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Inside RL: Cold starters, but rugby league battles on
Maybe rugby league is just unlucky. After one of the mildest autumns/winters on record, the weather gods decided to get angry on Stobart Super League’s opening weekend.
It’s a great credit to everybody concerned – players, match officials, club employees and particularly grounds staff – that all seven of last weekend’s games went ahead.
Perhaps the standard of rugby wasn’t particularly high, but that was also the case last year under the roof at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.
Considering the conditions, the players provided some good entertainment and a couple of shocks, which is always a good thing on the opening weekend.
The major surprise was Wigan Warriors’ home defeat to an injury-hit Huddersfield Giants, though Hull holding last year’s league leaders Warrington Wolves to a draw was also unexpected.
If Huddersfield – fourth in 2011 but poor over the second half of the campaign – and Hull are more competitive this year, that will shake things up in the race for Old Trafford.
Wigan and Warrington are among the title favourites, so it’s good for the competition that they have dropped points already.
Catalan’s win, minus Leon Pryce, over Bradford Bulls was an indication that they can be a genuine force this season, just as much as it suggests that the home team will struggle.
Revamped
Victories for last year’s Grand Finalists Leeds Rhinos and St Helens were predicted, but both were made to work, Leeds by Hull KR – who look like they might be a good side this year if they sort out their discipline – and Saints by a revamped Harlequins.
Castleford Tigers and Wakefield Trinity Wildcats both began a new era in winning fashion and, in spells at least, were impressive in doing so.
Even at this very early stage the teams they beat, Salford City Reds and Widnes Vikings respectively, look to be in for a long, tough year.
It was Salford’s first game at their new stadium, while Widnes had the advantage of their i-pitch and the emotion of making a long-awaited return to Super League.
Both will have targeted their opening fixture as a winnable one, but both suffered a comprehensive defeat and, though they will improve with more games under their belt, so will the rest of the competition.
Viewed via Sky TV, Salford’s new home looked very impressive, though old habits die hard. Embarrassingly, kick-off was delayed slightly as a man with a wheelbarrow removed the remains of pre-match fireworks from the pitch. Very amateurish.
It’s doubtful that the game would have gone ahead if Sky hadn’t been present, but there is huge pressure on clubs to ensure that all fixtures are played on the scheduled date, simply because there’s no space in the calendar for a backlog.
With the weather not warming up much, it will take another huge effort to get all of round two staged as planned. The season started particularly early this year to free up a weekend for the Exiles game in June, but, ironically, if matches are called off this week, that will be the obvious time to play them.
And the nightmare scenario would be heavy snow and/or a deep frost this time next week to threaten the Heinz Big Soup World Club Challenge. That may yet turn out to be a very appropriate sponsor.
It could be bad luck that Super League opened on the worst weekend of the winter weather-wise, but on the other hand, it is February – the coldest month – so it’s hardly a shock if the elements turn nasty.
Summer rugby is a myth because as much of the competition is played in winter as it is in the hottest months. Conditions like those of last weekend aren’t conducive to attractive rugby or attracting big crowds. The fact that four of the seven matches drew a five-figure gate and all were relatively entertaining is a tribute to everybody who made the effort.
But in an ideal world, this should still be pre-season. The perfect scenario would be to begin in March, on the weekend that the clocks go forward – as was the case in the inaugural 1996 campaign when the first match was on March 29.
Unfortunately, with a 27-round regular season, five Challenge Cup weekends (for Super League clubs), five weeks of play-offs and the internationals at the end of all that, it’s not possible to start any later and fit it all in.
This year, with no Four Nations, might have been a good time to experiment with a later start and go straight from Super League into whatever international matches are arranged, but when the Aussies and Kiwis come over at least a couple of weeks’ break is needed to give players from the Grand Finalists time to prepare.
Scrapping the unnecessary and unloved Magic Weekend would allow the competition to begin a week later and another option would be to move the Challenge Cup back to a pre-season slot, with an April/May final, as was the case until 2005.
The BBC was the driving force behind the move to an August final and, as this column revealed last week, they are set to reduce their coverage this season, so a change of date may be something that the game is willing to consider.
Though the weather was an issue last weekend, it wasn’t the big talking point. For fans with access to Sky that was pundit Phil Clarke’s latest toy, the Margin Metre. Supposedly, that’s a computer into which all the various match facts are fed as the game progresses and which then predicts who is going to win and by how many points.
It’s possibly the daftest idea Sky has ever come up with and it doesn’t work, but this writer likes it; it’s a bit of fun and it has got people talking.
The Margin Metre certainly did its real job last weekend, trending on Twitter and attracting publicity for the broadcaster’s coverage – and by making spectacularly-inaccurate predictions it fits in nicely with Sky’s regular match panel.
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Weather for Leeds
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: East
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