Long story short, after watching the past few seasons, I don't understand the sport of NRL anymore and what it is trying to achieve, and I wonder what the future holds. (please note I am not talking about RL in general, but the NRL specifically).
I am aware that I have spent a few years in the wilderness having no ARL/NRL teams to support and raising a family, and the game has changed significantly in that time, but even with the natural changes to the game, it's the unnatural and unnecessary changes to the code every week that has left me bewildered, specifically with interpretation rulings/ rule changes and the incompetence of referees and video referees.
I have given up on trying to decipher how interpretation works, and more frustratingly, have accepted that the refereeing is totally incompetent and so open to interpretation that the coaches must be coaching to each weeks refs as much as any part of a game plan, and that more incompetence/refs on the field hasn't worked, and having incompetence in the video ref's box only adds to the levels of bewilderment with every new weekly change to the game and every video-refs over-rule on the onfield ref's decision, with or without conclusive "evidence". The debacle that has been the finals experience of 2013 is testament to this.
How many times did we listen to Gus say, "imagine if a final was decided by that decision" during the regular season, and here we are seeing outcomes of games largely decided by refs rather than the teams.
I also cannot understand how a game can swing so wildly at half time, that a team that is so totally in control of a game at the 40 minute mark can somehow find themselves so totally outclassed in the next 40, and vice-versa. It's not a gradual change of the flow, it's a total change on every level, and tonight's game is the perfect example of this.
Does anyone else feel this way? Forget your allegiances and whether the outcomes have suited your teams. Is the game being ruined by ref's, coaches, media, betting and administration of the NRL?
I can honestly say, as an already paid up member for next year, that I have been constantly frustrated, sometimes disgusted, often disappointed with the past few seasons, and sadly I feel it's only getting worse. The game of RL and the NRL has a very limited life if it can't even provide a product that allows teams to decide their fate. I have already committed to the Titans and the code in 2014, but I am so piss#d off with the 2013 season in general that I can't pretend that anything about the 2013 season, or the finals season fills me with any confidence that the sport or the code is heading in a positive direction.
Tom Waterhouse is on now. Promoting horse racing through NRL betting. Does it get any more obvious that the NRL is in decline? Oh, and now he is promoting the AFL in prime time NRL.... f#ck this, channel 9 and the media are just as bad as any other part of the administration that is driving the game into disrepute. They should all be fined millions of dollars.
I'm done. Rant over.