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Brian Noble pitches “radical” new structure for Super League under IMG

IMG are coming in to reimagine rugby league but one of the sport’s most experienced men has his own pitch for what should happen to Super League.

A man who led many Bradford Bulls to Super League glory and worked as Wigan Warriors coach too, Brian Noble has said that IMG needs to ‘blow up’ what we have and start again.

“I am a bit of a radical,” he said to Serious About Rugby League, “I am a big believer in blowing it up and starting again like they did in 1996.”

He then pitched his own structure for the league: “Have two different competitions, have 10 in each conferences and a shared division where the hopes and aspirations of everybody can be sorted, because that would be a competitive right.

“Pick your fixtures, so it doesn’t matter what conference you’re in and then have a play off system.

“We have to build a structure, if it’s not what I suggest, that becomes appealing to people and they go ‘this is new and we want to see this.’

“We have to increase the investment in the game and we do that through structure. We need increased funds so we can spend more on players that kids want to see and build stories around.

“Guys like Ali Lauitiiti and Lesley Vainikolo were icons. You have to bring stars to the game, we create our own stars. Do we tell that story enough? Those guys from Leeds, Bradford, Wigan and Saints, local lads. Do we big them up enough?

“The problem we have is our players are so good, so humble, they dodge the lime light. We couldn’t get a Leeds player saying they want to smash the hell out of a Bradford player. They do it and they want to but they don’t like talking about it.

“We have to find a way of promoting the game. We need to generate stories and that’s IMG’s first job.”

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Yorky

    January 25, 2023 at 9:53 am

    Yes I like it very similar to the NFL two conferences then a play off giving the smaller teams stronger games. Wouldn’t like to choose which team goes in witch conference though lol

  2. Gaz Parkinson

    January 25, 2023 at 4:52 pm

    There needs to be more bravado between games for sure. We need to be seeing press conferences mid-week and the players and coaches winding each other up. I’m not saying we need it to be MMA or grubby, but we need more interest in it. Especially the big clashes or the bigger events.

    I think a lot of this comes down to the TV rights too. That needs scrapping and staring again. If Sly want it, they need to give RL it’s own channel and get to every game.

    If they don’t want to do that, then put the cameras in every stadium. The bigger teams have them, they record all their matches for their own TV channels. Get each club to have a recording of each game, put some pundits onto the biggest ones, and put them all through the OurLeague app with a screen-in-screen option. Put that on a subscription each month and feed the profits directly to the clubs again.

    Have the mid-week banter sessions live on those channels too, get them streamed out for free to entice people to subscribe. Get the subscription to include catch-up of the games.

    Most RL Fans want to watch every game they can. They follow their clubs, but they will watch almost all the matches if they get the chance.

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