Hold the outrage over NRL wildcard
If you are a fan of the Wests Tigers or Canberra Raiders, you might want to rethink your immediate objection to the ‘watering down’ of the competition by potentially expanding the finals series to include a wildcard weekend involving teams finishing ninth and 10th.
Last season, both sides would have been in play against the Warriors and Dragons, the latter who could have dropped out of the premiership race despite finishing seventh, six points ahead of the ninth-placed Tigers. Now that would have stung.
But wait! Rewind to 2017 and it would have been St GeorgeIllawarra in the fortunate position of being able to make a late scramble for the finals. They finished ninth, with the Raiders in 10th. The year before that it was the Tigers in ninth and the Warriors in 10th, while in 2015 it would have been a benefit to Manly and the Raiders. Along with the Tigers, those Canberrans must be very keen for the NRL’s latest brainchild to take flight.
The proposal to expand the finals series to include a wildcard playoff has been met with dismay by many fans and commentators, slamming the idea as rewarding mediocre play by giving undeserving teams a shot at the finals.
The NRL says it’s about providing more ‘live’ games in the latter part of the season, which tends to dive into a minihole after the Origin period ends before starting to liven up a few weeks out from the finals.
Again, the Goliath that is Origin has a role to play. It casts such an immense shadow over the season that there is an inevitable let down once it all winds up. Clubs either have to rest stars or are missing key players through injury and games can often underwhelm.
When the Roosters travelled to the Gold Coast late last season, coach Trent Robinson rested his full contingent of Origin players. It was a planned tactic that had been on the drawing board since before the first round and may yet be a blueprint for every team with heavy Origin involvement.
Those are the kind of ‘dead’ games the NRL wants to try to liven up. They shouldn’t be slammed for thinking out loud.
The NRL wants you to look at it not as a 10-team finals series, but essentially a six-team series with two wildcards to emerge from the first weekend. The top six get a week off and an inherent advantage, meaning there would be a premium not just on finishing top four but top six. History shows that nobody wins from outside the top four anyway.
While this new proposal could be construed as rewarding average teams, it might also be a vehicle to help the perennial mid-table sides like Canberra and the Tigers move on from the treadmill. Making the finals and regularly returning there is one of the best ways to fast-forward the development of a club’s playing stocks and winning mentality.
At least rugby league fans are finally up in arms about something to do with the game and not the criminal code. And before you take aim, it’s worth remembering that it could be your side that gets the benefit of a wildcard slot should the idea make it out of the planning stage.
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