Treading a fine line

THERE is a fine line between innovation and gimmickry, as anyone who has bought a recent Radiohead album will be only too well aware.

The Rugby Football League, though, aren’t afraid of straddling themselves across both camps.

The newly unveiled play-offs system for Super League has been designed to be impossible to explain without the use of complex diagrams. But the main discussion point, other than the expansion of the end-of-season contest from six teams to eight, is that the at some point in proceedings one of the sides will get to choose their next opponent.

This is, of course, highly unusual.

But such processes work on television, so why should sport be any different? It’s all entertainment.

Should one of our top Super League sides start struggling when deciding who they would like face, perhaps they could rope in a few familiar faces used to making momentous on-the-spot decisions.

Roll on Cheryl Cole and her quivering bottom lip, Louis Walsh and his many faces, Simon Cowell and his toilet brush haircut and Danni Minogue with the ex-Roughyeds ex-boyfriend.

Imagine it:

“Warrington, you’ve got a great personality, you talk a good game and the look is definitely there. But on the big occasion, you haven’t quite got that extra something we are looking for.

“So it’s a ‘no’ from me, and a trip to St Helens next week for you.”

It is a tad daft. But then again, the entire concept of a team finishing the league season top by a huge margin yet still failing to become overall champions requires the suspension of disbelief.

Competitions have also been revamped outside of the now locked and bolted door to Super League.

The Co-operative National Leagues now have a French team, Toulouse, within their ranks. Sounds exciting until you contemplate the implications of a rearranged midweek fixture across the channel on a cold March evening.

The opening stage of the Northern Rail Cup has been given the once-over, too. Gone is the home-and-away group stage, replaced by a pool system in which not every side gets to face each other. It looks a bit odd, but with every team facing opponents of roughly the same quality, works out fairly equitably.

A mixed bag, then. But at least the changes bring attention firmly back around to the domestic game and help to douse those bad memories of England’s abject failure in the World Cup.