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.”