The most radical changes in rugby league history -- including four-quarter football over 100 minutes -- "are under consideration" at the National Rugby League, according to Phil Rothfield of the Sydney DAILY TELEGRAPH. The NRL’s rules and competition committee "floated the extraordinary idea at Moore Park headquarters last week" in front of CEO Dave Smith, Chair John Grant, "the game’s most influential coach," Wayne Bennett, and NRL Head of Football Todd Greenberg. The changes "would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in extra revenue from the TV networks through quarter-time advertising breaks and an extra 20 minutes of game time." The committee "also raised the prospect of expanding the premiership to an 18-team competition to get a fairer premiership draw over a shorter season with spare weekends to play State of Origin." This is "roughly how it would work." Matches "would run for over two hours instead of 90 minutes as it is now." There "would be five-minute breaks for each quarter and 10 minutes at half-time." Potentially, the NRL TV deal could be almost doubled to A$2B ($1.7B) "from what the code is offering the TV networks." The meeting "also discussed adding two new teams, one from Brisbane and another from a capital city in Australia or New Zealand." This "would provide the networks with one extra game each week" (DAILY TELEGRAPH, 12/8).
