Let’s have some fun! What if we had no road blocks in the way, we didn’t have to worry about broadcasters, a drop in revenue, and we were tasked with shaking up the NRL season, just because we could?
What could we add to the competition that was a little different? What could we try for a while to see how it worked?
Lets give it a go!
Lets start by cutting the NRL club season itself down to 20 games plus the finals. That cuts a month and a half of football out of the season. What could we do with that free time?
What if, at the start of the year starting in March we had a world wide knockout competition with clubs from the NRL and Super League, with the final played at Wembley Stadium.
Taking 18 NRL teams (Lets throw PNG into the mix now!) and 14 Super League clubs, you would have a 32 team knockout competition that is absolutely ideal. A fast, 5 week long competition to start the year. Wouldn’t that be interesting to watch!
After that is all over then head into 10 weeks of the NRL club season. At the conclusion of that, we take a break.
During that break we have the State Of Origin series played over three back-to-back weekends along with international Rugby League matches mid season.
After the three week representative season is over, we head back into the next 10 weeks of the NRL season, and then the NRL Finals.
That sounds like a lot of football, but believe it or not most players would end up playing less games than they are expected to play under the current format.
You could add more international games after the NRLO season is over, giving us even more international football!
Now, there are a bunch of reasons why none of this would ever happen, but isn’t it fun to think about!
