Short CDRL season to stay
Some teams meet once in normal fixtures
THE CDRL will stick with a 20-round schedule for the 2019 draw, despite a shorter season in 2018 receiving mixed feedback from coaches and players.
Keeping last year’s format, the 11 clubs will have nine home and nine away fixtures in the 2019 regular season, along with two byes each.
The season will start on the weekend of March 30 and culminate with the grand final on Saturday, September 22.
In a change from last year, the CDRL grand final will not share a weekend with the Intrust Super Cup decider, to be held September 29, after the state competition’s decision to expand its finals series from six to eight teams.
Fans won’t have to wait too long to see a grand final rematch, with the first and only contest between Mossman/ Port Douglas and Tully in Round 5.
To make the CDRL schedule work and ensure all teams have two byes, three teams will need to take a bye in the same round late in the season. This will occur in Round 17 when only four matches will be played in the Far North while Brothers, Yarrabah and Innisfail all have the week off.
Tully Tigers head coach Aaron Tongalea said, while players welcomed a shorter season and a reduced toll on their bodies, producing a draw that was fair to all clubs in a competition where not every team plays each other twice is difficult.
“You really notice the ef- fects when you play a team in the first round and don’t play them again,” he said.
“A prime example would be playing Mossman/Port Douglas in the first round last season and then meeting them again in the grand final.
“When you play a team twice you get a much better idea of how they play and how they’re structured, but it’s very hard when you play a team only once, especially if it’s early in the season or they have a lot of injuries.”
Tongalea said the club would be better prepared for the 18-game season a second time around.
“It was a big learning curve for our managers and players last year,” he said. “We did the best we could to manage our players, but there were some things we had planned that had to be restructured.”