Forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere, but this interview by Paul Doward with Alex Murphy should be made compulsory listening for everyone involved in RL.....

[urlhttps://soundcloud.com/paul-doward/alex-murphy-on-statue-saints-warrington-and-state-of-rugby-league[/url

It is 30mins long but so well worth it.

If you want to skip to the REALLY interesting bit, listen from around 13 minutes in

Absolutely correct in what he is saying. The game has become boring and all about high percentage game plans and completion rates.

I have talked to Murph before and he is a big believer in heads up football and players with sheer pace.

Only disagreement I have with him saying we need a centre and a standoff is that we also desperately need an genuinely aggressive prop.

Yeah, agree with you on the stand off/centre comment. It's a prop who can lead the line (a la Morley in his pomp) that we desperately need.

The great AJM summed up the reason that this is the second season in over half a century I've not purchased a season ticket...He's spot on, the game is now a boreathon...the incessant aimless kicking down the field hoping to filch a mistake from the opposition....Players afraid or don't have the ability to play off the cuff for fear of falling foul of the coaches *game plan*. Now we have no wingers, just edge runners...Left channel, right channel, middle channel and all the other Aussie inspired crap we endure. No dummies, changes of pace, sidesteps and all the other deceptive measures which used to be commonplace..... Just biff bash bosh...The game isn't going down the toilet, it went down long ago...It'll be a long time before I have a season ticket again.....Put simply, it's boring.

The strange thing is we had one of the most exciting teams ever under Tony Smith in 2011. What a difference these last four years have made.

We can only hope Leeds clean up this season playing entertaining rugby and then other clubs start to follow.

I think maybe like other sports that tv gets hold of,over exposure produces boredom with the game but at least we are not yet as boring as football with its weekly multitude of matches.

Like BBHO says we do need to reduce the routine kicking the ball dead from a distance. Maybe another idea would be to increase the number of tackles in a set which would reduce the need for hurried ,panic kicks & allow more time for ball in hand rugby. I suppose we would then find out the extent of referees' counting ability.

Not sure rule changes would help but worth making a few; go to one marker, reduce interchanges, charge downs don't reset the tackle count?

Union has the rule where the ball goes back to the spot of the kick. The only problem with that is you would discourage 40/20 kicks, and a kick could be good but just skip on a little bit too much. Maybe instead of a tap on the 20 it could be 30.

Need to get rid of being able to put your foot on the back line, and knock the ball dead.

On charge downs there is too much risk for little reward, although you do want to pressure the kicker. You'd get far too many charge downs if the tackle count didn't get effected in some way though, maybe award additional tackles.

Just watched Melbourne v North Queensland, I'm not sure how I kept my eyes open!

If the Prop and Centre issues aren`t addressed in the close season, we will be in for a long, hard and frustrating 2016. Based on performances over the last two years, i cant understand why you wouldn`t want to strengthen in these positions, especially when we have aquired such quality as Sandow and Lineham, we need players to compliment them...

I don't understand how they can take the corner flag out of the equation ,but as Lister says ,you can stick your foot over the dead ball line & catch the ball. What a joke.