This is like AFL Irish thing. Not a fan.

Wouldn’t mind Qld vs Kiwis and NSW vs Kiwis. Went to a Reds Allblacks game long ago but these would be such a blowout these days. 

The NZRU must be in some strife financially, whenever these cross-over games occur the RL side wins 99% of the time. I can't imagine them diminishing the AB's aura without a good reason.

It's a bit of an insult to the Kiwis and Wallabies too.

Have they done this sort of thing before?

There have been many games like this over the years, amateur and pro. Most in the UK. 

Making news in UK. Rugby would never go for it.


”A former rugby league star has called for rugby's two codes to combine in order to take the sport to the next level and compete with football.With the All Blacks in talks with the Australia rugby league side about a match later this year, the prospect of another cross-code clash akin to the one played out between Bath and Wigan Warriors in the mid-90s looks on the cards.While nothing is confirmed, it is expected that, if the match goes ahead, it will be a mix of union and league rules played with 14-men teams.And former league scrum-half Craig Murdock, one of the Wigan Warriors players involved in those famous matches from 1996, believes that could work moving forward in a hybrid sport.“I think it’s important we try and get more people involved in rugby full stop and trying to take it to that next level to be able to compete with football,” he said

“I can see this idea being shot down already by lovers of both sports – union and league – but, realistically, if we are ever to compete with football, on any sort of level, there has to be only one game. And it would have to be a hybrid of both.

”The sports were a million miles apart in ’96 but rugby union now is very much rugby league with unlimited tackles.It’s making the rounds in the UK now.....”

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/calls-rugby-union-rugby-league-18505615

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/all-blacks-versus-kangaroos-can-spark-hybrid-future-rugby-union-and-league-2897721

A unified rugby code was on equal footing with football in the 19th century but the refusal of the RFU to allow compensation for injured players who couldn't work led to the split.

These days nothing much has changed. Rugby league is still not recognised by Sport Accord and that is directly due to lobbying from the IRB. The IRB, via member RU's, have also been involved with RL development officers being jailed and development tours called off directly because of this.

IMO the only way a unification would occur is if North America usurped/overthrew the UK's home nations as the seat of RU's power but that is never going to happen.

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/coupler.foxsports.com.au/api/v1/article/amp/nrl/nrl-premiership/nrl-2020-peter-vlandys-nrl-spending-15-million-new-zealand-warriors-players-going-home/news-story/de83f012c4edb839020c1fb5f1a2dfe8

No real surprise that it will cost sports bodies extra to complete a season at the moment.

Oh for someone with the leadership and foresight of V’landys in our game.... even if they do make people angry.

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.nine.com.au/article/18ceb02a-d1a7-4eac-8682-8cfd92ff551f

that's a silly article

Haha yeah but thought it’s worth sharing 

What V'landis is talking about is exactly what was proposed when SLowy came in as Chairman.  They even had people interesting in taking equity in the A-League.

I was mainly referring to the fact that he got NRL restarted when he said through excellent planning and taking the lead, unlike our mob who couldn’t even organise a 3 hr bus trip up the Hume Highway to get players to NSW. The NRL has completed 6 rounds and about 50 games Involving 17 clubs in the time it’s taken the FFA to not quite be able to organise 7 teams to travel to NSW.

True..
It might have been you who said that if we had returned on May 28, the whole season would have been completed by now.
We only have about 28 games to play, and we have the advantage of being able to play games with short breaks.

Code wars!!!


The Hawthorn president started his attack by saying V'landys was a "silver medallist" and "desperate" for media attention.
"The AFL leaves his code for dead right around the country. That is represented not only in the membership, it’s represented by people who attend the games, and is represented by the TV audiences," Kennett said.
"Down here, he’s irrelevant. We don’t even know who he is. There are a few in the sporting game that know his name - through football or racing - but he could walk down the street here in Melbourne and no one would recognise him," Kennett said.
"You know he’s irrelevant to places like Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory." 

A pissing contest between V`landys and Kennett, great.  They deserve each other.

Ah yes - 2 big fish is small ponds about to go at it. 
If I were Jeff I’d be focusing on the quality of the afl. It’s bordering unwatchable the quality is that bad. Fumble-ball at its best. 
The a league can confess to not being the best league in the world, but the afl who has the so-called ‘worlds best’ players in it, is deplorable. 

“....

Their blunt answers of "no" gave way to detailed observations that painted a picture of AFL broadcasting as something closer to a coaching fraternity in-joke.

The outline of grievances is simple enough:....

There are too many lingering close-ups that serve no purpose other than to familiarise viewers with players' haircuts and tattoos, and obscure what is really happening in the game....

“Soccer is on a handkerchief ground. Rugby is so slow that it is easy to catch up with. You can even have a cameraman running up and down the sidelines. But not with Aussie Rules, it's too bloody fast.”...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-11/what-if-broadcasters-are-the-source-of-afl-image-problem/12437678

there are plenty of gems in this article from today.

One criticism that stands out is commentary. Calling the play after it happens. Happens in AL too. 

Good find...I guess when the quality of the product is poor, focusing on haircuts and tattoos shifts focus and attention from the play...

“...

The talent pool has thinned

A decade ago, the AFL added two clubs that barely anyone wanted. Suddenly, there were 44 footballers running around every weekend who otherwise would have been playing at the lower levels. Even before Covid-19 struck, those competitions and traditional pathways had stalled. Tasmanian football had been left to rot. Country football was struggling. A remarkable number of teenagers were now being drafted via the Victorian private school system. Kids from disadvantaged backgrounds and remote communities were increasingly being lost to the game.

There are harder questions to answer. Are young men in Australia simply not as proficient at football as they were several decades ago? Do they now have so many distractions, and are they so cossetted, that they are not as well equipped to play what is a brutal and technically demanding sport? “The generations of today have more options,” Port Adelaide list manager Jason Cripps told the Herald Sun in 2017. “They’re not kicking the footy in the backyard, they’re not kicking it at school [and] a lot of them are sitting on devices. I’m talking the age of five to 15, so by the time they get in the talent pathway program it’s too late.” It is a view echoed by Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge. “We get to a point where they’re 18 and mid-20s players and they still have a long way to go with their skills,” he said. “The skill level has dropped off over time and that’s partly because of what’s happened through the pathways.”

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jul/03/an-increasingly-hard-sell-just-what-has-happened-to-afl-football

this isn’t a problem for league and won’t ever be for football with non Australians playing in the league. The odd foreigner plays in AFL sure but it would be a slap in the face the day a foreigner comes to Australia as an adult code switcher and is the best or one of the top players in the league.

It’s an interesting article only hardcore fans will care about the game the majority will still watch because it’s popular thing to do 

We already have AFL coaches and experts saying the game is getting worse. They won’t stop saying it either if it doesn’t improve. A younger generation will eventually give up on reminiscing. 

Soccer fans and will still have top Euro leagues no matter what the standard becomes.

We have the women’s game getting stronger every year, MLS getting bigger, Asian league developing players for top teams ect we’ll be fine 

“....Former Australian rugby boss John O’Neill says New Zealand would be foolish to go it alone with a domestic competition but believes Australia could create a successful league of its own should it need to.

There has been intense debate in recent weeks about what provincial rugby will look like in the southern hemisphere next year as COVID-19 forces administrators to re-evaluate the viability of Super Rugby.....

“Yes, Australian rugby and our Super Rugby teams need to lift their standards and become better, there’s no doubt about that, but when you look at the AFL and NRL and all the great competitions, of course there are strong teams and weak teams. If you’re looking at the longer term for trans-Tasman rugby, as a unified group, that’s where our financial and economic future lies.....”

“If New Zealand want to play that game [of going it alone] … Australia could,” O’Neill said. “Five Super Rugby teams, a second team in western Sydney, a team in Newcastle, a second team in Queensland. You could get eight to 10 teams by taking the existing Super Rugby teams and pick the eyes out of the NRC....

“It might be a couple of years of financial hardship. When I went to the FFA [O'Neill was the inaugural CEO of Football Federation Australia], we put the A-League together from scratch … and in the first year we lived on the smell of an oily rag.

“The Australian rugby audience is still pretty substantial. You can structure a domestic competition, we can accommodate Pacific Islanders and Japan just as well as New Zealand can.....”

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-union/if-we-have-to-go-it-alone-we-will-but-o-neill-believes-new-zealand-and-australia-need-each-other-20200714-p55bw1.html

Qld rugby is so snobby and stupid never to have a Logan team in the comp. It seemed at times half my school were kiwis. They wasted a whole generation of immigration.

Any 2nd Qld team would imo have to be a scum team to get support. In with Sunnybank or 

Brisbane Queenzlanders 

“

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire has opened up on the impending “financial disaster” facing AFL clubs as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

All Victorian clubs now face the prospect of not returning to play football in the state for the remainder of 2020 after originally being told they would only spend 32 days in respective interstate hubs.

As a result of the dramatic shift, the AFL will allow more family members to join players in their hubs in the coming weeks.

While McGuire admitted that added to the already exorbitant cost of housing players interstate for multiple months, he said the worsening coronavirus numbers in Victoria and New South Wales simply meant the AFL had to get a season away by any means possible.....

“It’s such a financial disaster for the competition but now it’s a matter of just getting the season away as best we can," McGuire told SEN

“It’s all shoulders to the wheel, help players and their families as best we can but it’s been done with the AFLPA … everyone is trying make the best of a horrible situation and we will do whatever we can.
“In the next few years, we’re going to have to fight back. Fingers crossed there is a next year but let’s get this year out of the way as best we can. 
“You go into these meetings with the AFL, you sit down with a piece of paper to take your notes and you’re hearing a story that would be the biggest story in football every other day in a nonchalant (and concise) manner by Gillon McLachlan and Richard Goyder.
“Gill looked like he hadn’t slept all night and by the time it comes to the club we know the AFL are doing all they can.
“If you can come up with an idea that’s any better, good luck.”...

https://www.sen.com.au/news/2020/07/15/mcguire-reveals-the-financial-disaster-facing-the-afl/

Afl has been fantastic organising throughout this mess 

You guys reckon an opportunity has been missed by not having a hubs in places like Tasmania and/or Northern Territory or even regional facilities? Surely enough infrasture is readily available to have the remaining games in Tasmania or even the Territory. 

Finals would have been fine to have in sydney, but just think that an opportunity has been missed.

Not sure if either is putting up its hand to have clubs fly in.