I'm not sure if drastic action is needed or just a few tweaks but our game (Rugby League) is rapidly heading up a cul de sac and unless something is done soon the damage will be irreversible.
I suspect we look to emulate the NRL but all that has done is squeeze the enjoyment out of it.
The balance has tipped too far in favour of the Defence. In support of my view consider the following
1) The 3 man tackle, firstly it seems the 3rd is as near to a "flop" as makes no difference. Secondly it takes an age for them to peel themselves off the tackled player, but because they lie on top of each other the ref is reluctant to penalise. Potential solution, set time to clear the ruck. It is then up to the Defending team to decide how many people to commit to the tackle, but it is then their responsibility to clear out in time
2) Dominant/surrender...why? If the runner wants to sacrifice distance for a speeded up play the ball let them. (It seems every time Ratch is tackled it is called as "surrender"icon_wink.gif.
3) Wingers expected to run the ball out of defence. No, no no! I want to see the winger "skin" the opposition not act like a superannuated prop! This is obviously a coaching issue and I don't know how to rectify it.
4) The over reliance on kicks to create try's . I'm fairly sure the answer to this is to give half backs time to develop, but that probably requires patience fro coaches AND fans...
No doubt there are many others, but the point is something needs to be done urgently, and this isn't just a knee jerk reaction to our poor season, hand on heart how many other teams are playing the sort of RL that inspires you?

I must agree. Like so many games Saturdays final was a war of attrition. There was very little flair and scoring seemed dependant upon a kick lottery in the final 10 metres. Compare that with the excitment of a 1980s game. I know which I prefer.

1 we have very little talent playing the game...i.e m monas morley hodgson briers cunningham scully peacock sinfield.i.ll go further back hanley (what a player best ive seen)..add to that daft rules i.e one foot over the dead ball line and palming the ball out instead of catching the thing and running it out..stealing the ball no matter how many there are in the tackle..going to the screen for the most obvious of decisions..inept decisions from officials..the daft relagation system any team finishing bottom should be relegated..any team top of the tree i.e cas this season us last year be crowned champions not a team that finishes 5th i.e leeds and win a knock out comp and class them as champions..and for what its worth get shut of cummings hes terrible ..rant over

The way we play the game seems to have changed over the years. At junior level kids are told to look for the gaps in the defence and run through it; at Superleague level they seem to be told run at the biggest guy in front of you.

here here..was thinking the same..best times watching the wire i.e workington mid week lancs cup game kick off 6ish cos of no floodlights..york away cup game in the snow..widnes after they won wcc..widnes away in premership when all hell broke out and the many battles with saints and wigan..and the game was far less complicated them days

When we see videos of early SL games the defenders seemed to be able to tackle one on one & the ball was back in play within seconds & full games were end to end action. What we are seeing now is endless "game management" with long kicks into touch ,our equivalent of the endless punts to touch that we criticise the other code for, & all these kicks to to the corner are no more than a line out on the try line.
Rugby Union has improved its game over the last few years while ours has gone backwards . It's a simple game ,keep it simple & entertaining.

Agree with every bit of that.

Only Cas playing the rugby I like to watch, find that very sad tbh, I really hope the win the Grand Final if that's what it takes to be classed as champions.

The game has started to believe it's own press and forgotten what made it s great - in esscence, it was a simple game that anyone could watch and marvel at.

Now we have a situation where grunt, pushing the laws to their limit, conservatism and in some cases, blatant cheating, are preferred to entertainment. Due to the inadequacy of the refs, the RFL and the overly pedantic rules, however, this approach often gives success (Hello Mr Wane).

Fans are apathetic because they have no faith in the ruling bodies abiliity or willingness to change, the ruling body have their collective heads buried in the sand and the media view the game as a joke - a view that is increasingly becoming hard to argue with.

The answer? Only wholesale changes at the RFL will bring about change, and that will require a collective revolution by fans and chairmen.

I'm very close to finding rugby union a better game to watch and i NEVER thought that possible. Its horrible to see the demise of the greatest game....which at the minute it's anything but.

Agree with a lot of this.

I would like to see

1. Contested scrums to encourage forwards to pack properly.
2. Reduced interchanges.
3. Some way of reducing the number of kick / catch / tries - they are boring.

I also agree with most of what has been said in previous posts, however, even though i take your point re the scrums don't think i want to see contested scrums back, we will probably have the game stopping and starting, scrum wheeling, collapsing, striking to early etc, i would get rid of scrums altogether really embarrassing.

I would also keep the water carriers/ trainers off the pitch, some are on more than the players.

Problem with contesting scrums is the players get naughty. Back in the day we rarely saw a scrum pack and ball in and out in one motion....it was often repack and even repack again, then eventually a penalty often given the way of the attacking team.
Scrums slowed the game down.
They are nothing more than a soft penalty. They still remain because no one has come up with a good enough idea of how to restart the game without one yet.

Another idea to reduce the reliance on the kick down field is to modify the "down town" rule. The change could be that the kicking side players are only onside if they are behind the kicker at the time it is kicked. This will give the receiving player more time and space, instead of facing 5 players 10 yards away from them when they collect the ball.

I wouldn't bring back contested scrums since I can remember when we had them and they were a total mess and a lottery to referee. Having 12 players struggling for possession and trying umpteen underhand ways to do it left refs able to take their pick what to penalise.

I do agree that the game has become dull because there's no battle for possession.

I'd reduce the 10metres. You get so much wrestling, flopping and holding down because players need time to get back 10m. Go back to 5m and get players to release immediately. I'd bring back being able to rake the ball back at the PTB and make it compulsory to play the ball with the foot. Back in the late 80s and early 90s this was all enforced without issue.

Agreed, but you only have to pop onto the wigan site to see that even their fans are citing playing style and grind as a reason the fans are not bothering as much anymore and why they were down on numbers for the final at the weekend.

Even my own team (Leeds), sitting second in the table and i struggle to think of many games i have been truly entertained this year and enthusiasm and excitement for matches is dwindling by the year. As others have said, only Cas games are really worth spending time watching these days, I watch far more NRL than i do SL. I was brought up watching the likes of Hanley, Schoey, Innes, Iro, Tait etc... in the early 90's putting on a regular show. We didn't always win... we won sod all infact during the era, but i still look back on that time with fondness with free flowing RL at it's purest. Far better the turgid, generic arm wrestle we get across the league these days.

Ok, so were all agreed that the present game is awful. The question now is what can WE do to change it?

Realistically WE can't do anything. If things continue as they are attendances will fall. However there are still a lot of supporters that don't know much different to what is served up now and will continue to go.

I hope that Cas win the GF and other coaches sit up and take notice. Perhaps then you may get some other clubs emulating their approach in the same way everyone copied the horribly cynical and negative way that Maguire brought to Wigan.

We can debate rule changes to the cows come home but I still think the big issue is the 10m rule. Teams are too far apart and it's made the ruck the be all and end all to the detriment of the game as a whole.

Cas are showing other sides how the game needs to be played at present - I hope they win the Grand Final so that other clubs can see this is the way forward for the games style, rather than adopting the 'grind' or in our case trying to win via a scootathon mentality - Everyone wants to win, but most importantly, we want to be entertained!!!

It's no surprise that the standard of the game has decreased though, as salaries for SL players have seen real term reductions for well over a decade and during the same period, salaries in the NRL and RU have accelerated massively. We wont be able to attract the Monaghan's, Hodgsons, Kings etc of the modern game if we can't pay them the salary they can achieve elsewhere.

The marquee player allowance could help improve that situation, so far we have Tomkins, Williams & Barba I believe on marquee allowances - we need more of them to increase the quality and profile of the sport.

The RFL can do their bit by trying to attract French and NA teams and so TV deals to the game in the Northern Hemisphere, but Sky need to step up and offer the game what its worth, otherwise they will have a product that will continue to diminish until even viewers in the heartlands aren't interested - It's obviously in Sky's interest to get TV rights for SL for as cheap as possible, but on the other hand TV revenue is the lifeblood of any major sport and they need to come to the party.

I hate to say it but I watched the final on saturday,from the shambles at the "abide with me" to listening to Kear going on constantly about superb Wigan, a very ordinary game with very few moves, an over reliance on kicking for wingers, and quite incomprehensible refereeing decisions. I am seriously thinking about my season ticket for 2018 with fixtures being any time and date over the weekend. This season has been poor . both at club level and super league in general, with the exception of Castleford . . There does seem to be a lot of players who are very fit athletes but lack the basic skills required to be a good rugby player,too many second rows/centre/wingers or . hookers/loose forwords/'scrum halves. All teams need a modicum of utility players,but not a team of bits and pieces with the plan of 5 scoots and a kick. All in all my most disappointing season for many years

Maybe one overhead kick in the opposition 20 per half....but god knows how you'd police that. Cas are by far the best to watch this season but i still find a lot of their play formulaic compared to decades ago. Whatever happened to a cheekky chip over the top or widnes' little beauty where three of them lined up with their backs to play on a penalty and dispersed all pretending to carry the ball? There's no on-field ingenuity anymore.

I thought James Childs was very clear and understandable as the VR. On another note in the current test match the VR speaks over the PA system so that the crowd have an understanding of his view, could this be worth a shot to help explain the decision?

What a league we would have if there were 4 or 5 teams playing in a similar vein to Castleford.

Cas, and us in an earlier version, demonstrate that exciting rugby can be effective rugby. The question is, can it be effective enough to win a GF? I hope for the good of our game that Cas demonstrate that it can!

S Grandad might have hit the nail on the head.
Players of skill is replaced by players if fitness.
Long gone are the days of old...The John Woods and the Kelly Shelfords.

I know where you're coming from but wouldn't that suggest that the part time leagues should provide a more exciting product?