fevnut's musings 2023/#14: Keeping competitions different and Summer Bash

  

 

Keeping competitions different

There can be little doubt that a lot of the gloss has been lost from the Challenge Cup in recent years. Now there are proposals emerging to give it a new lease of life by having a group stage at the point at which the Super League clubs enter.

We were prompted to give some thought to this after reading Martyn Sadler’s comments about it in the last issue of League Weekly. It’s not often we disagree with Martyn but this time we believe that his support for the idea is misplaced. It is another ‘sticking plaster’ plan which attempts to heal the maladies without fundamentally looking at the causes of the problem. It’s an attempt to treat the symptoms without analysing what has brought them about.

So, let’s start by looking at what used to make the Challenge Cup a very special and much loved competition.

 

a)  The Challenge Cup Final was the most important single match of the entire season.

b)  The unpredictability of the draw

c)  The involvement of such a wide spectrum of clubs from amateur teams through to the top professional clubs

d)  The opportunity for spectators to watch their team play against clubs who are not in their league

e)  The win or bust nature of a pure knock-out competition

 

Each of the first four of these has been partially or completely eroded and the ‘group stage’ concept would add the erosion of the fifth element.

The Challenge Cup Final used to be THE event at which the whole rugby league family would come together. It was the biggest day of the year and the roads to Wembley and the train services were thronged with spectators from every club making the pilgrimage. The introduction of play-offs to determine champions with a ‘Grand Final’ has completely undermined the special nature of the Challenge Cup Final. In an attempt to ape the Australian competition model we have heaped huge damage on the competition that we had that was so much better than what they have down under. We have had many conversations with Aussies who have come to play over here and all of them loved the idea of our Challenge Cup competition.

Once upon a time the Challenge Cup was a simple knock-out competition and the league, at its best, was a competition in which the winners were the best clubs through the whole season. Each team playing every other team home and away made it transparent and equitable.

Of course, the league competitions often weren’t like that with too many clubs in a single league. But for many years now the leagues have been of such a size where it is possible to have each club playing the others twice.

But instead of rewarding the prize to the league winners, we have introduced a further competition for the top clubs and crowned the champions for winning a knock-out competition. And now there are suggestions to introduce a league grouping into the knock-out competition. No wonder spectators are becoming disillusioned.

What really needs to be done is to make the two competitions as different as possible.

Pure knock-out for the Challenge Cup and make the League Champions the team that finishes top of the league! And then a third, separate, competition that pits the top clubs against each other as it used to be in the Premierships.

Finally, there is no doubt that there has been a considerable tendency for spectators with season tickets not to bother with matches that their season ticket doesn’t cover. Surely it is not beyond the wit of accountants to come up with formulae that prices for season tickets based on the likely number of home games. Although the number of home games will vary from year to year, it will balance out over the years.

We are of the opinion that the biggest single problem with our competitions is that there is an increasing lack of difference between them. So, let’s take, as a starting point for any changes, a determination to make them, once again, different in nature.

 

 

Summer Bash 

We’ve been looking through the Summer Bash fixtures. 

Obviously, we’ll be there on Saturday for the Fev match. In fact, we’ll be there for all four matches on the Saturday. Aside from our game the most interesting match-up looks like being Batley v Halifax. Pity that’s on Sunday but we have now booked to watch it on ‘Our League’ with the laptop linked up to our big television. Both clubs are now on 14 points with Batley steadily improving. Both Halifax and Batley were beaten by Super League clubs in last week’s challenge cup ties although Halifax gave a much more creditable performance.

Apart from Fev beating York (who are the only team we have ever beaten at Summer Bash!), the result we would most like to see would be Newcastle beating Sheffield but that seems to be incredibly unlikely. Sheffield are clear second in the table, two points above Toulouse in third, and Newcastle are bottom having not won a league match since the opening day of the season.