The fairest possible outcome

THE NRL will never provide a completely fair NRL draw while 16 teams are in the competition.

It’s simply impossible. Not everyone has to play the mighty Melbourne Storm twice.

And not everyone gets the benefit of playing wooden-spooners the Newcastle Knights twice, or other lowly placed clubs.

But at long last the NRL, without the demands of TV executives, have delivered the fairest possible premiership schedule.

Rather than getting the Broncos every Friday night, the distribution of free-to-air matches has been shared around.

This year 11 teams have at least 10 matches on Channel Nine. Last year it was only five clubs.

It’s also a much fairer draw as far as the State of Origin goes.

Each team loses their Origin stars for only one game during the series.

It will be tough on the Manly Sea Eagles rep players who have to travel to Christchurch after the Wednesday night Origin in Melbourne while the Eels and Cowboys are off to Darwin.

But player welfare has been addressed with no club having more than three five-day turnarounds. Last year the South Sydney Rabbitohs had five.

Outside of the Gold Coast Titans, the bad kick-off times on Thursday night and 6pm Friday have been shared evenly too.

The Titans have no home games in those times.

The Knights won’t be happy with four 6pm Friday night matches at home.

But they’ve got to start winning to get the prime-time placements.

The best part is all the Sunday afternoon blockbusters in Sydney.

Almost all the traditional rivalries are in the fan-friendly timeslots.

It’s a win for rugby league fans overall.