It’s a whole new ball game as Super League makes its return

On February 2, Headingley Stadium staged two games when Castleford Tigers defeated Toronto Wolfpack and Leeds Rhinos were beaten by Hull.

The paying attendance that chilly round one afternoon was a capacity 19,500, while six months on, for another double-header, it will be zero.

The restarted competition’s opening two matches, St Helens against Catalans Dragons and Huddersfield Giants’ derby with Rhinos, will be played behind closed doors.

Toronto had, once again, been invited to bring the curtain up, but their scheduled meeting with Hull Kingston Rovers was called off after the Canadian side confirmed they could not fulfil the rest of this season’s fixtures.

So Super League has become an 11-team competition of 20 rounds, including those already played, sudden-death semi-finals, instead of top-five play-offs and no relegation.

Not only that, but the last round of matches, on March 15, were played under different laws.

When St Helens and Catalans kick off at 4.15pm they will become the first two teams, at any professional level of rugby league, to play in a game without scrums.

As a temporary measure, packing down has been abandoned this year in an attempt to limit the spread of Covid-19.

Public Health England regard a scrum, involving 12 players in close proximity for a prolonged period, as a ‘microclimate’ and therefore a potential risk.

Were one player to test positive for coronavirus, numerous others would be forced to quarantine for two weeks which would, inevitably, put some fixtures at risk.

For the rest of this season play will be restarted following a knock-on or forward pass with a handover.

While scrums are expected to return next year, handovers are now the permanent method of getting the game back underway following a kick out on the full.

What is likely to have a greater bearing on the sport is the new ‘six-again’ law taken from Australia’s NRL, where it was introduced on their return from coronavirus in May.

Rather than stopping play to award a penalty for infringements in the ruck, referees will now restart the tackle count, which will be confirmed by a buzzer sounding in the stadium.

That will make an already speeded up sport even faster and has been brought in to tackle a problem which, arguably, does not exist in the northern hemisphere game.

Under the new rules, with the prospect of cramming up to 16 league games into a four-month period, the club with the fittest and deepest squad is likely to come out on top in the Grand Final at the end of November.

There will have been sighs of relief at leading lights Leeds, St Helens and Wigan Warriors when they received a bye into the quarter-finals of the redrawn Challenge Cup this week, but anguish at Hull, Castleford Tigers, Wakefield Trinity and Catalans who are all facing an extra match in the sixth round.

There was little option but to re-do the draw once the lower division competitions were abandoned and the five remaining Championship and League One clubs confirmed they would not fulfil their sixth round ties; however, success for the eventual Cup winners will be rather hollow this year.

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