Lets take our game back from the RFL then.

If people can overthrow governments then sure the same can be done for sporting organisations. The idea of becoming a fugitive doesn’t appeal to me though so don’t invite me to lead any revolution..







For the second one we could do a Rugby League wag. Ashley Gibson is with a glamour modal

I remember when the times used to sponsor the Super League coverage on Sky Sports.

Anyway, personally I'm not that concerned. National Newspapers will soon be defunct with technology moving on all the time. With hardly any copyright restrictions in the online world the working class (which is mainly what our sports fans are) are not the kind of people who will pay to read newspapers online.

I've always found national coverage a token gesutre anyway. They only seem to put the stuff in the northern editions from my experience.

A bigger priority for our game is getting a national highlights show onto BBC Television or another freeview broadcaster. Last year the BBC offered to do a highlights show for the Blue Square Premier (thats the non league of English Football). They actually turned it down. Yet we still have a regional highlights show that is clearly very low budget. Pathetic!

I also think they need to get all England tests back on the BBC. Now that Sky have taken (or will do next week) the football results show (Soccer Saturday) off Freeview we have a big opportunity to be a lead in to the "Final Score" show on the BBC. Could claw some exposure back. Then again improving the BBC coverage would perhaps be required.

What I don’t get is why we want to save our sport off the field. If a stadium was just piles of rubble and a rugby pitch I’d still go and watch if I really wanted to.

I don’t let how posh the surroundings are dictate my experience. I’ve watched Rhinos at Headingley many times and I’ve had good and bad experiences despite been in the same place.

You go to an estate like where I live you’ll find that the underclass are happy here and the working class aren’t despite it been the same location.

Sport is played without ‘professional surroundings’ and ‘professional equipment’. I went to a sink estate school and pupils still used an empty bottle to play football with.

Didn’t stop their enjoyment - just made the most of what their had.

That’s what we need to do with rugby league right now and stop with this obsession of expanding the game off the field.

Newspapers sales are in decline no matter what Chris Irvine says. Readers can get their news much quicker via 24 News channels and the internet, and most of that is for free. By the time a newspaper can get to press, the same news story is old news.

As a result national newspaper owners have to cater for what will sell copies. Football sells newspapers. Political scandals sell newspapers. Katie Price (unbelievably!) sells newspapers. A poxy little sport in the north of England doesn't sell newspapers.

You mention that The Times is owned by News Ltd, but Super League has one of the highest average ratings on Sky Sports behind football, rugby union internationals and cricket internationals. Therefore Super League is a valuable asset to Sky, and the fact they get exclusive broadcast rights means they pay more than if they didn't. ([size=50I mention that in an effort to silence those that say the BBC should broadcast the odd Super League game. Its a topic that gets on my tits reading this forum)[/size

Journalism as an industry is dying anyway. Print sales are falling, while internet advertising doesn't provide enough for any decent website to make a profit. Editors can often use fresh blood such as students, who provide decent copy that trying to get experience becomes slave labour. Once they leave they're thrown out in the wilderness and struggle to get a job even at a local level. The recession has made things ten times worse, so now freelance journalism is the only viable career opportunity in the industry.

Rugby League, whilst struggling to attract media coverage, is growing as a sport. More Kids are playing the game, the governing body have taken a dying sport and turned it into a profitable business (not quickly enough for some) and are trying to make the game a national sport rather than an M62 pastime.
Yes, the media are shocking in their lack of coverage, but that's nothing new. Before I got the RL bug in 2002, I really can't comment on the lack of covergage because I wasn't looking for it.....but that's the point. Unless Murray has a chance at wimbledon, Union do well in a RUWC/6 Nations or the ashes are on it's wall to wall wendyball. League (well in the south anyway) really never got a look in.
Journalists like [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyleague/3259506/Rugby-League-World-Cup-Englands-match-full-blood-guts-and-skill.htmlTHIS GUY[/url are few and far between, so much so that I nearly chocked on My Sunday Lunch when I read this, in print, in the Sunday Telegraph. Problem is, it's up to the RFL to get column inches and if you look at the attendance figures for wendyball, T20 or even Union then it is the advertisers that drive what's in a paper or not.
Wrongly...rightly, either way, your average Union fan is perceived to have more cash than his northern cousin......your average cricket fan at Lords wearing an MCC tie probably has a distant aunt who owns half of scotland and even though your wendyball fan may be as thick as pig, there are enough of them to warrant an ad spend. Compare this with a game that has a premier competition which has 12 of it's 14 teams pretty much along one stretch of motorway (wrexham isn't that far away) and you will see why anything other than local press has no real interest.I know not all northerners wear flat caps and fany pigeons, the same way all Londoners aren't pearly kings....but avertisers are becoming increasingly targeted in their spend and until the Northern Sport tag is removed, that's the brush league will be tarred with.

If only we had more people like yourself on this forum then I wouldn’t get too much slack for refusing to do ‘voluntary work’ to get experience. Its all Boll*x to save money for the corporate interests.

Rugby league was on the front and back covers of most national newspapers last year, on at least 3 occasions. happy with that

I agree with that but taking test matches off the BBC in 1997 has proved to be a bigger error in my opinion. Since then we've gone from playing tests at Old Trafford, Elland Road and Wembley sized stadiums to our own club grounds.

But probably only in our local region. Most back pages are regional anyway, certainly from the Daily Mirror. Even from City to City you can find a different back page in Manchester from Liverpool. So if you saw Warrington on the page back winning the cup, that was probably only printed for Warrington.

I've still got the front and back cover of The People I had in my room at uni from the following Sunday, a photo of the team celebrating with the words 'Yes!' as the headline.

On the Sunday morning in London however, there was just a small box in the front page corner with Briers lifting the cup. Nationals have different editions, again in an attempt to attract sales. What might sell and be relevant news in the north won't be the same in the south for example. I agree, copies of The People in Warrington would have had that special cover and no where else. All to draw in those suckers who will be after the best cup final coverage from the previous day. Believe me, it worked.

We all have to pay our dues in this world Damo. I do it by being being ignored by an editor and have colleagues who take credit for my work. It is slave labour, but to reap the rewards you have to get your hands dirty from the start.

Its different for everyone.

Just been reading Dom Joly’s autobiography and he got his degree by the MI5 despite dropping out of University. Of course I don’t know how true that is but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was. I’ll have to ask him when I see him in September

first of all RL was never a dieing sport it was a open and honest sport were anyone could do well,you should'nt listen to people like linsey and caisely.

im struggling to see how RL is a growing sport.two thirds of its member clubs are now dieing on there and half the clubs in SL are living from hand to mouth.after all the money sky have handed over to them,it really is a shocking state of affairs.

once upon a time a lot of the written media was based in manchester and RL got its fair share of coverage,thats not the case now....thats why i say SL/SLE should re-locate to london,that way the fat d,lazy reporters dont need to travel far for a story.who knows it might help the london franchise as well.

Disagree....if it had remained as it was it would now be even more marginalised and crowds would be considerably down on current figures. Temper that with the new found professionalism (yeah right) of the other code and the player drain would have been devastating.

...if you were called Wigan



, I don't.


The number of people playing the game is growing. The bad nmanagement processes of clubs is neither here nor there.......more Kids are picking up a rugby league ball...that's got to be good for the game.

Funny, I always though that pre digital, it was the fleet street in London that was the heart of the UK Newspaper industry.....silly me, it must have been fleet street manchester




In todays media savy age, most journalists don't travel anyway. This is a social matter and has SFA to do with League.

Beyond help IMO........so long as the current management and backer is in place.

Sport in the UK = Association Football. Everything else is a minor sport, some of which are national, some of which aren't. As it is, so long as RL is considered a Northern Sport the column inches will shrink.
As for your Manchester Media argument....the BBC are moving to Salford are they not? Does this mean ther SL Show will get a prime time national spot instead of 3am on a monday morning?...thought not

I don't agree with newspapers, and news channels in general, so don't buy/watch them, but I bought about 5 copies of each paper that had Warrington on it last year and still have them, and always will do.

Never felt so proud

Sky pay based on how many coloumn inches in newspapers a sport gets? Silly me I thought they were more interested in auience figures and the last time I looked Sl was doing ok in that regard!

Do agree though that the RFL needs to get its finger out and be working more actively to get media stories covered. In fact I would suggest that they make it an edict that every club has to send at least one news story a day to RFL central who will then send them on to every media outlet every day. If the papers won't do the work then the RFL and clubs will have to.

Let's bring back ration books, national service and hanging whilst we're on a trip down memory lane shall we? Leaving our front door open all day, neighbours popping in, no trouble in the area, them Kray twins never hurt anyone that didn't deserve it...hand full of cold gravel for supper, living in a shoe box on the M62, getting up for work 3 hours before we went to bed.....jumpers for goalposts....the list is endless of how good it was back in the day........IF YOU'RE WEARING ROSE TINTED SPECS AND SKIPPING YOUR MEDS maybe

this post tells me everything i need to know about you..your a gobe.
how youve come out with all this crap from that little bit of a post you've quoted is unbelievable.

why would they though? as primary broadcaster of the game they have an interest in ensuring that the best players play it to the highest standard, to keep viewing figures high.

if they reduce their investment, the standards will fall, the game will be less attractive to viewers and SKY will lose money.

Print media is on its backside and there is no way it will ever return to past glories, unless the internet stops working. I heard an interview with a print journalist on Radio 2 a while back, he mentioned that a lot of people are getting their news, view and opinions from Blogs. Blogs that are written by amateur writers who now have access to website and blogging services like WordPress, Blogger etc. These days pretty much anyone can build an decent looking optimised website in about 10 minutes.

As fans we should be using Social Media to market the game. Share all possible RL related news on Facebook, Twitter etc. We could get a article syndicated to a million people within 10 minutes if we all did this.

I still agree with Bill Hicks when it comes to marketing.

I think what we need to be doing is grooming the rulers of the future to have interest in our game. For example Polo will forever be financed thanks to royalty all over the world introduced to the game from birth.

We are the marketeers, we have technology at our finger tips that will allow us to market anything we want.

A friend of mine makes a living from selling pc world and tesco products through his website. He does not spend a penny on marketing, he uses social media, facebook twitter etc to get customer.

Hey...you hark back to the good old days all you like when RL was an honest sport in your opinion, but if you have a point to make, it sometimes gets lost if you throw in a personal insult.
Kind of like another of your anti expanionist rants on another thread....



So, I see from this that you take your lead from your chairman/ceo who spat his dummy out when his team didn't get a place at the top table last time around....BITTER is an understatement



As for me being a gobe.........maybe, but your post regarding the good old days points to you being someone who can't deal with change. If you think British Rugby League was in a better state in 1995 to the current situation, please tell us why you think this is.

its up to the clubs and the RFL to generate news worthy content that people would be interested in reading. If the clubs cant even get newsworthy and original content onto their own websites, what are bloggers and tweeters supposed to pick up on, never mind the national media.

Take your Lobby specs off for just a second and stand back. This is a problem for rugby league not just the horrible, nasty Super League.