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Will 2024 be the best NRL season ever?


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46 minutes ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:

The same 3 teams have finished top four the last 12 years (and those same teams have won the GF the last 7).

The NRL is becoming predictable.

Not that it ever bothered the Premier League!

Wellsy, Roosters finished 7th last year. I don’t think I understand your stat correctly. Can you explain?

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I had a friend over from Sydney for the weekend. As you would expect, he loved the Wigan HKR game. His take on the NRL: 

- the Bears in Perth will be massive; 

- league is booming in NZ, and only going to get bigger; 

- in his 20 years out there, he had never known league to be as high profile, popular and feeling as good about itself. 

So, as far as this thread is concerned, the answer is yes. 

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33 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

I had a friend over from Sydney for the weekend. As you would expect, he loved the Wigan HKR game. His take on the NRL: 

- the Bears in Perth will be massive; 

- league is booming in NZ, and only going to get bigger; 

- in his 20 years out there, he had never known league to be as high profile, popular and feeling as good about itself. 

So, as far as this thread is concerned, the answer is yes. 

The bears will need a decade or so to establish themselves within the Perth/western Australia population but will be a good draw in Sydney from the off I feel.

not sure how league gets bigger in NZ without the addition of NZ2 to the NRL.

I think the NRL today has just about over taken the winfield cup of the early 90’s although it was obviously a different era in which top RU talent from NZ was regularly plundered.

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5 hours ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

I had a friend over from Sydney for the weekend. As you would expect, he loved the Wigan HKR game. His take on the NRL: 

- the Bears in Perth will be massive; 

- league is booming in NZ, and only going to get bigger; 

- in his 20 years out there, he had never known league to be as high profile, popular and feeling as good about itself. 

So, as far as this thread is concerned, the answer is yes. 

It`s easy to forget that Rupert Murdoch , love him or hate him, saw something in Rugby League that he thought had the potential to be extremely popular, and he is a bloke with an eye for the main chance. Unfortunately the way the whole thing was undertaken was a disaster and we have spent the last 25 years getting back to where we were when the whole episode started.

Fact still remains though, we have an extremely marketable product in the right hands.

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6 hours ago, The Rocket said:

It`s easy to forget that Rupert Murdoch , love him or hate him, saw something in Rugby League that he thought had the potential to be extremely popular, and he is a bloke with an eye for the main chance. Unfortunately the way the whole thing was undertaken was a disaster and we have spent the last 25 years getting back to where we were when the whole episode started.

Fact still remains though, we have an extremely marketable product in the right hands.

Makes you wonder where the domestic game in Australia&NZ would be had it all not happened?

maybe even stronger than it is today and still with teams in Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane2?

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18 hours ago, fenster said:

I think the NRL today has just about over taken the winfield cup of the early 90’s although it was obviously a different era in which top RU talent from NZ was regularly plundered.

Give some examples of the "top RU talent from NZ" that was "regularly plundered" in early 90s NSWRL.

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4 hours ago, unapologetic pedant said:

Give some examples of the "top RU talent from NZ" that was "regularly plundered" in early 90s NSWRL.

Daryl halligan, Eion crossan, John schuster, gavin hill, mathew ridge, Marc Ellis, John timu, John kirwan and mark carter.

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3 hours ago, fenster said:

Daryl halligan, Eion crossan, John schuster, gavin hill, mathew ridge, Marc Ellis, John timu, John kirwan and mark carter.

AFAIK -

Halligan, Crossan, Hill, Ridge never played for the All Blacks. Ellis, Kirwan, Carter signed for the Warriors in 95-96. Timu signed for the Bulldogs in 95. Which leaves Schuster as the only All Black in the list to sign for an NSWRL club in the early 90s.

Not sure how this substantiates the argument that "top NZ RU talent" was a defining feature of the Winfield Cup.

Plenty of Kiwi League presence in Oz back then. At Manly for instance, Mathew Ridge played alongside Tony Iro, Kevin Iro, Darrell Williams, Adrian Shelford, Gene Ngamu. And was coached by a bloke who has League in his DNA.

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6 hours ago, unapologetic pedant said:

AFAIK -

Halligan, Crossan, Hill, Ridge never played for the All Blacks. Ellis, Kirwan, Carter signed for the Warriors in 95-96. Timu signed for the Bulldogs in 95. Which leaves Schuster as the only All Black in the list to sign for an NSWRL club in the early 90s.

Not sure how this substantiates the argument that "top NZ RU talent" was a defining feature of the Winfield Cup.

Plenty of Kiwi League presence in Oz back then. At Manly for instance, Mathew Ridge played alongside Tony Iro, Kevin Iro, Darrell Williams, Adrian Shelford, Gene Ngamu. And was coached by a bloke who has League in his DNA.

Sure they weren’t Allblacks but they were pretty decent union players who for the most part had decent league careers.

if anything back in the early-mid 90’s English RL competition was a bigger pull factor and had the financial edge for NZ Union talent.

interesting fact that I just recently found out about was that manly were close to signing zinzan Brooke in the early 90’s just after or around the same time they signed ridge which would have been massive and very interesting.

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Just watching the Penrith - Roosters game. The PTB in the NRL this year has been a mess. 

Some of these 'PTBs' have been dreadful. The constantly emphasis on speed over everything makes it annoying to look at sometimes.

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45 minutes ago, Click said:

Just watching the Penrith - Roosters game. The PTB in the NRL this year has been a mess. 

Some of these 'PTBs' have been dreadful. The constantly emphasis on speed over everything makes it annoying to look at sometimes.

Yes, I think the play the ball in Super League is better than the NRL now which would have been unthinkable a year or two ago.  It is full of step overs with absolutely no attempt to put the foot anywhere near the ball.

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"The history of the world is the history of the triumph of the heartless over the mindless." — Sir Humphrey Appleby.

"If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" — Sam Harris

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The 'attempt' needs removing from the description of what the foot needs to do in relation to making contact with the ball. It makes it so much easier to enforce and if players knew it became part of any review checks, to go back to the last PTB to ensure that was fulfilled (similar to how the foot check is done for any review in cricket regardless of why it's being reviewed) it'd soon become the norm again. 

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2 hours ago, hunsletgreenandgold said:

The 'attempt' needs removing from the description of what the foot needs to do in relation to making contact with the ball. It makes it so much easier to enforce and if players knew it became part of any review checks, to go back to the last PTB to ensure that was fulfilled (similar to how the foot check is done for any review in cricket regardless of why it's being reviewed) it'd soon become the norm again. 

It's incredibly easy to enforce a proper play the ball - just penalise those that are not.

But we have a sport that won't tolerate the referee's enforcing the laws of the game because we say they are ruining it.

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"The history of the world is the history of the triumph of the heartless over the mindless." — Sir Humphrey Appleby.

"If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" — Sam Harris

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2 hours ago, Click said:

Just watching the Penrith - Roosters game. The PTB in the NRL this year has been a mess. 

Some of these 'PTBs' have been dreadful. The constantly emphasis on speed over everything makes it annoying to look at sometimes.

It`s a pity the referees aren`t as lax when it comes to forward passes. That call against Daniel Tupou with 17 minutes to go was a bloody shocker. Very sharp eyed when it comes to imaginary forward passes.

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2 hours ago, Damien said:

What a great read.

It could really be used as a sales pitch as to why Christchurch should be a must for one of the expansion teams. Hopefully V'landys reads it.

I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to state that the decision to include another New Zealand team into the NRL could be one of the biggest and most pivotal moments in the history of NZRL mostly due to the current standing of the NRL in terms of popularity and financial power but also because of the recent downward trajectory of both professional domestic RU competitions in New Zealand.

This could be the making of RL in New Zealand and turning into the country’s #1 code.

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9 hours ago, fenster said:

if anything back in the early-mid 90’s English RL competition was a bigger pull factor and had the financial edge for NZ Union talent.

One reason we've fallen so far behind NRL.

You appear to think English pro clubs signing international Union players was a wise use of resources. Whereas I only see flurries of ephemeral publicity, lack of development investment, and a self-defeating message to audiences that League depends on Union for relevance.

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6 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:

One reason we've fallen so far behind NRL.

You appear to think English pro clubs signing international Union players was a wise use of resources. Whereas I only see flurries of ephemeral publicity, lack of development investment, and a self-defeating message to audiences that League depends on Union for relevance.

Does the fabulous entertainment that some of these fantastic rugby players brought to our game not factor into your thinking?

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"The history of the world is the history of the triumph of the heartless over the mindless." — Sir Humphrey Appleby.

"If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" — Sam Harris

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1 hour ago, unapologetic pedant said:

One reason we've fallen so far behind NRL.

You appear to think English pro clubs signing international Union players was a wise use of resources. Whereas I only see flurries of ephemeral publicity, lack of development investment, and a self-defeating message to audiences that League depends on Union for relevance.

I think the root causes of the decline of English pro RL is far way deeper than the signings of union players to be honest.

some of the greatest ever British RL players came from rugby union and did so for nearly a century.

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