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I have listened to two recent podcasts. Forty 20 and Brian Noble on Six to Eight both suggesting going down the road of the NFL by spliting into confernces.

Is this the way forward?

Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor but because we cannot satisfy the rich.

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5 minutes ago, Irish Saint said:

I have listened to recent podcasts. Forty 20 and Brian Noble on Six to Eight both suggesting going down the road of the NFL by spliting into confernces.

Is this the way forward?

yes its probably the way forward and its something I would always look to, means you dont need to limit the size of the league and kick people out to add.. 

however you need more than we have now and I dont really see the point splitting east and west just yet. 

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23 minutes ago, Irish Saint said:

I have listened to two recent podcasts. Forty 20 and Brian Noble on Six to Eight both suggesting going down the road of the NFL by spliting into confernces.

Is this the way forward?

Would agree with the other posters here, seems the natural route to take if we get more strong teams and/or expand geographically. 

This is what the Union Pro14 did in 2018.

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If new teams from France and North America do come in, and investors are prepared to stump up some cash (e.g. rumours about Newcastle's owner), then 4 conferences of 5 would potentially be possible. It could then see teams play everyone in their conference twice (home and away), and everyone else once (home or away) for a total of 23 games. Then follow the NFL style play-offs with 4 Conference Champs and 2 wild cards, with the top seeded teams getting first week off.

Conferences could either be organised geographically to ensure local rivalries get home and away games, or they could be drawn prior to each season (could be an opportunity for some hype like the soccer World Cup draws etc), with the previous season's top teams seeded to avoid each other. Can't work out the maths, but I would imagine there would be some way of ensuring that teams travel to France and N America once per regular season.

However, the 'if' at the start of this post is a pretty big one, and there would need to be some pretty cast iron guarantees of funding over a minimum 3-5 period to ensure that teams don't fold. Not to mention the increased overseas travel and associated costs. It's a nice idea, but it will need some people and or broadcasters with pretty big pockets.

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35 minutes ago, PREPOSTEROUS said:

Conferences is the way to go. Allows the game to expand without others feeling like they are having their noses pushed out. It also makes more sense with a play off system to decide the champions. Money, as ever, is key. 

Yes possibly.  It would work or be needed because of geography.   But if you have 20 quality teams, that does not be necessarily mean a conference. Just still limit the number of matches.  It  still provides for a playoff.

In a related point, maybe the CC could be put into a conference to supply the quarter final places. Then a knock out. This produces more games for SL teams which could then reduce SL games back to say 23.

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1 hour ago, Irish Saint said:

I have listened to two recent podcasts. Forty 20 and Brian Noble on Six to Eight both suggesting going down the road of the NFL by spliting into confernces.

Is this the way forward?

Do you have links to these podcasts?

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37 minutes ago, Big Picture said:

Do you have links to these podcasts?

Easily available on Apple I tunes.

Videos on youtube.

Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor but because we cannot satisfy the rich.

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Any entrance fee/deposit to be paid? :whistle:

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I think in principle, it’s an idea that could work but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work with Rugby League. I think it would actually produce more questions than answers, in all honesty.

I know we can’t predict what clubs will be where in two or three years but let’s say it’s an Eastern Conference and a Western Conference. Automatically, the Western competition looks the better of the two in terms of quality and attendances with St Helens, Wigan and Warrington in it, compared with the Eastern where the biggest sides are Leeds, Hull FC and then, maybe Cas.

 

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10 minutes ago, Oliver Clothesoff said:

I think in principle, it’s an idea that could work but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work with Rugby League. I think it would actually produce more questions than answers, in all honesty.

I know we can’t predict what clubs will be where in two or three years but let’s say it’s an Eastern Conference and a Western Conference. Automatically, the Western competition looks the better of the two in terms of quality and attendances with St Helens, Wigan and Warrington in it, compared with the Eastern where the biggest sides are Leeds, Hull FC and then, maybe Cas.

 

yes agree with you on this but it is very much an "in principle" discussion I would suggest. We arent near it for numbers IMHO or in the fact that to do it you will need to close the door to an extent.. which isnt happening again too soon.

I would also suggest that, although East and West is normally the call as its an easy split, you can easily look at a different style of split.. AFC and NFC for example are spread across the states and then they conference to areas from there.. I would guess you could do similar and split half of west and half east together etc.. equally at the time you need to look at the additions, if it is east and west then you want to add 2 additional teams, for the sake of argument Dublin and Cardiff, you have landed yourself in a pickle to where to put them... 

as I say if it is something that they decide is a good idea then the real discussion start then on how

56 minutes ago, FearNothing said:

...and what about the other teams outside the 20????

they would be left to grow, at their own pace, with an ability to be added to make 22, 24, 28, 40 but be all conferenced off... the good thing with conferencing is that you can keep the same number of games but with more clubs involved by changing the way/times you play etc (NFL and all american sport have been doing this for decades).. so i think it would allow this to happen more.. while teams know that if they meet xyz they are in rather than being one in one out in can be 2 in... 

IMHO if you close the shop you need t be able to go to conferencing and to be able to add without kicking someone out.. 

IMHO it is also miles and miles away so i would say its nothing to fear but people talking about "ideal world" scenarios.

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4 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

I agree entirely with the reasoning for going to conferences, allowing us to grow rather than replace where possible.

However the reason to go conferences now would be to basically rebrand and the loop fixtures and remove the inherent unfairness of them and magic.

Two conferences of 6. Play yours 3 times. 7 home. 7 away. 1 magic. Play the other conference twice. 6 home, 6 away. 27 game season. Then play-offs

yes i get that, and can see why they would do it, but that is just really putting something official in place rather than the slightly more random loop fixtures set up they have now. For me that is just shuffling the deckchairs on the titanic.. great but there are more important things to sort. 

IMHO they are looking to add another 2 teams to SL over the coming 3-5 years which would make a simple home and away fixture list plus a 6 team play off work out quite nicely.. start a week or so later. So I dont feel as though they need to make this change now, otherwise they will only be changing it again, and we are all getting a little sick of that I think. If they were to add another couple of teams after that then that is the point I can see them breaking to 2 x 8 or (if they can) 2 x 10

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1 hour ago, Vichyssoise said:

Any entrance fee/deposit to be paid? :whistle:

Who knows what will happen if the Dragons get to Old Trafford:D

Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor but because we cannot satisfy the rich.

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42 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

I'd also add. It would be near impossible to run P+R with a conference structure fairly.

Would agree,,,, conference would work best with licencing imho. Giving some form of stability whilst enabling teams to join more easily and allow expansion not being restricted to a certain size single league.

Not sure we have enough SL status clubs and potential SL clubs at the moment.

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48 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

I'd also add. It would be near impossible to run P+R with a conference structure fairly.

it would certainly be very very messy with teams changing conferences each year (if done geographically) etc.. 

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The NFL is mainly organised geographically but some teams are in the same division as their biggest rivals, e.g. Dallas being in the NFC East with Washington when they probably should be in the South division, which was deliberately done by the league to maximise rivalry games during the season. That could be a possibility if RL goes to a conference system although it might mean some rejigging, such as if Leeds were put into the same division as Wigan, Saints and Warrington then Salford could have to be moved to another division to accommodate them. 

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I think so if we commit to expanding in North America and Europe. We talk about adding so many expansion clubs and then say about a 14 team league. Clubs like Wakefield, Salford, Huddersfield would simply not survive in the top flight in that environment and expansion teams want to be in super league. 2 conferences of 10, each team playing 27 games, each team 3 times, and top 4 going through to play-offs I think would be good. 

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Wasn’t the original Super League idea to have SL Europe and SL Australia and have a playoff between Europe and Aus.

I think the future is conferences, especially if we’re going to expand to North America we could end up with SL Europe and SL America’s 

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I’m broadly in favour of the conference format, but I do have concerns over spreading the money pot too thinly by increasing the number of top flight clubs too quickly.  There’s also the question of the available player pool.

I’d be in favour of shortening the regular season and placing greater emphasis on the Grand Final and the playoffs leading up to it especially.

As others have mentioned the NFL isn’t restricted by alignment on pure geographical lines although I would start with Western (including N America) and Eastern (including France) at the beginning.

There’s certainly a lot of good ideas to be borrowed from the NFL and their format is one part of the success story over there.

 

 

 

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