Forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere, but this interview by Paul Doward with Alex Murphy should be made compulsory listening for everyone involved in RL.....

[urlhttps://soundcloud.com/paul-doward/alex-murphy-on-statue-saints-warrington-and-state-of-rugby-league[/url

It is 30mins long but so well worth it.

If you want to skip to the REALLY interesting bit, listen from around 13 minutes in

Absolutely correct in what he is saying. The game has become boring and all about high percentage game plans and completion rates.

I have talked to Murph before and he is a big believer in heads up football and players with sheer pace.

Only disagreement I have with him saying we need a centre and a standoff is that we also desperately need an genuinely aggressive prop.

Yeah, agree with you on the stand off/centre comment. It's a prop who can lead the line (a la Morley in his pomp) that we desperately need.

The great AJM summed up the reason that this is the second season in over half a century I've not purchased a season ticket...He's spot on, the game is now a boreathon...the incessant aimless kicking down the field hoping to filch a mistake from the opposition....Players afraid or don't have the ability to play off the cuff for fear of falling foul of the coaches *game plan*. Now we have no wingers, just edge runners...Left channel, right channel, middle channel and all the other Aussie inspired crap we endure. No dummies, changes of pace, sidesteps and all the other deceptive measures which used to be commonplace..... Just biff bash bosh...The game isn't going down the toilet, it went down long ago...It'll be a long time before I have a season ticket again.....Put simply, it's boring.

The strange thing is we had one of the most exciting teams ever under Tony Smith in 2011. What a difference these last four years have made.

We can only hope Leeds clean up this season playing entertaining rugby and then other clubs start to follow.

I think maybe like other sports that tv gets hold of,over exposure produces boredom with the game but at least we are not yet as boring as football with its weekly multitude of matches.

Like BBHO says we do need to reduce the routine kicking the ball dead from a distance. Maybe another idea would be to increase the number of tackles in a set which would reduce the need for hurried ,panic kicks & allow more time for ball in hand rugby. I suppose we would then find out the extent of referees' counting ability.

Not sure rule changes would help but worth making a few; go to one marker, reduce interchanges, charge downs don't reset the tackle count?

Union has the rule where the ball goes back to the spot of the kick. The only problem with that is you would discourage 40/20 kicks, and a kick could be good but just skip on a little bit too much. Maybe instead of a tap on the 20 it could be 30.

Need to get rid of being able to put your foot on the back line, and knock the ball dead.

On charge downs there is too much risk for little reward, although you do want to pressure the kicker. You'd get far too many charge downs if the tackle count didn't get effected in some way though, maybe award additional tackles.

Just watched Melbourne v North Queensland, I'm not sure how I kept my eyes open!

If the Prop and Centre issues aren`t addressed in the close season, we will be in for a long, hard and frustrating 2016. Based on performances over the last two years, i cant understand why you wouldn`t want to strengthen in these positions, especially when we have aquired such quality as Sandow and Lineham, we need players to compliment them...

I don't understand how they can take the corner flag out of the equation ,but as Lister says ,you can stick your foot over the dead ball line & catch the ball. What a joke.

I wouldn't say I agree really. There are a few teams who work that way (Hudss, Saints, Wigan) but Castleford, Leeds, Catalan and until recently, us, all play with an exciting style and like chucking the ball about. We just have fallen off the pace and need the talent back to get away with it.

I think its a good balance between exciting play and the calculated teams. Both are proven methods as these are the teams in the mix. Just depends how well you execute your chosen side.

Leeds are top for good reason. Just as we were top for good reason in 2011. I like that battle. The high risk playing teams won't come out on every time and you just deal with that.

I've been saying on here for years....

STATS, STATS, STATS

Coaches live by them, set plays by them, and therefore (90% of the time, see, there's a stat) drain every bit of entertainment out of the game. There are very few mavericks in our game. Scarce "off the cuff" play. Just formulaic play, as was "shown" in our predictable second half display v Cas, where Smith thought he'd seen a weakness down Cas' left, but they shored it up all night. The moment we move it left, we score. This tactic would've been drawn out from endless stats.

We are now a non risk taking sport.

And as for someone mentioning the NRL game this morning.....you gave up nearly 2 hours of your life watching THAT?????? I LOVE Rugby League, but I'd sooner watch Saturday Kitchen than robotic NRL

I know we haven't played well for a month, but, I've certainly noticed the lack of "go forward" from young Dwyer. It's as if he's been told to "rein himself in", so he can do more teamwork.

This season has been there for the taking. We have Wigan in second place, despite them having a WOEFULL away record. Leeds (the one team who play attractive RL, along with playing "the basics" well) will walk away with 3 pots, this year, without having to break sweat, and we did a Double over them. Teams are too scared to play, for fear of not doing what their coach told them to do.

The quality on display throughout superleague has been woeful this year & we seem to have regressed to the standard of pre superleague, but hopefully, the return to a team set ups will bear fruit in a couple of years providing clubs have enough money to fund them. Leeds are the only team comprising stand out players so it is no wonder they are sweeping all before them.

there was a set in the Cup final today when Hull KR were bringing the ball out of their own twenty and the compact Leeds defence was compact and I mean Really compact literally all bar two players must have been in the camera shot on the Rovers play the ball.

I was thinking that, it was just asking for someone to lift their head up pick out a hull kr wide player, and it would have been, if not a try, a serious 50-60 metre break up field....... but no .....the robotic set play out of ones own half was on cruise control.... dummy half, short ball, crash, ......dummy half, Short ball, crash....dummy hal.......ZZZzzzzz

hark back to When Michael monaghan caught a restart kick off and thought "Aye aye Penny on the Wing can have this .... this five drives ...." Penny promptly loved off up field and drew the full back and Put a flying Matt King in for a 60 yard canter to the line......

loving awesome rugby League.......


(Cullens Rugby League btw)

And straight from a KO. Instead of shouting out 'safe set' blah blah blah. Play what you see.

That King try was a set move straight off the coach's whiteboard.

If so they only did it once. And the problem with set moves it takes away from actually reading the play.

The game goes through phases when teams place greater importance on playing the percentages than taking risks. I'm not sure you can blame individual coaches as I think this is something of a trend.

We faced a similar problem during the eighties when the Aussies strangled the life out of the game.

Ultimately it required the intervention of the governing body and a switch to ten meters to fix the problem.

But I can't see something similar happening today - not least because the NRL is so much stronger than SL currently.