GIMH

Yeah ok, what to?

I'm still about mate! just busily looking for a job! Actually took 3 weeks off to travel once i was laid off - went to LA, NYC, London and Hong Kong. Tried to go to England v NZ at Lords but chose the pub instead when a ticket would cost me 50 quid. I'll be about for the Ashes mate, but not with the same frequency there was in 09, good times that was!

Apologies for not dropping a line while i was in the Sunless country, only booked the ticket there 3 days before i arrived!

Hope you and the kids are well mate, I'll be far less frequent on here i feel!

Yeah, sorry, brother's 40th. Might not reach 41. I'll shut up now.

pretty sure your bro murphy instructed me to not

they must've already deleted it, lightning quick stuff that

Remember when he bought a degree of the internet and become a school teacher?

Yeah; rugby league (or AFL, or association football, or anything really) would have to split into different regions much earlier in Australia. Not just because the country is so much bigger but because there's less money in sport here.

Lots of fans were definitely going to have a well deserved whinge about it because clubs had to apply for franchises, and the Super League knocked back a couple of clubs who were actually already in Super League because they wanted a better geographical spread and a couple of expansion teams. The real problem with it was that it was six of one, half a dozen of another. If they really wanted to go to franchises (which was a mistake anyway IMO) then they probably needed to have new ones instead of just basing it on whoever was going better in the old pyramid system at the time.

Part 2:

Incidentally, rugby league in England swapped to a franchise system a few years ago and it hasn't worked at all so they're looking to go back to their own pyramid. The real struggle they're having with that though is their desire to spread the game to Wales and France, and the massive problems that come up if the Welsh or French sides get relegated. Football doesn't really need to expand; it's already a world game so it doesn't have challenges like that.

Haha yeah exactly re: the size of England. Can't imagine Shellharbour and Cairns in the same amateur or semi-pro league. They struggled with the cost of having a Perth side in rugby league even when Rupert Murdoch owned his own competition and the average player wage in it was about $450,000...

I think if we went the way of a pyramid, we'd just go towards regional competitions on equal standing a lot earlier. So once you got down to National Division 3 for example, one team from each NSW Division 1 and Queensland Division 1 would be promoted, or have a couple of qualification games so it was more a one-off trip rather than weekly treks across the continent.

Part 3 of 3:

Given those realities, I vastly favour the promotion and relegation with a proper pyramid. If you're going to have open player movement then the tribalism is going to have to come from something other than players representing their area, and I think having lots of smaller sides representing really small areas like Wirral is a better option than big catchment franchises.

Part 2 of 3:

If I ever said I didn't like promotion and relegation on here or on CS, then it would've been because I was clinging to that idea. Essentially the same model as international sport, applied domestically. It's just completely unrealistic in professional sport though. even aside from the fact that it'd be illegal in Australia and the UK, it just completely ignores the fact that sport is a profession and that it'd be grossly unfair on a player to tell him he couldn't go to another team to make a living if he was stuck behind someone awesome in his position, or if he was from a weak region that couldn't afford to pay him anywhere near what he was worth. It'd diminish the actual standard of the competition too.

(tbc)

Part 1 of 3:

Yeah, in my ideal world I think every area in the country would be in some way represented by a Premier League franchise, and a vast, vast majority of the players in the team would come from the area. So, if this was the system in place when you were born, you'd probably follow a Lancashire-Merseyside hybrid side full of players from that general area. Or maybe a Division 2 side for Merseyside as a standalone entity. (Obviously if they changed to that system now, your club would be dead and you'd probably just rage quit and follow no-one, though :P)


(tbc)

(part III



I think the current rugby league structure in Australia makes me suffer from a weird variation of "uncanny valley" a bit. It's almost but not quite what I want so I'd rather something that was true to itself. We basically get sold the idea that the competition works the way I said in the first paragraph with set franchises representing different areas, but because there's free movement of players and all these franchises actually market themselves as brands all over the country rather than targeting the tribalism idea they're "supposed to", I know it doesn't work like that at all. However, there is no pretence in a properly set up pyramid.

(sorry I ended up in three parts; character limits aren't my thing :P)

(part II

What I really like about the English football pyramid is that everything is part of it. If you start up a social club with 16 registered players then you can 'live the dream' by imagining what it'd be like to move up the chain. With excellent management and an absurd amount of luck, your social club could develop into a semi-professional side in League 3 or whatever 50 years down the track. I think it's absolutely great that, while obviously unrealistic, that's possible.

(to be continued next message..)

Well, it depends. My actual preferred of setting up a national sporting is completely unrealistic. I'd have teams representing geographic catchment areas and I'd basically treat those areas like representative sides, with a strict limit on players you can field who aren't actually eligible for your region. I don't like abundant player movement and I don't like teams that don't really represent anything other than their own logo.

However, that's just completely unrealistic in professional sport. So if you're going to have a capitalist player market - which is unavoidable if you want sportsmen to get paid what they deserve - then I say, go the full hog and have promotion and relegation.

(to be continued next message..)

I reckon it suits you

my god given talent is to rock all the nations

Nah mate, not getting wound up. We'll see if he can take as good as he gives.

Aye. Playground duty, really...

If I'd known it would have made me so popular, I wouldn't have ****ing put it up.