reasons, and synchronisation with the Australian season was by no means the most important of those reasons. It isn't changing back any time soon and certainly not just so obsolete tours can be revived.

Leigh

 

[brendothejet]

The seasons are pretty decently lined up as it is, we are only anout 6 rounds behind the poms.

There is no reason why the British couldn't do a big tour of Australia. Have their final then get the Lions team together (after playing a four nations tournament during the year for selection) then head out here. They could play teams that didn't make the 8, maybe a regional game or two then an ashes series.

Sounds like fun to me.

 

[nadera78]

exactly......


as much as i miss oldhams old watershedding i'll never miss stand on the terraces freezing my knackers off :lol:

Tell me about it. The coldest I've ever been in my life was sitting at Boundary Park one saturday watching Oldham v QPR! Nearly died when that wind started whipping in.

 

[deluded pom?]

The seasons are pretty decently lined up as it is, we are only anout 6 rounds behind the poms.

There is no reason why the British couldn't do a big tour of Australia. Have their final then get the Lions team together (after playing a four nations tournament during the year for selection) then head out here. They could play teams that didn't make the 8, maybe a regional game or two then an ashes series.

Sounds like fun to me.

Sounds like way too many games to me brendo!