First, the good news. The first full round of Super League fixtures was as promising as it was enjoyable. Two major surprises, with home defeats for last year's Grand Finalists, Leeds and St Helens, have set up some intriguing games this weekend: Sean Long's home debut for Hull against Huddersfield, plus the clash of two more opening-round winners, Wigan and Hull KR, on Friday night; the return of Castleford's Rhino-slayers to the Jungle to face white-hot Warrington the following evening; and two more potential crackers on Sunday afternoon, when Leeds will be under more pressure at the early-season pacesetters, Wakefield, but not as much as both Bradford and St Helens when they meet at Odsal in an unlikely bottom-of-the-table clash.
Irrespective of the results, and some impressive attendances, arguably the most encouraging aspect of the weekend was the impact made by a clutch of young British players.
On Friday at Huddersfield, Kevin Brown was all class at stand-off and the tough Cumbrian hooker Shaun Lunt picked up where he left off in his excellent 2009. Ben Harrison was just as good in Warrington's romp against Harlequins, and Tom Briscoe showed the pace that has already earned him an international call-up with an 80-metre try at St Helens. On the flimsy basis of a single match this season, all four look good bets for a place on England's Four Nations tour.
Michael Lawrence, Leroy Cudjoe and Gary Wheeler also showed promise in the televised games, but the most tantalising sight of all came in the brief highlights of Castleford's win at Leeds, as Joe Westerman surged through the Headingley mud for a cracking try.
Westerman himself admits that he struggled last season to repeat the initial impact he made as an 18-year-old in 2008, which wasn't surprising as he had probably been overpraised in his debut year, and then had to endure the terrifying experience of suffering a series of fits after an accidental head clash against St Helens. But I'd love to hear how good the gifted loose forward looked over the 80 minutes at Headingley, from any Leeds or Cas fans who saw the game. We'll all be able to see him for ourselves against Warrington this weekend.
Do we need the weakest links?
Unfortunately, there are a couple of weightier matters arising that have dominated rugby league discussion this week – the number of teams in the Super League competition, and the apparently declining level of behaviour of Super League players.
The clubs have moved unusually decisively, if not very transparently, in voting at a meeting on Monday to stick with 14 clubs until at least 2014. This has the major advantage of lightening the climate of fear that had been hanging over at least five of them – Castleford, Crusaders, Harlequins, Salford and Wakefield – since the word spread of a mood to cut the Super League to 12 from 2012 to increase its quality and intensity. (And, more prosaically, to ensure that any future television contracts are sliced 12 ways rather than 14.)
But there could not be a better illustration of the argument for cutting to 12 than this weekend's fixtures. You may have noticed that only five of the seven were highlighted at the top of this piece. It is safe to say that the other two – Salford v Crusaders on Friday, and Harlequins v Catalans on Sunday – will fall some way short of maintaining Super League's five-figure average attendance. More seriously, there must be doubts over how long the majority of Super League clubs who now spend the maximum £1.7m salary cap will tolerate the financial stragglers such as Salford, Quins, Wakefield and Cas falling well short of it.
Judged by six of the seven clubs who played at home in front of 9,000-plus crowds last weekend, the Super League is a strong competition. Using its weakest links as a barometer of its health is more of a worry.
So is the reality that in the eyes of many influential opinion-moulders in the media, and therefore for a fair proportion of the general sporting public, the Super League now has a real problem off the field. In the last month the involvement of six Huddersfield players in an alleged rape scandal has been splashed on the front page of the Mirror, and featured prominently in news bulletins throughout the days that followed, and this week five Catalans players were held for 24 hours in Leeds for their role in an alleged late-night brawl.
This follows the extensive coverage of court cases involving Leon Pryce, Stuart Reardon and Ben Cockayne last year, and the string of off-field atrocities in Australia that caused a few ripples over here.
It is entirely possible that over the next few weeks and months the Huddersfield and Catalans players will be cleared. But you can guarantee that would not receive as much publicity, so the damage would already have been done.
Somehow, the game's authorities have to impress upon players that they can't even afford to put themselves in these positions, because anybody who denies that such stories damage the game's attractiveness to sponsors and broadcasters is kidding themselves. Steve Mascord, an Australian journalist with extensive experience of covering such stories, suggests in this month's Rugby League World magazine that clubs such as Huddersfield and the Catalans should be fined, and the players suspended, whatever the outcome of the current police investigations. That seems a bit draconian to me, and legally unenforceable when the players cannot be named. I'd prefer the immediate docking of at least one Super League point, which would create a peer pressure for impeccable behaviour.
As ever, your thoughts on that, the 12 or 14 debate, Joe Westerman and the other young guns, the likelihood of a Hull v Warrington Grand Final, or anything else, are very welcome.
