Worzel
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Posts
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Posts posted by Worzel
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3 minutes ago, super major said:
I would like to apologise to you all. The last few season's have made me realise what you have gone through for the last forty years or so.
It was wrong of me to enjoy your misery if it was as bad as I feel now.
It was worse, you have no idea. Give it time though, give it time... I hope!!
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I think the issue with the BBC is the lack of cross-promotion. The *only* reason to be on the BBC is to reach audiences who wouldn't otherwise be actively looking for rugby league. We should have insisted on a certain framework of cross-promotion of the matches in exchange for selecting them as a broadcast partner, and if we didn't then we've been a bit negligent I think.
Channel 4, whilst notionally having a smaller reach, clearly worked much, much harder to let their general audiences know that they broadcast rugby league and when matches were. They even created custom trailers advertising the respective stories of the two participants. Their approach was night & day to the BBC's approach.
Think we've dropped the ball here in allowing the Beeb to get away with cursory efforts.
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7 hours ago, unapologetic pedant said:
Would you use a short grubber on the final play of a game i.e. when it's no longer an each-way bet, with the repeat set removed from the equation?
On a similar theme, I've gone right off the 2-point field-goal. Seen too many games end in damp squib attempts to level with a 2-pointer. Previously, trailing teams went for the try. Kept the ball alive at all costs. Threw the kitchen sink.
Good example was the 2016 NRL GF which finished Cronulla 14 Melbourne 12. Wasn't a great game. Storm's hot-potato last throw of the dice was the best moment. Now they would just grind out the yards to try and get within range for a 2-point FG.
It isn’t an each-way bet, far from it: The defending team can run the ball out, or far worse if you kick long you concede a 20m restart (and potentially a fast one where your defence isn’t set). It seems clear that the addition of an extra tackle to the latter downside has been sufficient to discourage the grubber, which means we see less positive attacking kicks on the 5th tackle now, and I think that is a bad thing.
I’ve always been indifferent to the 2 point field goal. It’s very rarely attempted anyway.
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21 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:
A short grubber to the in-goal for a repeat set is the conservative choice. And the least skilful or prepossessing. Could be implemented by any old clodhopper. RL evangelists won't be sending out "100 greatest grubber kicks" videos.
More adventurous to keep the ball in hand and alive.
The short grubber is predominantly designed to create a try-scoring opportunity. It only creates a repeat set if a side defends it.
However, even if it only created a try-scoring opportunity a minority of times (perhaps that’s the case), that amount of times is infinitely greater than the final drive and surrender tackle designed to turnover the ball tight in the corner, or the final kick floated to the corner but rarely contested. Those two options are both designed to get the same result: A boxed-in yardage set which can be defended by a compressed umbrella defence.
I vote for incentivising the option which at least creates a try-scoring opportunity some of the time.
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19 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:
This was addressed on the previous page.
It was a kick on the full over the touch-line I had in mind. Replying to your comment about "unfair punishment for a slightly long grubber".
Intended to illustrate that whether a kick is an inch too long or 10 yards too long makes no difference to the sanction. Close, but no cigar. The only sport I know of where a miss gets a cigar (one sixth of a cigar, to be precise) is Australian Rules Football. I'm sure you wouldn't wish to go down that route.
That's entirely irrelevant, and not even true (we have many rules where the sanction depends on the grade of mis-step). But as I said it is irrelevant because rugby League is a game with rules designed to increase the level of entertainment. It's very far from a "pure" sport, and consistency between different rules' relative sanction is not a requirement.
The rules are a calibrated balance between incentives and disincentives, designed to optimise attractive play. My judgement about an "unfair punishment" is precisely that, a judgement made in that context: Increasing entertainment. I'm simply arguing that short kicks to the in-goal are almost always attacking motions, with positive intent to create a scoring opportunity. That is what people pay for: To see those, and to watch teams defend against them. It makes perfect sense to better reward (or reduce the penalty for error) that action, to encourage it to happen more often.
At present the fear of a 7-tackle set reduces the incentive to be progressive, and increases the incentive to be conservative. Our sport has continually evolved rules in the interest of the former, and it'd be perfectly consistent to do so in this case.
That's why rugby league isn't always the best sport for a pedant
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1 hour ago, Tre Cool said:
I agree, but saying RL in London's dead when it clearly isn't is unconstructive imo.
Perhaps, but to be fair he said "pretty much dead", so not quite the full parrot.
I think sometimes in order to have any chance of moving forwards it helps to fully admit where you are, no matter how sad or confronting that may be, and then make an active decision that you want a better outcome and so will have to do things differently. Otherwise "pretty much dead" really does evolve into "dead", which is what we all want to avoid?
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21 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:
Only the Zero Tackle sets that begin with a tap on the 20m line.
The fact that some 7-tackle sets don't get called 7-tackle sets doesn't materially change the fact that in sets from a 20m restart you are given 7 tackles, so they are quite clearly "7-tackle sets". Now if you want to argue that the other instances should always be described as such by commentators, then sure I'll help you right some nice placards, or perhaps sign your change.org online petition. That's fine. But making the argument that a set with 7 tackles in it isn't a set with 7 tackles in it is pretty difficult.
Like you, I won't apologise for my pedantry on this topic.
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1 hour ago, unapologetic pedant said:
How do you feel about a slightly long kick out on the full?
I think that cynically kicking the ball out on the full, enabling you to set your defence ready for a 20m tap, should be disincetivised and a 7-tackle set reasonably does that. With a long kick out of yardage you have the whole pitch to aim at, and an additional 8-10 metres of in-goal safety valve so you're already given a decent contingency for slight 'good faith' error. It also isn't game play I pay my money to watch. If I liked watching long tactical kicks I've watch the other lot.
Grubbers on the other hand are more-times-than-not an attempt to score a try. Even the possibility of them keeps a line defence on edge, which again makes try-scoring actions more likely with ball in hand too. So I think that is game play we do not want to discourage.
How do you feel about it?
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Just now, Harry Stottle said:
Already been done, slowcoach
I missed the bus on that one, clearly
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11 hours ago, Click said:
I have always thought that the 7 tackle set should be when the kicker kicks the ball dead from outside the 40m line. If it is a short grubber within the 20m zone, I don't think it should be a 7 tackle set, and be a usual 6 tackle set.
I always remember a game years ago at the Stoop when Chad Randall for (probably) Harlequins kept intentionally kicking the ball dead for a 20m restart because it allowed us to set our defensive line. Although it helped us win the game, it wasn't very exciting to watch.
This would be a sensible evolution. We even have the red lines to police it already, although I'd say 20m rather than 40m.
I really do think that a 7-tackle set is an unfair punishment for a slightly long grubber, and the consequence has been that it has disincentivised attacking kicks like people say, resulting in more conservative last play options in the red zone. Our game should be about encouraging positivity near the try line, not discouraging it.
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On 12/05/2024 at 09:23, Harry Stottle said:
I was going to say the exactly same thing Griff, the bus I get was 22:10 (last one) and I have a 20min ish walk from the ground, the bus company have just changed it last week to 22:05, then bloody Sky or whoever it was decided to make Friday's kick off v Salford 20:05 instead of the usual 20:00, so I took the decision to drive other than going for a few pre match scoops of the amber singing juice, it's not on!
Can't you get the train instead?
Oh.
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1 hour ago, Tre Cool said:
Well there definitely needed to be a coherent long term plan which there never was (and never is anywhere from the RFL so we may as well forget that).
Broncos are still going and still providing opportunities for local players so let's be pleased about that and stop knocking them. And there are still a few decent amateur clubs knocking around. Skolars and Hemel failing at pro level is on them and no reflection on anybody else.
If anyone wants another positive check out what Bedford Tigers are up to these days (ok not London but near enough). The club's going from strength to strength and running mens/womens and wheelchair teams.
I'm not sure constructive assessment is knocking them?
The reality on the ground is that London Broncos will be back in the Championship next season, with an uncertain pathway back into Super League and no surety that the club's economics can ever add up below the top-level. I think that's worth discussing, especially as the biggest challenge for rugby league is talent pipeline and London - for all it's imperfections - has demonstrated its clear potential to be the biggest single driver of increased participation in our game. There is an opportunity there, one worth considering how we pursue it as a sport.
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3 minutes ago, Tre Cool said:
Well we have a London club in SL packed with local players, the atmosphere at games and the stadium is great, so that point's wrong (it's not a dump in north london with a running track around it like Skolars tried to keep telling us was the future).
An amateur club from London got to the 4th round of the Challenge Cup and only lost 50-4 to a strong championship side in Halifax.
There's still plenty to be positive about, Skolars and Hemel should never have tried to go pro and fans of those clubs need to accept it and stop with the constant negativity.
This is all true. I think what I would have liked to have seen was, in the 1997-2012 period I described, the RFL and David Hughes sit down and design a coherent London/South pyramid. One with the Broncos at the top, and then Skolars and Hemel etc running as proper feeder organisations as the Broncos development pyramid, with an integrated London Academy running through that organisation. Ideally with a 5 or 10 year Super League guarantee for the Broncos, to enable all of this long-term planning to not be undermined by one bad season on the pitch.
The resources existed at that point to do so, but it seemed to me at that time that neither the RFL, London Broncos and indeed nor the Skolars and others wanted to do that. Politics and short-term thinking abound I'm afraid. Once-in-a-generation opportunity was lost.
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On 10/05/2024 at 15:56, nadera78 said:
I don't think there's realistically anything you could do now to revive RL in London, no matter how much money spent. The Broncos are a dead donkey, having been slowly killed over many years. The people who used to support the club are gone and they aren't coming back, they've been gone too long now. Could you replace them? No, not in my opinion.
Cities like London always have a demographic churn, it's the nature of the place, but the changes seen in the last 10-15 years have been astronomical and I think you'd struggle to find more than a couple of thousand people here who even know Rugby League exists. Sure, quite a lot of people have heard of 'rugby', but all they know is there's an England team that plays out in Twickenham and occasionally plays in word cups on the telly. They've also heard of the All Blacks. Beyond that, they have no interest in it at all, and that's a sport that does get national reach. Expecting them to know about RL, a sport with no real presence in London or the media, is like expecting someone in Latvia to know about it. It's just completely alien.
Meanwhile, there's another thread on here detailing the community game in London and, from reading that, it looks smaller than it's been in 20 years.
So if you wanted to do anything here, you'd essentially be starting from scratch. You'd have to fund a dozen development officers, for a decade at least. You'd have to fund a professional club - not just a team on the field, but club as a whole - for the same period of time. You'd have to find a home to play out of, and stay there permanently without falling out with the owners, which is something the club has never managed in its history. And you'd have to get pretty much every decision right over that time, day in day out, week after week, for a decade. Make any significant mistakes and you undo any successes. On top of that, the ongoing churn of people coming here for a few years and then moving on means you'd also have to be committed to an ongoing cycle of finding new players and fans to replace the ones who leave. And doing all of that in a media environment that thinks you're irrelevant.
Not only would it cost an absolute fortune, but it would require a level of expertise - and luck - that none of us have ever seen. To transplant an alien sport to a city with a transient population and a million competing entertainment options...nah, sorry, I don't think it's possible. It might have been, at the dawn of SL and the move to summer, but that's many years and many failures ago now.
Brentford and Twickenham - which were realy only a stones throw apart - were the big chance to get it right. For 15 years between 1997-2012 the club played pretty consistently in the same part of West London, in decent-ish facilities and for a lot of it coinciding with Sport England-funded development officers. Unfortunately during this time David Hughes wouldn't listen to the voices in the club suggesting a better mix of investment, with more in marketing and community/pathways development, and his focus remained almost entirely on the first team playing squad with only token efforts made in other directions.
If either David, or frankly also the RFL, had taken a more strategic-minded path in that decade then we could have seen Broncos develop into a club rather than a team. Unfortunately neither did, and now we are where we are. It could still be done now, but David is 25 years older and the RFL has even less money now than it did then, so I genuinely think the moment has passed.
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14 minutes ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:
Unfortunately, that's not THE issue. It's just AN issue. One of many.
I mean, in this video, there's at least two. One being the effortless warm up, the other being someone at the club thinking this is decent prep and feeling it's good enough to share online!
Indeed. Much as I find this all quite amusing, it’s genuinely baffling how the club has got to this spot, given the heritage of the club and the size and engagement of the fanbase. I know Pearson isn’t the super-wealthy benefactor you’d ideally have, but he’s put enough money in to get a solid “compete for the playoffs” squad. Not this shambles.
Huddersfield and Salford I’d understand, those are husks really, that punch about their weight. But Hull FC should be more like Wigan and Saints.
This did make me laugh earlier though…
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10 minutes ago, Leyther_Matt said:
Just came here to post the same thing! The absolute state of it. Where are the coaches? Why film it? Why think it was a good idea to share it?!
Can’t believe they posted that on their own socials
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I think I’ve spotted the issue. Hull FC have been practicing letting people through the defensive line as a warm up
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This soap opera gets better every week
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8 hours ago, Dunbar said:
I would pick 13 loose forwards and be the Great Britain coach in 2003.
I only came here to make this comment
Waite-Noble-ball, the innovation that bored thousands of people to death
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Game over. You can’t give 4 yardage penalties and 3 soft tries from a weakness in defensive structure and still expect to beat a good side. Basically gave Wire an 18 point handicap, and then started to play.Ah well, we learn the lessons and move on to next week.
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Video ref was gagging to not give that. Maybe he could have watched it another 5 times?
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2 minutes ago, Just Browny said:
That Hull KR RHS defence is very odd.
It’s clearly a designed defence, but Sam B has done his homework and decided to trigger it with a well-architected edge attack.
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Hiku has jumped out of the line 4 times. Warrington have scored 3 tries as a result. Unless he’s been told to do that during the week, I’d genuinely sub him off at this point.
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I have to say, I am enjoying this season’s unexpected soap opera. Who needs the “excitement” of a relegation battle when you can have this instead? More twists and turns than Eastenders in the peak Den & Angie years.
All it needs now is for Adam Pearson to buy out Derek’s caravan decking business for Hull FC to get the full set of Leigh assets. You heard it here first.
Western Australian government to support bid for an 18th NRL team
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
I swear any feel good factor is only in the minds of blokes in their 50's and 60's, not today's much-larger NRL audience
The game has moved on a long time ago. The Bears are an irrelevance and a distraction and I've no idea why a Perth franchise would entertain the idea of giving away some of their home games to be played at North Sydney Oval... the team is already going to play 9 or 10 matches in Sydney every season as it is!! In an ideal world we'd have more games in Western Australia than one team's home games can provide, not less.