UllFC wrote:
I will give Union a lot of credit for sticking to tradition with their internationals and they've built the show up over many decades. The 6Nations for example is the same time, same cities every year with teams in traditional kits.
RL messes around with the schedule too much, like our 4nations was going well something like 40k at Anfield for a Australia-NZ final then the powers that be decided not to ever host one again??
Think you hit on a fundamental issue there with modern-day rugby league (Super League in particular).
The endless tinkering with formats, the constant alterations to the calendar, the absence of traditional kits and colours, have all led to a sport which no longer has a recognizable identity. Union have managed to move with the times (eventually!) and expand their international game whilst maintaining links with their heritage to give a certain sense of continuity.
Even football, despite all the seismic changes which have happened in the sport over the past thirty years, have maintain links with their past. Man City were crowned champions last season by the same method and format that every other champions of England have done since league football commenced. We, on the other hand, seem to alter the play-off format every two or three years, creating little in the way of historical continuity.
Your point about traditional kits is highly pertinent in my opinion. The colours a club plays in are part of their image, identity and history, so why on earth don't all RL clubs celebrate that fact.
We should always, wherever possible, play in black & white irregular hoops. That kit, in those colours and design, are a part of what we are and who we are and we should celebrate it loud and proud, as should all other rugby league clubs.
In this age of corporate branding, I'm amazed that IMG didn't pick up on this in their attempt to reimagine the game for the 21st-Century.
There are so many issues with how the game is run and presented in the present-day, but the way we have burnt the bridges to our past in the name of chasing short-term gimmicks and fads is one of the biggest mistakes the sport as a whole has made. We've ended up (over the past thirty years) in losing a great deal of history, tradition and identity whilst gaining very little new in the so-called name of progress.
Maybe I'm just another old-timer with his head stuck in the past, but these days I increasingly struggle to see exactly what the sport is aiming to be, who it is aiming itself at and how it projects itself as an exciting vibrant sport, which it still can be despite all of the endless going round in circles that we have witnessed throughout the summer Super League era.
(And that's my rant over for tonight! I went off on one as usual!
).
