It mus be working if Gould has come out saying this!!
The Sun-Herald
The Tri-Nations rugby league competition between Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand has been an outstanding success. Crowds in New Zealand and England have been terrific and the large audiences watching telecasts in Australia clearly show people love international football.
Thankfully, most players still regard selection for our national teams as the most prestigious personal reward our game has to offer. But for some players, clubs and fans this international competition was seen as an unnecessary addition to an already lengthy season.
This competition can help put international rugby league back on the pedestal it deserves. The game needs it.
Players should always aspire to wear their national colours. In recent years Australian and New Zealand players have made themselves unavailable for selection and in some cases you would have to question the validity of their claims.
NRL and English Super League clubs have pressured players into not representing their country because they want them to attend to injuries, when the NRL clubs would allow these players to take the field for important games with the same injuries. This is happening far too often and the international game suffers as a result.
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AdvertisementThe matches played so far in this series have been gripping. I hope players at home watching the TV are getting more than a little jealous.
I agree our domestic season is far too long and we should shorten the home-and-away part of the competition to 20-22 weeks.
The NRL, clubs and broadcasters are reluctant to shorten the season because of the gate revenue involved. But if we could extend the finals series to six weeks and offer an expanded representative program each year with City/Country, State of Origin, more Test matches and a tri-series, we'd have more than enough football to keep everybody happy.
The NRL is underfunded and the clubs do not get anywhere near enough money from sponsorship and broadcasting rights. They are entitled to a lot more.
The clubs are protective of their home-and-away games because they need the gate money.
If we extended the high-profile football, (i.e. finals and representative matches) perhaps we could come up with a second club knockout competition to increase the value of the game to potential sponsors and broadcasters, then the NRL could pay the clubs more money and we would not be locked into so much home-and-away football, which really does take its toll on players.
Our international competitors would also benefit from playing more matches against Australia.
It is no good being the No.1 rugby league-playing nation in the world if you have no one to play.
Our wonderful record at international level doesn't get the respect it deserves because no one rates the quality of our opposition.
I cannot agree with Wayne Bennett's claim that the Tri-Nations will be successful only if Australia lose, but you can see his point.
We must assist our international competitors to develop their strength.
The international body should urgently review the qualification guidelines for blokes wanting to play for their country of birth.
It is ridiculous that players such as Sonny Bill Williams, Benji Marshall, Karmichael Hunt, Timana Tahu and Tonie Carroll have to knock back playing for their country so they can play in the State of Origin series in Australia.
Why can't they do both?
If they are educated and play junior football in Australia, they should be eligible to play in our premier domestic representative events at the senior level. If they also qualify to play for Great Britain, New Zealand or an emerging rugby league nation, they should always be allowed to fulfil that dream as well.
We have more than enough players to go around and anything to help improve the strength of our competitors surely must be a good thing.
Im sure this was the same guy saying during the year that Australia should worry about themselves and not the other nations :roll:
