Given the widening gap in rules and interpretation of these two variants of the one game, is it fair that an NRL referee oversee games between them, or should they even be playing each other? I've watched a lot of both games and it's obvious that ESL is moving to a quicker and less confrontational style of the game. The 'world cup' is obviously being played under the NRL style, which definitely favours Australia and the teams with large numbers of NRL players. Should anyone care?Â
I think there is a set of international rules that the world cup is being played under. The challenge would be the same I'd say. If one comp wants to move further away from this standard than the other, they do it to their own detriment.
The referring interpretations are very important. It always seemed to me that the Storm had a headlock on refereeing interpretations until at least the semi's this year. The point I was making is that ESL is definitely becoming a different game than NRL.Â
