We are now 22 years into SL so perhaps time for reflection. Has it been a success or not? It was heralded as the great saviour (or should that be save you) for RL. We were going to merge teams, strict regulations were to be introduced for ground standards, and a switch to summer all in return for Sky millions. These changes were meant to develop the game in the UK in order to also close the gap on our antipodean rivals.
So 22 years on we have the same teams in existence except for the team from France being in Catalan region rather than Paris. Grounds have either remained largely untouched except for those lucky enough to sell the to supermarkets in order to re-develop. After the recent 4 nations competition I don't think we need to mention how we are doing with regards to catching the Aussies. Everybody on here knows what has happened to the Bulls but a lot of other teams can only exist on the largess of a sugar daddy.
So has it been a success or merely prolonged the death throes of our great game? And where has all the Sky money gone, if not into the pockets of the players and agents?

I didnt start going or getting into rugby really until about 98 so didnt experience any of the before. I think at the height when we were at the top echelons the standard of Super League was superb. I think from that point the RFL have done nothing to keep it at least the level it was then. For me we are so far off that standard its untrue. I know there are obvious reasons for top end players not coming such as the tax loophole closing, exchange rate not being what it was etc. I really cant ever see our game attracting the likes of the Vainikolo, Hape, Renouf, Lam, Barrett, Albert, Hoppe, Cayless, Lyon, Dallas, etc etc could go on all day, ever again. I would personally like to see it go back to licensing, not because we would have a better chance of a license, but because it gave the clubs good chance to develop and give time to young players coming through who could hopefully develop and finally start gettign us to compete with the aussies. The debate on the 8s has been done to death but the threat of relegation makes teams recruit panic buys instead of trusting kids.

In all I think the game has gone stale and until we get more money in the game we will carry on gettign further behind the NRL and even union, and wouldnt be surprised in years to come see the game go back to part time

Good question. I think we’ve come off the back of probably one of the worst domestic campaigns since Super League started (as a game I mean, although obviously the Bulls have as well) and I don’t think that helps the gloomy outlook. What will this season be remembered for? Well Leigh going up, a decent cup final and Hull KR going down in a dramatic fashion. Wigan deserved winners of the GF on the night, but from the outside it seems like the year that nobody could be bothered to win the title. Add in an underwhelming Four Nations campaign, and it really has been a year to forget unless you are from Leigh, Wigan or West Hull.

To veer it back to the original question, I think RL is stood still in this country, but in reality that means it’s going backwards. Billion pound deals for soccer we can never aspire to, but it doesn’t mean we can’t learn. We are happy to continue taking the Sky handout and carrying on business as ususal, as if the game hasn’t changed since 2006

Had you asked us this question 10 years ago I’d have said that SL had absolutely improved on the product of 10 years previously, but was SL 2016 any better than SL 2006? I genuinely don’t think so. I know I’ll be accused of bias here since we were a big deal then and not now, but in a way I think the Bulls are the canary in the mine of the fortunes of Rugby League. The talent is more spread out now so we get more shocks in the week to week of Super League, but that doesn’t mean the standard is any better. Leeds 2015 is a team that will go down in history of course, but the title winning squads of the years prior to that are hardly legendary – that said it may be a case of rose tinted glasses on my part.

I don’t really know how to improve things, and RL fans are famous for moaning but I genuinely can’t see the sport getting any more traction over here with the ridiculous 8s system that I think has set the game back about 10 years at least. I’m not coming at this from a Bradford are resigned to the second tier POV (but that doesn’t help), but the only thing it creates interest for is the relegation battle. I think it actually devalues the title race and SL should be our top window. Much like the Championship Shield, people don’t really care about the Top 8 once the split happens as – generally – the same old teams are always going to be in the mix for the Grand Final and the like of Wakey, Widnes etc this year have done enough so why should they care?

I don’t think the game is on its death bed yet, however I think it’s in danger of becoming even more irrelevant to the wider public than it already is.

Another tester for how far we have fallen behind will be the World club challenge, I can't see Wigan been able to come close tbh.

The needs to be a overhaul of the whole game from the roots to the top of the tree in Rugby League, as has been mentioned in the thread earlier promote kids playing the game, when I started before Super League everyone at school played football, during Bull Mania there was a big surge in kids playing now with the lull around Bradford it back to football.
This could account for the lack of quality that Wayne Bennet has mentioned.

The game should be promoted to get kids into the game, then they should be nurtured and developed instead of paying over the odd's for average NRL players to see out their last season or two over here.

Again a bit of biased view since we have seen in first hand but investment into the championship to draw standards between the two leagues nearer, then championship 1 and amateur games, when you stand back and view from the outside the Gulf between Superleague and the NRL is massive but the Gulf between Superleague and the Championship is also with the 8's concept it will become a closed shop, where championship teams commit financial suicide to try compete.

In answer to the question in my opinion that doesn't account for much, Superleague was a big success initially but has been managed very poorly since, The only clubs that seem to be benefitting now are the big 4 (and FC) although another bad season and we could see Leeds start nipping.

Agree with all of that. I can only think of a handful of games last year that were genuinely exciting. The calibre of player now is ppor. Crowds are dwindling. I think i'm right in saying out of every single game played in SL last season, only one fixture got a crowd of over 20k.

Throw in the 1-2k attendances Salford were getting, along with some equally depressing attendances of other clubs, the game is struggling. People are bored of playing the same terams all the time with the ridiculous amount of games. Scarcity creates demand!

The Wigan team that won the title last year were one of the worst teams to have won the title since i can remember. Imagine what the Bulls, Leeds, Saints and Wigan's of the mid 90s-mid noughties would do to them.

I think clubs have become lazy. They don't market, they don't try entice the kids to watch the games or make it entertaining. How many players go into the schools nowadays like at the height of Bull Mania? We're led by the oaf if Nigel "everything's fine, nothing to see here"Wood. Well when i say lead, he asks the clubs what to do and they have proved time & time again they are the worst people to run the sport. Stobart...Dual Reg...

Marketing as well as money is essential in my view of rebuilding the Bulls,
kid for a quid if accompanied used to get the stadium full..

A lot has happened since 1996.

Remember the SL deal bailed out a lot of clubs that were broke. The game was broke in 1995. A lot of the £87m that came from Murdoch was wasted and it was never enough to change the game anyway. Club attendances have gone up but the overall profile of the game has gone down. Since the financial downturn clubs have struggled and there is less money in the game now. In a lot of ways we’re back where we were in 1995 but without the higher media profile and the international game we had back then.

All the games ills are down to a lack of money IMO. With decent funding we could get more kids playing the game and that would eventually feed through into playing ranks and crowds. I think it’s scandalous that a club with a rich owner like Salford can get away with only running a first team, disbanding their academy and having dual reg with Halifax. There should be rules against that.

I think we really need to market the game. The circle that needs squaring is that whilst salaries of players and costs are going up the number of spectators attending, and thereby providing funds to cover this, is falling. thought up.
Going forward we need a radical rethink along the lines of the one when SL was originally thought up and I think it should be driven by the clubs and by the clubs I do not mean all clubs. Over the last 10 years the RFL have shown that they do not have the vision or capability to run the competition. The clubs should be franchised forming a new league and then be marketed as one entity by the League as a whole i.e. the league licenses things like shirts and takes a percentage which is used to fund and run the league.

I think the creation of SL was very much needed. As a Bullseye said the game was broke in 1995. In addition to this it created an even playing field. If there wasn't an SL it would be a Wigan dominated game with no hope for anyone else. I mean at least throughout SL there has been Wigan, Leeds, St Helens and Bradford all competing at one point.

Nowadays SL has created a more competitive league, 10 years ago the likes of Castleford wouldn't have been able to regularly turn over the bigger teams. In our pomp we were a class side but the league wasn't great. There were too many clubs who had no hope in games against the top 4. Except the odd one off (London, 2003 anyone? Dennis Moran show?). But all in all it wasn't as competitive.

As for the current system, I think it's good. In 2004 Leigh were promoted as Champions, in 2005 they were the whipping boys of SL and that crippled them for a few years. This system means that a lower club has to prove themselves against SL teams in order to be able to play them regularly which I for one think is a very good thing.

In terms of crowds I think it comes down to two factors:

1. The product is predictable, it is too structured in how it is played. You know full well that on the 4th tackle nine times out of ten the hooker will jump out starting a sweeping move. The ball will go to the back man and so on until the winger scores, a flat ball is given to the second rower to score or the defence make the tackle. I'll give two examples of past games which were exciting and not structured (Bradford vs. St Helens 1996; Bradford vs Wigan 2001 Grand Final). Both games there were flowing, expansive rugby league. The players played what was in front of them rather than to a solid structure which made for entertaining rugby!

2. It is a working class sport no matter how we try and view it. The majority of viewers are working class and these days working class people don't have as much disposable income as they used to do resulting in less people going to games. A family with 2-3 children going to a match on a Saturday/Sunday could quite easily be a £100 afternoon if not more. I think this point goes hand in hand with the previous point of the product not being as exciting?

I mean it wasn't long ago we had an average team (2011) and yet our first 4 home games resulted in attendances of 15,348 (Wigan), 12,835 (Wakefield), 14,348 (Castleford) and 12,354 (Harlequins RL). That was in between a loss in the Magic Weekend against Leeds hammerings against Wigan at home and Huddersfield away plus a loss at Saints! In fact we never got a home crowd lower than 10K and that was when we wasn't competing for playoffs.

As far as being behind the Aussies it's a matter of where RL is on their priorities compared to ours. To compare their NRL to our SL is like comparing our Premiership Football to their A-League. RL is their main or one of their main sports. Over here it's 3rd or maybe even 4th/5th. In an ideal world we would create a league similar to the NRL here, and have 'Super Teams' which can survive and not lose money hand over fist. That means mergers. I am not a fan of the idea but the only way to get a true competitive league where anyone can win any year is to have mergers. That means Cas, Wakey, Fev merging and pooling player talent, academies, into one cohesive club. One professional team in Cumbria with their strong amateur game providing pathways to their pro team. Hull having one super club, they have already merged academies. So this one club gets all the best Hull players? Keep Catalan as it's own entity with first refusal on French players. Toronto could be in the mix? Obviously clubs like Leeds, Wigan, St Helens, Warrington etc stay as they are. Do away with P and R and have this 12-14 team super league. Any team not in a merger or not strong enough to be an SL club form a Championship. Then like the NRL look into giving one of these teams a chance, or a new team, ala Gold Coast Titans/Melbourne in 1990's?

I am not a fan of that as it loses club identities and the fans would be outraged but maybe emotion aside that could work? Would certainly be more attractive to sponsors and works in a business sense.

The competition these days is more level,I agree, but that is only because the standard of the top teams has dropped rather than the bottom teams getting higher. AS for Cas, Wakey and Fev merging I wouldn't get into those specifics. You would take the most profitable teams (4,5 or 6) and then the other places would be up for grabs. This wouldn't be on the promise of a developed ground but with a backing of a certain amount of money held by the new league to show their viability. (This would be a bit like the bond that travel companies have to lodge with their governing body). If any club can do that then they could bid for a franchise. By the way the clubs that I described as 'profitable' should also lodge the given amount.

The week to week league might be more competitive overall than it was in 1995, but there has still only been 4 winners of the title in the whole of super league, that's crazy really, and 1 of those teams now isn't even in the super league. Only 6 teams have made the grand final at all, and only 9 players have lifted the trophy as captain in 22 years.

SL was needed at the time, and we benefited greatly by seizing the opportunity quicker and better than most so was very good for us, but the game does feel to be slipping backwards at the moment - I'm just not sure if my view on that is too jaundiced because of our own problems and being out of the club- would I think the same if we were still competing in semis and finals? I honestly don't know, but I do know that as an outsider to SL but a huge RL fan I have no real desire to watch SL games each week at the moment, but I still go to the Bulls when I can (don't live close to Bradford anymore) and I now find myself watching my local amateur sides a lot more instead of SL for my RL fix.

As long as they dont go to bowling

Was 2011 the season where season tickets were £60? I think that might skew attendances a little!

Thats a great point look at the cas side that Raper coached they were not good enough to regularly turn over the big boys like they do now but that side for me was equally as good as they have now

I understand that and yet now in 2016 we have the very real possibility that a different team could win it, Hull FC, Warrington were in the semis and GF last year? So what could 2017 bring?

10 years ago this wouldn't have been close. I mean Hull FC did get to the GF in 2006 but in terms of consistently being up there with the so called big 4, they never were. In 2005 we smashed Hull 71-0 in the semi final? Yet the following year they nearly won it. I'd say this Hull FC side is more consistent than that in 2005/2006? Warrington seem to be the closest though out of the two. But like us in the 90's are they the chokers? When they do get that GF win wil it kickstart them like it did for us?

Has the standard dropped? Or has the game changed in the way it is played. You put the 2016 Wigan Champions in the era of 2005 rugby league and they would blow everyone else out of the water, due to superior fitness and more open play. Alternatively you put one of the big teams of that era, say 2003 Wigan Warriors into this era of more structured rugby, they would get torn apart. Even by some of the mid-table teams now.

Quite possibly



I'm not sure! But if it was it backs up my point about the disposable income. Less disposable income means people cannot afford the regular prices. This shows that there is still desire to watch, if the price is within the working class families disposable income then they will show.

Don't agree with that. The big teams early 2000s played some very open stuff, and smaller teams couldn't cope. Saints of early 2000s were the master of stuff like that and would blow the modern Saints team away (IMO). However I do agree you have to take the league as a whole - the team that went down this year (Hull KR) are probably stronger than Cas when they went down in 2006.

If you want a quick comparison on then vs now, looking at the World Club Challenge in the early 2000s vs now where English teams were regularly competing and winning - to the past couple of years have been embarrassing. Can't agree that teams that are getting paggered by NRL teams now would have beaten teams that were holding their own a decade back.

NRL has changed a lot to be fair too in the past 10 years. So it's still an unfair comparison :/

The reason we could beat the NRL teams back then is because we played an open brand of rugby rather than to a structure. Wigan are the best UK team in terms of playing a structure but man the NRL teams have that nailed down. It would take a very good performance from Wigan to win the WCC playing structured rugby or a Cronulla team not being overly interested and using it as a warm up!

And in the early 2000's it was only us who were consistent with the NRL teams, the others either got smashed or won by a mere point or try hardly on par in one off game:

2000: Melbourne 44-6 St Helens
2001: St Helens 20-18 Brisbane Broncos
2002: Bradford 41-22 Newcastle
2003: Sydney Roosters 38-0 St Helens
2004: Bradford 22-4 Penrith
2005: Leeds 39-32 Canterbury
2006: Bradford 30-10 Wests

We haven't won a WCC convincingly since 2006 and Leeds did a great job in 2012 over Manly. Honestly the all conquering 2015 Leeds side who got battered 38-4 against North Queensland would have been better suited playing the NRL teams of the early 2000's. But it's a different era. Both leagues have changed so much and the game itself is so different.

When I said more open play I didn't mean the 2016 Wigan played more openly than the 2005 teams. Rather that the game in 2005 was much more open than it is now, so the likes of Tomkins, Charnley etc would be able to exploit this more freely and with superior fitness would dominate the league. Watch highlights of matches from back then, especially the 2001-2005 era and you'll see just how open the field is compared to games now a days. But as you say as well the league as a whole is stronger.

Makes me wonder if the NRL is on steroids

Sorry dont agree with that JJ. That Wigan team for me wouldnt get near this 2005 saints side

Paul Wellens
Ade Gardner
Jamie Lyon
Willie Talau
Darren Albert
Paul Sculthorpe
Sean Long
Nick Fozzard
Mick Higham
Paul Anderson
Lee Gilmour
James Graham
Jon Wilkin

James Roby
Keiron Cunningham
Mike Bennett
Mark Edmondson

Cant see it myself and this Wigan side 2002/2003

Kris Radlinski
Brian Carney
Gary Connolly
Jamie Ainscough
Brett Dallas
Julian O'Neill
Adrian Lam
Terry O'Connor
Terry Newton
Harvey Howard
Mick Cassidy
David Furner
Andy Farrell

Paul Johnson
Simon Haughton
Stephen Wild
Ricky Bibey

difference in quality is massive for me

Agreed that on paper and what they achieved in that era was pure class. But we never saw those teams play an 80min structured game as is RL now. Don't get me wrong that era with those two sides with the Bulls and Leeds thrown into the mix was my favourite era of RL.

We will never know and we can only speculate but even though those were class teams. I still think the fitness and the structure of modern day RL would beat those. The games back then were a lot more free flowing and more play what's in front of you. Defensive lines weren't as tight or structured as they are now which freed up a lot of space. You just don't get that now :/

I disagree. Back in the day, I saw some of the dourest, hardest defence I have ever seen, and basically little has changed, teams could be exceptional at defence, average or useless. And could vary from game to game, like now.

The Bulls, or Saints, of the early SL days would have paggered any UK team of today. This is just because they happened to have a wealth of great players, all happily playing at the same time, something which has always been rare.

I would certainly have liked to have seen 2001 or 2003 Bulls with today's fitness levels and training facilities. Would be a beast of a team.

The problem with structured play to the level we have now is akin to playing Top Trumps. There is no surprises and perhaps this is why crowds are dropping. Doubt we'll ever see a "Wide to West" anytime soon.

Most comparisons between eras are pointless since the rules change endlessly.

Every rule change alters the balance between the attack and defence, and this either 'opens up', or makes the game 'more structured', depending on whether the change makes it easier, or harder, to attack or defend. The game has always fallen between those two stools, trying to reward good play whilst not becoming like basketball and devaluing try scoring by scoring with every attack. to be honest I don't see an answer to the problem.