You can kiss goodbye any hope of seeing a repeat of last year’s ultra-dramatic NRL Grand Final. The NRL is looking at overhauling the way it handles ties in key games.
With last year’s Premiership decided under golden point rules, the controlling league body in the nation will seek to implement new overtime rules aimed at preventing games being decided on a field goal.
The NRL Competition Committee is mulling over a number of alternative proposals aimed at levelling the playing field, so to speak, including adopting overtime rules that are similar to the NFL.
Last year’s decider was famously won off the boot of Johnathan Thurston, with the North Queensland Cowboys securing their first premiership on an extra time field goal.
A number of different systems are among the proposals, spurred on by a meeting of NRL coaches and forwarded to the committee to consider.
The new systems include introducing a pair of extra time periods of either 5 or 10 minutes either way (followed by golden point if the scores are still locked), increasing the point-threshold up to golden try rules, or even adopting NFL-style overtime system that would give a team a full set of six to respond in the event that their opposition scores a field goal in extra time.
At this stage there are no plans to change the golden point rule for regular season games. Rather, this rule change would only affect finals and the big dance itself, and would seek to remove arguments that a team who loses a finals game in golden point “didn’t deserve” to lose, as was the case with the Broncos after last year’s Grand Final.
The Golden Point rule has been in place in the NRL since 2003.
The NRL Competition Committee confirmed the rule will be a focal point of discussion when they meet next month.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Mark Kolbe/Getty.
