A Rugby League living legend Neil Fox should present the Challenge Cup, not minor royalty or a star but a true great...

Some of the issue is the political motivation linked to military matters : it's appropriate to commemorate VE and VJ Day, but still a bit more 'politically sensitive' to directly commemorate UK military involvement in The Falklands, Iraq (X2), Afghanistan, Balkans, Syria etc.

So perhaps though enduring involvement of the Services in RL it is indeed a recognition of support, and thanks, for those more recent efforts.

Is a hugely flawed strawman statement, as ex forces myself, i'd rather we see less 'flag waving' and far less spent on the military, it's no longer the way to fight 'wars' as we see almost every week.

In any case why did we need to have an acknowledgment of VJ day at rugby league matches, where is the connection? personally we should keep sport away from politics completely, there should be no needing to do remembrance stuff, no head bowing or 'silence' for some tragedy/people dying outside of a clubs/sports sphere. It comes across as 'respecting' some people's deaths but not others,
IMHO it's not appropriate and works against the respect that these tragic events should be shown, people who are connected directly to those events should be left to pay respects, if you want to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VJ day, you should have gone to one of the many hundreds across the country.

Well said, pretty much my thoughts entirely, very nicely summed up.

Particularly pertinent is the point about respecting some deaths but not others.

There is also the problem of respecting one cause but not others. Why should sports administrators and referees become arbiters of what is the 'correct' and acceptable type of political cause, and the type of political cause a player might receive a card and a ban for? It's too much to ask of them in my opinion, they should be focused on applying the rules of the game.

Good post.

Unfortunately, the people funding our game have decided that BLM is the political trend to follow ( see their sports news output for proof ) and so our sport as to get in line, otherwise it's probably curtains for British RL.

I think what's obvious, is that if we had crowds in the stadiums, then the politics wouldn't be getting such an extended look in.

Agreed. Wow,

We even have a soldier who was seriously injured as one of our referees and numerous veterans in the game.

This has NOTHING to do with BLM. That was a a erosional matter for players and their clubs. VJ Day should have planned at lest a year ago by SL and the RFL. Did the SL organisation for consider this 12 months ago?

Utterly out of touch.