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Newcastle coach Brian Smith has labelled the NRL “not a fair competition” because of the lack of flexibility in game scheduling.
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Smith has been on a long crusade against the NRL over its scheduling around the representative time of the season and continued it yesterday following his side’s 38-26 loss to Wests Tigers at EnergyAustralia Stadium.
The Knights were backing up from an intense and narrow loss to the Storm in Melbourne last Monday and were without Origin stars Danny Buderus, Ben Cross and the injured Kurt Gidley.
The Tigers were almost full-strength, only prop Todd Payten missing with injury, and had too much class for the Knights who appeared to struggle with fatigue midway through the second half.
Smith said he felt for teams like Brisbane and Melbourne who both suffered weekend defeats to drop three places on the table because they were without their best players.
“How can you possibly expect Melbourne to take their best nine players out and win?” said Smith.
“It’s just ludicrous. You may as well say on that weekend we will give them (their opposition) the points and them the points.
“Brisbane has been doing it for donkey’s years and other clubs have it from time to time.
“It’s just we have all got to understand the NRL is not a fair competition.
“There’s other things that are not fair. You play at times when you get Monday night games away week after week and get backed up with injuries.
“You don’t play everyone twice. Sometimes you get to play teams that are no good, or not as good as the others twice and the other ones once.
“It’s russian roulette and you just have to do your best.”
Smith believes a lot of the problems can be solved if the NRL puts State of Origin on a stand alone weekend, as the AFL did with its Hall of Fame tribute match, allowing players not to miss any clubs games.
But he knows it will never happen.
“Until Channel Nine or somebody decided that State of Origin would be a better ratings winner for them on Sunday afternoon it’s not going to change,” he said.
“It’s a bit of a futile argument and something the chief executives and people at the top of the pile should be dealing with if they feel like it’s worth dealing with.”
Former NSW and Newcastle forward Steve Simpson said a weekend Origin would be warmly accepted by the players.
“As a stand alone it would get a lot of support from the players because you would get a full week between games and you would probably not be quite as worn out come the back end of the year,” said Simpson.
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