sportingFACTIONS :: Code XIII

Sitting in the office in Liverpool I got a chance to browse a selection of the Monday papers. The release of Super League’s fixtures for 2007 appears to have been met with a blaze of apathy by the nationals I could get access to (Indy, Mail, Express, Sun, Guardian and Telegraph).

At least the Daily Mail was helpful enough to tell me that Hull-Hull KR will clash on Easter Monday and that the rest of the fixtures were viewable online. But there was nothing in the rest as far as I could see.

Perhaps the RFL missed a trick here; they could have better promoted the fixtures’ release by focussing on May’s Millennium Magic weekend, making a big splash of the match-ups and the whole package.

In fact, having finally tracked them down online at http://www.superleague.co.uk/fixtures07 I’m thinking all that apathy might be a mercy. Because only rugby league could kick-off a season with a Round Three match (!!) which is then closely followed a week later by all the Round 1 matches (?).

Whilst I get it that Saints and Huddersfield are meeting out of sequence in order to free Saints up for the World Club Challenge the whole thing is clumsy and confusingly presented.

Ce la vie. As long as we all turn up on time it’ll be fine.

I was really keen to see the line-ups for the Millennium Magic weekend and there are some belting games in there but predictably the RFL have gone for local-derby clashes.

It ought to be a great weekend in Cardiff though.

And who knows it … might even cheer-up the Welsh … after Saturday’s shellacking by the All Blacks they’ll need it.

Next Monday (November 27th) see the official release and publication of engage Super League XII’s fixtures.

Already? Did we just finish a season? Are the guy’s back from Australia yet?

Phew – there’s barely a beat of downtime. Pity the players, who are likely reporting back to their clubs in a couple of weeks to get back into preseason training.

Me? Time to bundle the Damart collection down to Johnsons the Cleaners for a quick freshen-up. Don’t smirk the thermals are an indispensible part of the press box wardrobe; even for a ’summer’ sport like rugby league.

Believe me, those January preseason warmups at the Autuquest (or whatever Naughton Park’s moniker is these days) are cold enough to freeze the ink in your nib if your not proprely prepared (oerr missus, stop titterin’ please).

I remember David Peachey making a classy debut there last season in a real icebox: he couldn’t believe we played in that. Me either as it happens. I’ve got to say that it’s probably contradictory to every Sports Conditioning directive there is.

And we wonder why our stars are running out of steam when we pack them off to Oz for a brutal schedule of four or five Test-match calibre games in as many weeks; this after a gruelling Super League campaign that for most of them began eleven months earlier and for some comprised 40 first class games.

We cannot continue to realistically demand it of our stars.

If we value International competition – and we are right to – then we have to find another way to accommodate it.

Demanding more from our stars is not an option.

Getting rid of the extra Super Lesgue rounds ought to help but we also need to look at when we play the International games.

Maybe we use those freed-up Super League rounds to accommodate them?

Timed right it could provide a late-Spring/early-Summer festival of test match rugby.

The posts logged before this one were transferred from my previous site, sportSOFA.

We’ll be back with more content as the new Super League season approaches.

For now we’re still traumatised by the tri-nations.