Rugby League: Standings show evolution under way in the NRL

By PETER JESSUP

Don't expect the NRL ladder to change too much in the countdown to the playoffs.

The North Queensland Cowboys, South Sydney, the Canberra Raiders and Penrith Panthers have absolutely no chance of pulling themselves up to where the Canterbury Bulldogs, Newcastle Knights, New Zealand Warriors and Brisbane Broncos sit.

And the next group look set to continue beating one another in a win-loss cycle that will keep them mid-table.

Bar Stacey Jones, P. J. Marsh, Motu Tony and Lance Hohaia all breaking their legs, the Warriors seem sure to steam relentlessly towards a home semi that should set them on the path of long-term success Broncos-style.

The teams who are struggling are the ones lacking decent halfbacks and five-eighths. Souths have tried six combinations there, naming the unknown Joel Penny for this weekend. North Queensland have experimented with five, the Panthers three.

Wests Tigers, just above those three sides, flew former Illawarra Steeler Glen Air, 28, home from the London Broncos and introduced him to coach Terry Lamb and his new team-mates at training last week. But if Air was up to NRL standard, what was he doing in Britain in the first place?

So there aren't enough decent halves, playmakers with a good kicking game and vision to steer play, to go around. And now it appears rugby is ready to pinch any player who stands out.

The NRL competition has been skewed by money, causing a mass exodus of players to England in the last two off-seasons. But that's unlikely to happen again. Clubs have folded in England; players including Alf Langer, Robert Mears and Kevin Campion have returned quickly.

Fifteen clubs are limited to a salary cap of A$3.25 million ($3.8 million) a year and of those, only six make money or break even. Good players who develop at those losing clubs will shift to the winners. Losers struggle to attract sponsors.

Consider the Warriors two seasons ago. They couldn't give tickets away, the games were shown at 11pm on free-to-air TV because of poor ratings and advertisers didn't want to be associated with them. Quentin Pongia, Steve Kearney, Joe and Nigel Vagana and others fled.

Now it seems almost every bar has a competition for an autographed Warriors jersey, the stands are three-quarters full, the media conferences are packed, and the air-time is primetime.

And what they've achieved on-field in the past two seasons, plus Marsh and Campion making State of Origin, will attract high-calibre players for less than they would get elsewhere.

But the Warriors are a one-country team, have a huge player base, good sponsor support and were always going to succeed once the management was right.

That's not so for the inner-Sydney clubs, where couples are having fewer children and junior numbers are dwindling, fan support is sliding as people choose other forms of entertainment, and paying too much for ring-ins to bolster the team only leads to monetary problems.

What the fans want is a consistently fair competition where their team always have a chance and are based on a core of local juniors.

The ideal would be 12 teams playing one another home-and-away. The better players would be shared more evenly. The competition would not produce 40 and 50-point blow-outs every weekend, as it does now.

Manly drops all Super League connection from this weekend, returning to Brookvale fulltime, reverting to the Sea Eagles and tossing away the Northern Eagles/North Sydney Bears connection.

Ad-man John Singleton wants to shift the Bears to the Central Coast and play at Gosford, where the Eagles have drawn minuscule crowds.

But the NRL board decided this week that there would be no expansion to the existing number of 15 teams.

Like the Central Coast, North Queensland deserve a team because of the area of Cowboys' coverage and high junior numbers - a winning side would stop the player slide south to the Broncos.

The Warriors are safe while they keep winning. And there's no reason they shouldn't. Most Kiwi players want to stay here as first choice, and that huge talent pool is a big advantage.

It's easy to see Souths and Canterbury being forced to merge with another club by financial necessity in the not-too-distant future. So, too, Penrith and the Wests Tigers, and the Dragons and Sharks.

Melbourne are struggling without the Super League leeway that gave them salary cap exemptions. The city has never been a home to league. Don't be surprised to see the Storm start playing in Wellington to get bigger crowds, then shifting there. Because if the Warriors win the competition, there'll be cries across the Tasman that New Zealand must field two teams in order to redress the player imbalance.

So what about a competition with the Wellington Storm, Singleton's Central Coast Billboards, North Queensland, the Broncos, Newcastle, Manly, a Sydney City comprising the Roosters and Souths, the Canterbury-Parramatta Eel-Dogs, the Wests Panthers, the South Coast Dragons, Canberra Raiders and the Warriors?

Don't rule it out. There's evolution going on within rugby league that may well achieve what Murdoch and his millions couldn't.