Having achieved all he possibly could as CEO of the Gold Coast Titans, former top referee and State Parliamentarian Graham Annesley has taken on the role of NRL Head of Elite Football Operations, hoping no doubt to share his brilliance across the entire league.

He hasn’t taken long to dive into the deep end with the kind of forward thinking which could have seen his Titans play a lot more finals football. Speaking to all the club CEOs Annesley announced an idea to extend the finals series by a week to give teams finishing ninth and tenth a shot at making the grand final.

Annesley argued that there are way too many dead games towards the end of the season when teams like, say, the Gold Coast Titans, pretty much have nothing to play for after the Easter long weekend.

Under this brilliant plan, the top six teams would have the Wildcard Weekend off while the team finishing seventh would play the team finishing tenth and the team finishing eighth would play the team finishing ninth for a place in the regular top eight finals series.

The immediate benefits would be larger crowds and greater television ratings as at least two more teams would be involved in the race towards the finals. Annesley explained that clubs that rarely get to participate in the finals would receive an enormous financial boost under the new format.

“I think at the Titans last year we were probably done and dusted by very early in the second round,” Annesley said.

“You often hear clubs say mathematically we can still make it, but mathematically means you have to win every game.

“If you’ve missed the eight for multiple years, trying to get members to re-sign for the following year can be difficult, so if this is a way of keeping that engagement and that involvement from everyone associated with the game it is at least worth considering.”

He is obviously just testing the water with his initial wildcard concept. It is pretty obvious that the concept could and should be expanded to enable maximum benefits to as many NRL clubs as possible. Why limit it to the top ten?

It’s when you start playing with a system that involves all 16 teams that you realise just how much further this idea can be developed. My finals format would involve giving the top four teams a well-deserved week off in the first week of the finals, while every other club would play at least one more game.

The team that finished fifth would play the team that finished twelfth. The team that finished sixth would play the team that finished eleventh. The team that finished seventh would play the team that finished tenth and the team that finished eighth would play the team that finished ninth. The four winning teams would advance to the following week to commence the regular eight-team finals format.

The bottom four teams wouldn’t miss out. The team finishing thirteenth would play the team finishing sixteenth and the team finishing fourteenth would play the team finishing fifteenth, all on the same weekend.

The losers of those two games would go on to play for the Wooden Spoon, most likely as a preliminary clash on Grand Final day. Just imagine how good it would be to keep the legions of Parramatta fans involved right up to and including the biggest day of the NRL year?

I imagine you could play all six of these week one games in the one stadium over a weekend and call it the Magic Finals Weekend. Don’t tell me they wouldn’t pack out somewhere like WIN Stadium for six sudden-death clashes, especially if the Dragons were playing in one of them.

In these troubled times for rugby league, the NRL needs forward thinkers like the former New South Wales Minister for Sports. Having all 16 teams involved in the finals has clear and obvious financial benefits. It is also a sensational way of keeping players focused on playing football for an extra week and away from recording their own amateur porn films.