“It was Warren Ryan’s 11 v 11, so we got to see 10 minutes of that and see how it went.”

For anyone without a season on the line on Saturday night, or a player sat in the Suncorp Stadium naughty corner, 11 Roosters against 11 Dolphins was a lot of fun.

With Spencer Leniu’s eyes rolling like Gold Coast pokies and Gerard Sutton just as enthusiastic about using the sin bin, Trent Robinson watched Ryan’s ideal game of rugby league in real time and made sure to mention it afterwards as well.

Ryan might just be the single most influential coach of the past 40 years. Not only because of his introduction of the umbrella defence in the 1980s, but in sowing the seeds of his rugby league philosophy among figures including Phil Gould, the Johns brothers and premiership-winning coaches Chris Anderson, Steve Folkes, Michael Hagan and Shane Flanagan.

The ‘Wok’ has long contended that 11 players is rugby league’s magic number. Every five to 10 years, players become noticeably bigger, faster and better at the athletic components of the game. Yet the rugby league field hasn’t gotten any bigger since 1908.

So if the game needs more space, more expansive attack and larger gaps in a defensive line, fewer players is how it’s done.

Warren Ryan: one of rugby league’s sharpest minds.Credit: Fairfax Media

“Eleven-on-eleven” has been uttered occasionally since the mid-1990s.

One of Newcastle’s founding fathers and recruitment guru of those times, Keith Onslow, would use 11-on-11 games in trials to get a better measure of a player’s attacking wares. Could a first-grade prospect actually see and........

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