Ideas for NRC 2015

[Jagman]

Fair call. From a NSWelshman perspective the only names I recognized in QC (Quade Cooper) were the twins, Robinson, Holmes and maybe JJ, though I'd never seen him play before. From BC I recognized the names of Genia, Frisby, Cooper, Kerevi, Kuridrani, Hanson, Talakai, mcDuling, Gill, Gunn, Horwill, Schatz.


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[Wilson]

Also the QC (Quade Cooper) wallabies were Simmons, slipper who never played where city had horwill and Genia who did.

 

[Brendan Hume]

I said it a long time ago and il say it again, I think people need to be prepared to have all NRC matches broadcast on week nights if that's the trade off to get the matches broadcast. that is an NRC match on Mon, Tue, Wed and Thu nights. This is especially pertinent when the season overlaps with the NRL, the NRC can provide live sporting content midweek that has minimal clashes with the other codes.

All I will say is, look at how well the BBL has embraced this concept..

I think this link to the BBL concept is really interesting and exciting. Now that the future of the competition is assured for the next 6 seasons, it would be great to see the ARU and Fox do some blue sky planning. I really think the opportunities to gain some traction during the lull in mainstream sporting content in that late Sep-Nov window are huge.
I'm also excited by the mention the BBL - perhaps Ten might show some interest in developing a concept with Fox and the ARU... Ten aren't kicking many goals in broadcasting, and haven't for a long time. BBL is a notable exception. It would be incredible to see a FTA broadcaster really push the sport and achieve some traction.

 

[TOCC]

Fair call. From a NSWelshman perspective the only names I recognized in QC (Quade Cooper) were the twins, Robinson, Holmes and maybe JJ, though I'd never seen him play before. From BC I recognized the names of Genia, Frisby, Cooper, Kerevi, Kuridrani, Hanson, Talakai, mcDuling, Gill, Gunn, Horwill, Schatz.
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QLD Country had: Holmes, S.Fainga'a, Slipper, Enever, Simmons, Robinson, Harris, A.Fainga'a, Magnay, B.Lucas and Taulagi.

I think the squads were fairly even, QLD Country just had back luck on the injury front and Brisbane City were just coached far better which resulted in guys like Talakai, Kuridrani, Kotze earning their Super Rugby spots this year. I don't think you could say one team was stacked over the other.

 

[Jagman]

Brisbane city also had injuries. Turner, Tapuai, Browning. Any way... Foxtel seem to want more fluidity for contracted players amongst the teams so there are some issues to resolve.


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[TOCC]

Alright, i was just pointing out those since you said the QRU deliberately stacked Brisbane City, i thought that was unfair on the Queensland Country players who had a worse coach and lost almost all their Reds to injuries.. I think in hindsight its easy to look at a team like Brisbane City and say it was stacked, but i think thats more of a reflection of the good coaching that Nic Stiles provided.

Having a more fluidity in the player market is no doubt aimed at teams like the Spirit and Rising who were able to roll out teams with almost full strength super rugby contracted players...

Ultimately, NSW teams needs to accept that there isn't the player depth within the state to support 4 teams, consolidating to 3 teams would solve a lot of those issues without having to transplant players from other states.

 

[Ash]

Ben Daley and Ed O'Donogue should have been at Country but were injured as well. And, maybe Quirk as well as City had too many backrowers. Fringe Reds like Sam Johnson at Country also spent a lot of the NRC injured. I reckon one out of CFS or Shipperley also would've been drafted to Country.

It's easy to see why people would say City was stacked, but the reality was that Qld Country was just very unfortunate, and probably had the worst injury list of the comp.

It's fair to say that City was likely to always be stronger than Qld Country, but the descrepancy would've always have been small. edit: if not for Qld Country's insane injury list.

 

[kiap]

Thought I'd go back and assess my NRC Distribution of players blog article written exactly a year ago (to the day!) .

The 32 Reds players (at that time) were split roughly equally into two squads. Players with country backgrounds or from the Gold Coast or the Southside were prioritised toward the Queensland Country team.

Predicted squad selections that happened (19) -

Bris City: Hanson, McDuling, Browning, Frisby, Kerevi, Kuridrani, Turner + (Horwill, Gill, Genia, Cooper)​

Qld Country: Holmes, Enever, Robinson, B Lucas, A Fainga'a + (Slipper, S Fainga'a, Simmons)​

Players not selected for QRU teams (10) -

Rest/rehab: Daley, O'Donaghue, Quirk, CFS (I picked them all Country)​

Moved on: Anae, Owen, Harris, Shipperley (picked as City) + Davies, Toua (picked as Country).​

The ones I got plain wrong were (2) -

Schatz (picked as Country) and Taulagi (picked as City)​

So I'm claiming a 93% success rate (tbf 60% were bang on the money, 33% were a refund/push).

But the suggestion that the Brisbane team was "stacked" is wrong. The selections were pretty much aligned on recent/previous associations - so country boys (incl. Gold/Sunshine Coasts) played for Country + other players from clubs closer to the Gold Coast (i.e southside).

 

[kiap]

It's also worth noting that Qld Country beat 2 out of the 3 Sydney teams and only lost to the 3rd side (the Rays) by a solitary missed conversion.

They put 50 on the hapless Stars. So if Qld Country were full of the so-called rejects that Nick Stiles didn't want, then what does that tell you about the Sydney teams?

Is 4 out of 9 too many sides for NSW?

For mine, perhaps surprisingly, the answer is no. For a number of reasons, some of them to do with rugby politics, Sydney probably needs three teams for now (it might rationalise down in the future). That means the NSW player depth is being stretched thin, but it can recover (Sydney Stars/Uni, for example, I think will improve).

The Fox Sport suggestion of having more movement of players has its plusses and minuses. There's probably only a little bit of juice to squeeze there (on the other hand, if teams don't use players (Perth) then maybe it will transpire that others will take them). It would boost Sydney's NRC sides at the expense of Melbourne, Perth and Canberra. Plus the other downside would be more relocation costs.

 

[Wilson]

The other side of the player distribution argument is that the spread of wallabies players around the country needs to improve. The more wallabies at the rebels and force, the fewer at the tahs and the more super rugby players they'll have to distribute amongst the NSW sides.

 

[kiap]

The other side of the player distribution argument is that the spread of wallabies players around the country needs to improve. The more wallabies at the rebels and force, the fewer at the tahs and the more super rugby players they'll have to distribute amongst the NSW sides.

It's a fair point.

The Super Rugby "Salary Cap" is nominal only. It does nothing when there are two-tiered ARU/Provincial contracts.

 

[Jagman]

I don't think consolidating down to three NSW teams will make a significant difference if Canberra, Perth and Melbourne get to pick 16 players after they asses their Super Rugby injuries. I mentioned last year that surely the broadcasters are not going to be happy with this situation and it looks like that is the case. TWAS argued that Rebels are contracted to the Rebels so should play for the Rising. But if there's no broadcaster there is no Rising.


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[p.Tah]

The other side of the player distribution argument is that the spread of wallabies players around the country needs to improve. The more wallabies at the rebels and force, the fewer at the tahs and the more super rugby players they'll have to distribute amongst the NSW sides.

IMO The more the Wallabies play together at provincial level the better the combinations at Wallaby level.

 

[Highlander35]

Think it may be simpler to raise the cap on players (say, to 20ish), then make it part of the Super Players contracts to sign and appear for the NRC side, taking into account long term injury and Wallabies duty of course.

Have it done earlier in the Year, say by May 1st of each year, Super Players must be aligned to a side for the respective NRC season. A couple more tweaks are necessary, but in General, allow the International Marquees to opt out so they can continue playing in the ITM or in Japan, and make it so that not "participating" in the NRC renders you ineligible for Wallabies duties from the conclusion of Super Rugby, i.e. No RC, no November tours, no RWC.

I think moving the allocation period earlier would relieve a significant portion of the biases towards injury stacking.

 

[Jagman]

I agree that the Super Rugby alligned NRC teams should basically be selecting their squad now and then just have to cop the injuries that come their way like everyone else. But you can't increase the selected squad much above 16 because that is roughly the number of contracted players in the country (excluding Wallabies) divided by the number of NRC teams.


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[TOCC]

Reducing the number of NSW teams would allow a consolidation of playing and coaching resources and thus improve the performances and competitiveness of those teams..

I think while there is room to improve player movement between the teams I ultimately think this is a bandaid solution, the objective should be to lift the performance of the lower teams and not find a way to scale back the success of the better teams...

A reduction in teams works because it suits the draw more, having an odd number of teams makes for a bad draw. NSW teams are the obvious target here, teams like the Sydney Stars were completely shown up.

NSW teams benefit from calling on the resources of the Shute Shield, however what they lacked was the injection of progressionalism from the Waratahs, all other teams received Super Rugby support, the NsW teams didn't get this from the Tahs... So again, this is an area which needs to improve.

I really think we need to look at what went wrong for the worse performing teams and assess how that can be improved, rather then trying to handicap the better teams..


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[Jagman]

Consolidating to 3 teams would only do so much. Remember the Rays only had about 2 contracted players by the mid season and the stars only had about 3 or 4. Put those teams together and you get 5-6 contracted players, when the Spirit and Rising had about 11-12 contracted players at seasons end and that's only because some rising players got selected to Walabies.

I agree that NSW Teams need better help from the Waratahs but I don't know if that will ever happen as the Waratahs can't be seen to support the NRC more than the SS. NRWRU are still their landlords so to speak, they lease the license. And NSWRU only cares about SS. That's really the main problem there but in saying that the Rams smashed the eventual winners and the Eagles did well so I think the program they were running was working. I wouldn't bet on Sydney Uni having another poor year. Had NRC started in 2013 the stars would have dominated the comp but that's because they would have had plenty of Waratahs who didn't end up in wallabies camp.


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[TOCC]

Consolidating to 3 teams would only do so much. Remember the Rays only had about 2 contracted players by the mid season and the stars only had about 3 or 4. Put those teams together and you get 5-6 contracted players, when the Spirit and Rising had about 11-12 contracted players at seasons end and that's only because some rising players got selected to Walabies.

Brisbane City only has 5 contracted players in the Grand Final(McDuling, Shatz, Gill, Browning and Frisby)....Kuridrani was an EPS player and perhaps Ready was as well.

This big difference was the club players like Kotze, Paraka, Feao, Kite and Feaunati stepping up and the coaching of the team. All of which is within reach of the NSW teams as well who arguably have a higher caliber of club player to pick from..


I just don't think moving players between teams should be seen as the solution, it would prove expensive and understandably a team like the Spirit or Brumbies wouldn't want to entrust one of their players to a NSW team who doesn't have the same S&C or medical staff that the Super Rugby aligned clubs have. Maybe one or two players, but it won't be bulk players moving teams.

An 8 team competition makes sense



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[Jagman]

I don't disagree with 8 teams. Though it's not the perfect fix to the draw that you might think. It means half the teams get one more home game than the other half. My beef is that Super Rugby teams reserve 16 uninjured contracted players. There is no way 3 NSW teams can reserve 16 contracted players injured or not. The way to fix it to some degree is to have them select 16 players now and cop the injuries that come.


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[Jagman]

In any case the telegraph is saying today that Sydney will be brought down to 2 teams under the Waratahs just like in Queensland. That actually fixes everything.


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