State of Origin and The NRL

It is time for a complete restructure of the NRL season. The farce that was the previous round of the NRL needs to be stamped out of a competition already struggling to put bums on seats and money in players pockets.

One of the first steps that needs to be undertaken is to return the competition to 22 rounds. As with the EPL's 39th game debacle, the NRL's expansion to 26 rounds has lead to complacency within clubs who are now willing to sell games to the highest bidder rather than catering to fans. The NRL is currently in a mid-season slump, the season has been going for 13 weeks but with all of the controversy it feels like an eternity. There is another 4 weeks until state of origin finishes the point at which all NRL clubs can focus on the run to the finals series. Until the run to the finals series most NRL fans are simply interested in their team surviving. This does not generate enough interest to help the code.

So what is the key alternative? First of all the season needs to be reduced back to 22 rounds. The next decision is whether to use split rounds or full bye rounds for state of origin. I would structure the season something like this.

Rounds 1-6
Mid-week International
Round 7-10
Bye Weekend (Friday Night State of Origin 1 - Wednesday Night State of Origin 2)
Round 11-12
Bye Weekend (State of Origin 3 - The Decider)
Round 13-22

This format leaves a 10 week uninterrupted run to the finals, only 2 bye weekends for all teams and the season being shortened by 2 weeks means that interest won't be lost in the mid-season lull. Every game will become that much more important. This will also shorten the season by 2 weeks allowing players an extended off-season.

Another feature of the 22 week season is the sporting integrity of the competition can be improved with a split into 4 divisions. American sport knows how to best implement this sort of structure and in the NRL it could be best worked with a split based on rivalries

Sydney East
St George
South Sydney
Sydney Roosters
Cronulla

Sydney West
Wests Tigers
Penrith
Parramatta
Canterbury

Queensland Division
Brisbane
Gold Coast
North Queensland
Melbourne (given their feeder clubs are in Brisbane)

Other
Manly
Newcastle
Canberra
New Zealand

Similar to the NFL, teams would play their own division opponents twice every year, play each other team once and on a 3 year cycle play teams from another division twice. Rather than a top 8, The winner of each division would qualify for the finals with the next best 4 teams making up the top 8. The finals would be played as they currently are under the McIntyre system. This system is quite similar to the seeded system used by the NRL through most of the last 20 years at least until 2 years ago when it was decided to structure the draw around rivalries. This system again uses rivalries as the basis for creating the draw but goes one step further in ensuring 1 team from each rivalry group is ensured a finals position. Further each team would play 22 games. If a Sydney club were to be forced to relocate to Central Coast they would swap with Manly who are rivals with almost all Sydney clubs.

Another set of rules that should be adopted are the pre-season rules which prevent organised training before certain dates. This would be as compensation to players in return for a reduction or long-term freeze in the salary cap. The recent rises to $4m have become unsustainable with the changes to NSW tax laws and anti-smoking legislation. In addition the reduction of 1 game may cost clubs additional revenue. It also appears ANZ Stadium at Homebush may be no longer willing to subsidise clubs. All of these will put long term pressure on clubs until the next NRL TV deal can be negotiated. As a result players should be compensated in other ways. The NRL also needs to increase its grants to clubs which are struggling. Training should be banned until at least November ensuring all players (except internationals who can be financially compensated seperately) get at least one month off plus all clubs should be forced to have 3 weeks off at Christmas.