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Off Topic Battle of the Local Authority Areas

Discussion in 'International Rugby League' started by rethink, Jun 16, 2019.

  1. rethink

    rethink New Member

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    Imagine if for one month every year each top player from England 'came home' and represented the local authority area where they grew up, instead of their usual club, money, injuries and timing are no issue in my utopia. Enter now. Imagine how refreshingly different it could be to see the stars line up in these affiliation teams, and away from the usual big v small shopping trollies club football routine.

    There are 150 main local council areas in England (metropolitan boroughs, shires and unitaries of 200,000 to 1.2 million inhabitants each), so there would be upto 150 but more likely around 24 official representation teams signing up (idea A), maybe playing in divisions or in a pre-seeded ladder of likely-to-be-fairly-evenly-matched opponents (the best way to do the seeding process is another gr8 discussion topic by the way!), and rather than have the top seeds play the bottom seeds, I suggest we would design a cleverly imagined opponent allocation system just for this, that gives out more than one trophy (best improver and best in comparison to population ‘little giant’ might be two of the five trophies of the 5 to fight for). We’d have a total break from the usual clubs all playing at completely different shopping trolley budget levels.
    There are some wonderful opponent allocation system ideas and format ideas to contemplate … Who might do particularly well and who might wear which colour?

    I like to picture a team in blue or red going up against a team in green or grey or yellow, at your local stadium, and it’s two of the boroughs or shires and unitaries nearest your house squaring off, a bit like a world cup game, but this time WE control the whole thing and can make changes wherever improvement is possible. Such as re-balancing how many teams could finish first this year with the trade-off considerations of bringing in separations that bring about more evenly matched pairings, and the other competing influences being those of wanting to put teams up against opponents who are not too far away, probably getting more tickets sold if we can set all later opponents in advance, rather than leave the determining of the next opponent dependent on the outcome of the first game, wanting to let teams who are lower down have big opportunities (but not setting the up to be annihilated), and wishing to make use of foreign-born players in a way that makes the top seed unable to use them but other areas can use them when playing against the top seed ...

    Version B of the idea is to have only two opponents per team per year 1v3, 2v4, 5v7, 6v8, … & 1v2, 3v4, 5v6, 7v8, 9v10, …. so one Friday and the ensuing Sunday might suffice. This way, we could use just the biggest stadiums, get a bigger percentage of the games onto the top TV channels, and all games would feel more like they matter in playing for the top positions.

    I do like the idea of having proper top-level home region/authority area teams (meaning each metropolitan district, borough, shire or unitary council area gets its own national team of people who grew up in the area or who slept more nights in this one area than in any other, no shopping trolleys! by shopping trolleys I mean chelsea fc and all clubs who import/buy in their talent) - I wonder what would happen if all of England's 150 boroughs, shires, metropolitan districts, and unitary local authority areas had their own teams (or just the 50 areas where rugby league is played)? and what format of opponent allocation systems might work best, and what predictions would you make if money, injuries, access to the best players and stadiums and suspending all other fixtures for a month were no issue? Would we get the same top teams every year? Should we separate into tiers of x teams to have better matched opponents?.... Let me know your thoughts, guys & girls

    Remember, this would be a little like national teams, but for local authority areas like Hull, Salford, Warrington, Trafford, Calderdale, Wigan, ERoY, NY, Lancs, Wakefield (including Castleford), Kirklees, Cheshire East, Leeds, Bradford, Halton (including Widnes), Liverpool, York, Rotherham, London boroughs, and Sheffield all competing for the top spots - I think it would be marvelous and would make some very good viewing, especially if/when the tiers are well arranged, and if the number of teams in each tier changed such as year1, 3 & 5 = 12 teams in the top flight, 10 in the second and 10 in the third; all others in the 4th tier; year 2 & 4,6: 8 teams in the top flight, 10 in the second, 10 in the third and 8 in the 4th tier. Or we could go for more tiers with fewer teams in each tier, or a totally other system that allows teams the potential to leap up a long way in the rankings in a single game .....

    These many England area teams could then be part of an international system in which other nations and countries of Europe (plus Lebanon and Canada) go up against our metropolitan districts in a big tournament

    I think, if all real word obstacles were removed, this could've been a great concept to see ....
     
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  2. Saf

    Saf Not606 Godfather+NOT606 Poster of the year 2023

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