Ideas to make the game better to watch

[Wakefield Ram]

Like a few on here, aside from watching my team Dewsbury (which has been pretty painful this season) I have lost interest in watching SL aside from odd Saints games. So few ideas that might make the game a bit more interesting and varied to watch. 

1. Speed up the play the balls - watched some retro games on Sky and YouTube and noticed how much quicker the ptbs were. Too much flopping (which used to be penalised) now and wrestling on the floor to slow it down as much as possible. 

2. Reduce 10m to 7m. The laws work now encourages safety first 5 drives and a kick play. The retro games seem to have more passing and more running from depth. Yes there were more errors.

3. Attacking side kicking the ball dead. Use part of the RU law, where the scrum is back where the ball was kicked from or on the 20 whichever if within the 20. This will add some jeopardy to the tactic of booting the ball down the field. 7 tackle set isn't a major deterrent. 

4. Penalise all contact with the head/neck. Grapple tackles used to be penalised, now it seems to fairly common. It adds nothing to the game and we need to get rid of head contact to avoid as many concussions as possible for player welfare and reduce future litigation.

5. Scrums. Do them properly. If some teams start contesting scrums, the rest will have to follow. 

6. Penalise dissent to refs. We used to pride ourselves on it, now it's not much better than football. Consistently penalise it for a few weeks and it will sort itself out. Players arguing with refs isn't good for the sport.

7. Big hits. Whilst they look spectacular if the tackler gets it right, the tackled player will have this brain rattled around inside his skull. When the tackler gets it wrong, you get head clashes. Appreciate a lot won't like it, but I don't think players should risk their health even more than they do just for our entertainment. Seeing players stagger around after a big hit doesn't seem like something to applaud.

8. Contested high kicks. Penalise players running blocks, if they're not contesting for the ball they are obstructing and stopping the contest.

I'm sure a lot will disagree and feel free, these are just my thoughts, but we've got to make the game more exciting to watch and away from the "winning the arm wrestle" mentality.

 

 

 

[Leeds Wire]

I've got so much to say about this, but I'll start with get rid of scrums altogether.

Agree that the play-the-ball is a mess.

Good post mate by the way 

[DavidM]

6 minutes ago, Wakefield Ram said:

Big hits. Whilst they look spectacular if the tackler gets it right, the tackled player will have this brain rattled around inside his skull. When the tackler gets it wrong, you get head clashes. Appreciate a lot won't like it, but I don't think players should risk their health even more than they do just for our entertainment. Seeing players stagger around after a big hit doesn't seem like something to applaud.

Can you explain this a bit ? Penalise a  strong tackle ?

[Wollo Wollo Wayoo]

Your No.3 has been suggested many times before and I always agree it's a great idea.  Other than that the sooner we get rid of the 6 again rule the better.

[bratman]

Yeah get rid of 6 again. But I like a big hit and an arm wrestle!

[Moove]

It would be interesting to see what the game would look like if we just started enforcing the rules we already have rather than tweaking or adding new ones. E.g. enforcing a proper play-the-ball.

The other thing I've often wondered is whether limiting to a max of two in the tackle would help reduce the wrestling and encourage more offloading or quicker play-the-balls.

[Dunbar]

That's the thing about these threads, we all have our own views about what will make the game better.

While I agree with some of the ideas in the first post, personally I would slow down the play the ball and increase the big hits!

[Dunbar]

1 minute ago, Moove said:

It would be interesting to see what the game would look like if we just started enforcing the rules we already have rather than tweaking or adding new ones. E.g. enforcing a proper play-the-ball.

I would very much like to watch that sport being played.

[BridBeachRL]

As a sport we need a USP. I was thinking about this earlier today, if you asked a generic sports fan in the UK to name 1 NFL team and 1 MLB team I reckon the numbers would be high if it was done "BBC pointless style" straight away San Fran 49ers and New York Yankees would fit that bill. However if you went to the US how many people would have heard of Rugby League never mind being able to mention a team. 

Although I personally think looking at the game in the UK we are a 1/2 way house, we have bits of union and bits of football/soccer (especially atmosphere) the game needs to work out does it want to have less bulky players and speedsters in all positions making the game even more quicker or do we want to slow down the game to more of a Union market as in bringing back Scrums making more of a wrestle and big hits. 

Speeding up the game you could look at reducing players potentially removing the props to a 11 a side format, I know a complete change. Or we could stick to what we have and turn up to beach events like on 25th September in Brid

[unapologetic pedant]

1 hour ago, Wakefield Ram said:

7. Big hits. Whilst they look spectacular if the tackler gets it right, the tackled player will have this brain rattled around inside his skull. When the tackler gets it wrong, you get head clashes. Appreciate a lot won't like it, but I don't think players should risk their health even more than they do just for our entertainment. Seeing players stagger around after a big hit doesn't seem like something to applaud.

8. Contested high kicks. Penalise players running blocks, if they're not contesting for the ball they are obstructing and stopping the contest.

If your 7 is intended to make the game safer, it`s at odds with your 8. Allowing chasers a free run to challenge a kick receiver would increase the number of dangerous "eyes only for the ball" collisions.

Lots of high kicks are contested anyway. And on what basis would it be illegal to get in an opponent`s way while moving towards the ball? Blockers are already penalised if they gratuitously adjust their line.

In my view, we need to move in the opposite direction regarding obstruction if we want to "make the game a bit more interesting and varied to watch". The current absurdly prescriptive "running behind your own player" application, if consistently applied, would penalise the tackled player at every PTB, since the dummy-half uses him as a block against the markers.

[Wollo Wollo Wayoo]

7 minutes ago, BridBeachRL said:

As a sport we need a USP. I was thinking about this earlier today, if you asked a generic sports fan in the UK to name 1 NFL team and 1 MLB team I reckon the numbers would be high if it was done "BBC pointless style" straight away San Fran 49ers and New York Yankees would fit that bill. However if you went to the US how many people would have heard of Rugby League never mind being able to mention a team. 

 

Maybe Wigan?

[unapologetic pedant]

7 minutes ago, BridBeachRL said:

Although I personally think looking at the game in the UK we are a 1/2 way house, we have bits of union and bits of football/soccer 

I have a different version of the RL halfway house.

I would put AFL at one end of the Football spectrum (very loose, huge field, no offside, fumble the ball in any direction) and NFL at the other (tightly controlled, restrictive, precise, stops after each play).

Rugby League falls somewhere between these two and can be the best of all worlds, contingent on rules, applications, and the attitudes of coaches and players.

An abiding problem for us is that when administrators decide on rule changes, they are so sure RL is a "working-class simple game" that they never adequately think through the ramifications. Those have to be played out before their eyes before they realise RL isn`t as simple as they thought.

There are some recent telling examples related to speeding up the game. The exemplar though was the move from 5 to 10m offside line. There are pros and cons of 10m, but without doubt the cons were inconceivable to the people who made the change. For them, 10m meant more space than 5m and that would open up the game. Simple as that.

[johnh1]

I am convinced that the current Sky coverage of the games is turning people off. Terry O’Connor’s banal drivel is just embarrassing. And Sky’s insistence of showing either replays of a previous incident, or close ups of the coach whilst play is in motion is just frustrating. I prefer to think that if I was at the ground, watching the game, would I want Terry’s monologue in my ear and would I be looking at the coach or watching the game? Why can’t we just have one commentator, commenting on what is happening on the field?

[Man of Kent]

6 hours ago, Moove said:

The other thing I've often wondered is whether limiting to a max of two in the tackle would help reduce the wrestling and encourage more offloading or quicker play-the-balls.

It would encourage more hit-ups, wouldn’t it? The easy, safe option. 

[Sir Kevin Sinfield]

Ideas to make the game better to watch?

Stop tinkering about making changes all the time, be it to the rules or the league structure, keep it the same, put all the focus on what actually happens on the field.

[Sir Kevin Sinfield]

6 hours ago, johnh1 said:

I am convinced that the current Sky coverage of the games is turning people off. Terry O’Connor’s banal drivel is just embarrassing. And Sky’s insistence of showing either replays of a previous incident, or close ups of the coach whilst play is in motion is just frustrating. I prefer to think that if I was at the ground, watching the game, would I want Terry’s monologue in my ear and would I be looking at the coach or watching the game? Why can’t we just have one commentator, commenting on what is happening on the field?

Agreed Terry O’Connor and Bill Arthur are nice blokes but terrible commentators, that’s a change I’d be willing to accept.  

[Just Browny]

1) The game was better and more vivid when we were 12-16 years old.

2) Changing rules/interpretations rarely has the effect we think it will.

Unconsciously, many of us want the game to go back to how we remember it from our high school years. Because we are used to the rules changing every year, we start regular threads thinking about how we could change the rules to make it look more like our idealised vision of the game.

It won't work. Coaches will always find new ways to improve their team's performance, but unfortunately this won't always make the game more attractive. By changing the rules to try to keep ahead of coaches, we just move further and further away from everyone's idealised memory of the game, and make more and more older fans ###### off (c.f. every thread on here). What we should probably accept is that the way the game is played will continue to evolve, but keep the rules as consistent as they can be.

[DavidM]

9 hours ago, johnh1 said:

I am convinced that the current Sky coverage of the games is turning people off. Terry O’Connor’s banal drivel is just embarrassing. And Sky’s insistence of showing either replays of a previous incident, or close ups of the coach whilst play is in motion is just frustrating. I prefer to think that if I was at the ground, watching the game, would I want Terry’s monologue in my ear and would I be looking at the coach or watching the game? Why can’t we just have one commentator, commenting on what is happening on the field?

Certainly doesn’t augment the experience in any way . They basically call the same game every week , saying the same things . Bill bumbles away , Terry is seeing the 85 challenge cup final every match and everyone’s phenomenally quality , and Baz gets a gold star if he completes a coherent sentence ( he’s up to 3 in his sky career) . For an organisation priding itself on presentation ,  professionalism , slickness and innovation the lack of progress there is bemusing . 

[Wakefield Ram]

9 hours ago, johnh1 said:

I am convinced that the current Sky coverage of the games is turning people off. Terry O’Connor’s banal drivel is just embarrassing. And Sky’s insistence of showing either replays of a previous incident, or close ups of the coach whilst play is in motion is just frustrating. I prefer to think that if I was at the ground, watching the game, would I want Terry’s monologue in my ear and would I be looking at the coach or watching the game? Why can’t we just have one commentator, commenting on what is happening on the field?

Definitely agree on the coverage, sit there cringing

[The storm]

11 hours ago, BridBeachRL said:

As a sport we need a USP. I was thinking about this earlier today, if you asked a generic sports fan in the UK to name 1 NFL team and 1 MLB team I reckon the numbers would be high if it was done "BBC pointless style" straight away San Fran 49ers and New York Yankees would fit that bill. However if you went to the US how many people would have heard of Rugby League never mind being able to mention a team. 

Although I personally think looking at the game in the UK we are a 1/2 way house, we have bits of union and bits of football/soccer (especially atmosphere) the game needs to work out does it want to have less bulky players and speedsters in all positions making the game even more quicker or do we want to slow down the game to more of a Union market as in bringing back Scrums making more of a wrestle and big hits. 

Speeding up the game you could look at reducing players potentially removing the props to a 11 a side format, I know a complete change. Or we could stick to what we have and turn up to beach events like on 25th September in Brid

You are over thinking this. 

[DavidM]

For starters bring  back some structure and control  to the play the ball . Get up , get set , play it properly with your foot , slow it down a bit rather than the obsession over years with speeding it up so it’s unravelled to a mess . Scrums with forwards in , feed in the middle and a contest for the ball . I refuse to believe that can’t be enforced with a will to do it. Scrap the no punch rule , what we get now is just silly and looks ridiculous for rugby league . Scrap the video ref . Stop stopping the game for every injury and HIA assessment we never used to , it’s sometimes used tactically and is often unnecessary . Games are taking to long nowadays.   Less ref involvement the better . I don’t blame them , it’s the people above them loading more and more on them to look out for 

[Rugbyleaguesupporter]

First half of melbourne v paramatta. 

We can't help that the players much better but no excessive video ref, no play acting, few stoppages

[Mr Frisky]

How about 2 extra players, contested scrums and line outs???

[dkw]

Stop focusing on penalising tiny errors, let some stuff go rather than stopping the game all the time. Play the balls are a mess so some leeway from a ref would have a huge impact on the flow of a game.

[Wakefield Ram]

5 hours ago, Just Browny said:

1) The game was better and more vivid when we were 12-16 years old.

2) Changing rules/interpretations rarely has the effect we think it will.

Unconsciously, many of us want the game to go back to how we remember it from our high school years. Because we are used to the rules changing every year, we start regular threads thinking about how we could change the rules to make it look more like our idealised vision of the game.

It won't work. Coaches will always find new ways to improve their team's performance, but unfortunately this won't always make the game more attractive. By changing the rules to try to keep ahead of coaches, we just move further and further away from everyone's idealised memory of the game, and make more and more older fans ###### off (c.f. every thread on here). What we should probably accept is that the way the game is played will continue to evolve, but keep the rules as consistent as they can be.

The evolution is turning the game into one with falling participation, falling attendances and a declining TV deal. Watch one of the retro games on Sky from 90s or 00s and see the difference especially at the ptb.