I believe Gledhill still does his coverage on mixlr etc

I'm sort of surprised that the RFL actually had a minimum lux level for floodlights. Historically, they were introduced piecemeal and, by modern standards, the early ones were quite dire, even though we thought it bloody marvelous at the time. I'd have thought it was just like any other 'seeing' problem like fog, for instance, and would have been down to the referee's discretion as to whether it was playable or not.

There used to a problem with Sky games back in the day as I can remember extra lighting being used in the stand to cover TV games. I'm not sure how much difference it made to the players but it certainly blinded those standing on the terrace. To be honest, I think the modern cameras aren't anything like so fussy as I've seen a few games live which looked quite dark but looked fine when viewed later on TV. Our game against Fax being a good example.

New bulbs have been fitted. Well 12 new ones to be exact. Should be enough to make things much better.

Bulliac having decent lighting makes a huge difference to players - I speak from experience of playing under many substandard floodlights in my time.

Good grief, those pics on twitter of the changing of the bulbs makes me feel VERY queasy...

Oh yes, I appreciate that but I was speaking about the early SL days at Odsal where the lights were actually pretty good but not, obviously, [iquite[/i up to the standard needed for the cameras back then.


Btw, I'm impressed you've played under floodlights...the nearest I ever got to floodlights was touch and pass out in the street!

It sounds odd that the RFL would remove any minimum lighting requirements.

From a player/referee welfare point of view surely the RFL have a duty of care for them under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to protect, as far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of its employees. This certainly applies to the RFL where the referees are concerned since the referees are paid by the RFL, and more broadly the players because the RFL are running the competition they are participating in, thus they have a responsibility to take measures to protect them. I would argue that the low lighting levels might have a detrimental effect on the welfare of the players and that the RFL would have some questions to answer by not having a lighting policy in place.

As far as the Bulls are concerned I am disappointed that they haven't prioritized the lighting situation for the same reasons. Not just that, they could have scheduled earlier games to circumvent the issue in the first place, much like they did for the Boxing Day game. We don't need the floodlights in the summer (normally), so why not just save the money and scheduled pre-season (and maybe early season) games for 1pm or 2pm kick offs such that the floodlights aren't needed? I understand with the Yorkshire cup it was a double header - do the same thing, kick the first game off at 11.30am and the second at 1.30pm. Problem solved.