Bit late to the party, but to address some specific points...
PornDog wrote: Sun Oct 01, 2023 11:06 am
The idea of a First XV of players, like a clearly defined first team that should play every game if they are fit, has been part of the problem in England. It has lead to those players being played into the ground, being more highly valued and thus highly (over) paid, to the detriment of building a proper squad.
Player A may be subjectively a better player than Player B, but if A has played 4 games in a row and is carrying a bunch of knocks, then you are going to get a better performance out of B who is raring to go. Proper squad management seems to be a lesson only now being learned in PRL.
Player rotation has always been an absolute necessity for us, with the IRFU not only holding back players for internationals, but also defining additional rest periods. So the question became, how do we best manage this? It has never been a question of fighting against the concept, because that was impossible. Proper squad rotation and squad development is a vital skill that coaches need to learn and develop - a lack of which was one of the reasons that cost Matt O'Connor his job at Leinster and really should have long ago cost JvG his job at Munster.
To me, it seems like the problem is ultimately that there are too many games on the calendar. Rather than running players into the ground or using what should be prestigious top-flight leagues as little more than developmental pathways, I think the answer is clearly to cut games from the calendar. There's actually lots of reasons to do that, namely player welfare, but less is more from a commercial perspective, as well.
When I've suggested this in the past, people tend to go apeshit as cutting games will also clearly cut into revenues in the short term, but again, the idea should be to create something compelling and sustainable over the long run. Meaningless competitions on a congested calendar is neither.
And, maybe this would also go some way to eliminating the conflict that seems to exist with supporting your local club (which I for one think is massively important and ultimately cuts more to *the point* of sports, which you guys understand a hell of a lot better than Americans...I'd hate for you all to lose that, even though you seem to be trending in our direction of become fatass franchise-sports-watchers rather than grassroots-sports-players anyway). But maybe this speaks to the deeper issue, as that's the sort of thing though where like...how is this even allowed to be a problem? It's not like I've never heard this issue expressed before, so Slick isn't unusual at all in this regard. Surely the braniacs in charge can see the dilemma here?
On that note, and maybe if I could synthesize this whole conversation into one takeaway: I think it's clear there needs to be a lot more cohesion among all levels in the game, from grassroots to pro rugby to international level, on and off the field. Because it's one thing if we're talking about competition from other sports, that just is what it is, but it's actually stupid and sad that what I'm seeing is basically that rugby can't get out of its own way, and is in a lot of ways basically cannibalizing itself. Too many parties pulling in too many different directions, fighting one another for a bigger piece of a not-exceptionally-large pie.
Simian wrote: Sun Oct 01, 2023 11:54 am
The NBA and NFL model works because their week in week games sit at the top of the pile (are the highest level they play at) and because the tier down from the pros involves a huge number of players, is already ultra ‘professional’ and an incredibly high standard. That will never be the case with rugby. So, like porndog says, the pro game needs to develop players because it’s very rare that players arrive ready to play at that level, necessitating rotation.
Not sure if you mean players need to be rotated in from the amateur ranks for purposes of making them fit for the pro level, or rotated into the pro game for purposes of developing them to eventually (if they're good enough) play at the top level, i.e. international in this game. If the latter, I heard this argument before when involved in a similar discussion on PR way back when (yes, I've been banging on about this for some time), that the system as-is is ideal because though you don't see the First XV all that much, this frees up space to blood youngsters. To which I say: here, players are developed in the top flight, i.e. in the NFL and NBA, by bringing them off the bench, filling in for injuries, and by coaches finding their balls and making changes to the lineup when the season starts to go south and the stalwarts lose form...and I see no reason this wouldn't be the case in rugby if the system were rejigged to make it so that the best players realistically could (and therefore likely would) play every game and rotation thus no longer made sense.
And if this is what you meant, I mean, if you're referring to college football and college basketball, it absolutely is not "an incredibly high standard" relative to the NFL and NBA; you don't see it much anymore, but even a decade ago you'd still occasionally see international rugby sides play pro clubs/provinces on tours, and in some cases the contest was pretty close. If an NFL or NBA team played a college team, it would be a triple-digit scoreline. There are some special talents that form an exception, of course, but most just need -- and get -- developmental snaps/minutes in the big show.
