The undeniable fact is NRL players are not built physically, as well as conditioned, to run flat out for 80 minutes. That's AFL territory, where they measure how well a player is conditioned by how many kilometres they run in a game. It's a total change in the fabric of the game, a simple example we now have even more wingers, fullbacks and centres taking hit up after hit up, that used to be the forwards job. Forwards with their size and strength are conditioned for impacts, but the way the game is now they can't do that for 50 minutes let alone 80.
This is exacerbated this year by the 6 again nonsense, once a team gets 2 or 3 against them they are gassed for next 10 to 15 minutes because there is no time to recover. So they get further behind, more fatigued, get desperate and make mistakes and/or give away more penalties in an attempt to give them selves time to recover.
"Speeding up the game" is a piss poor excuse, if we aren't careful it's going to totally change how the game is played and the type of player that plays league all the way from juniors through.
Go Dogs
Thug,
I'm not saying you're wrong in your reasoning and logic, but I would ask if you to consider cup until the early 90s we only had 2 replacements per game.
At this stage. We have 4 reserves and 8 replacements per game.
This is an era with bulldogs great as like Mortimer and Brentjall and johns.
What we are seeing now is no where near those days.
And let's compare it to 2011 - 2016 when the game was completely gridlocked.
We got by on some great athletes but who knows what they could have done with space.
You need to understand that rugby league has largely been solved. Coach's figures it out tans defence got so good the product became shit.
We are seeing some slick plays and hoood spectacles now and it's a good thing. Otherwise follow rugby union, that game is much more complex and suited for competitive gridlock play.
The RL product was always about trying to be more exciting than its dominant cousin.
And jets have a reality check, you guys live in a RL bubble, but on the scale of it, RL is not 1/20 of the game worldwide compared to rugby union and its because they do this grind game better.
I'm shocked at the level of complaining here and wondered if you have truly thought this through.