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.

To be honest if its just The Times that are dropping the use of a dedicated RL reporter then I wouldn't worry too much, there are some weird things going on at that opinion paper, their conviction that people will actually WANT to queue up to PAY for online opinions is probably being severely tested at the moment and will be for some time to come until some fekkwit at the organisation realises that its probably the worst decision that they ever made - shedding reporters like falling autumn leaves is only a result of their marvellous management decision.

Is there a sport that isn't?

That describes football as well, is that a dying sport?

The problem is that the stories that the clubs / the RFL want to generate aren't the stories that print press are interested in.

The national press aren't interested in "xxx signs one year contract" or "Fringe player opens village fete". They are however interested when a player is arrested following a nightclub brawl, caught drink-driving or in some other scandal - something that no club is going to try and promote. That's not a rugby league problem, that's a problem for any sport. Just today, for example, Joe Cole is on the BBC News front page because of a driving offence - it's probably the first and last time that he'll be found anywhere other than the sports pages. Likewise with John Terry / Peter Crouch.

It's very easy to say that the clubs should be producing the PR (and some, undoubtedly, could do more) but the what the clubs want to say and what the press wants to hear are two very different things.

In order to get the coverage that the sport craves, it has to be mass appeal. That means attracting a greater demographic of fan, establishing a strong international scene and getting the sport on the national conscience. When enough people, who don't have access to the YEP, HDM or Wigan Evening Post, want to hear about rugby league, the advertisers and the press will meet that demand. Unfortunately, there is huge fan opposition along the M62 to expanding the game to do just that. The RFL is dammed if it does and dammed if it doesn't.

agreed to all of that - and to a certain extent its no fault of the clubs, who are trying to appeal to their own market with 'XXX signs new contract' and 'YYY opens village fete' type stories.

however, the RFL needs to take a lead in identifying and producing the stories that might have a mass appeal. if they send out well written PR stories that sports editors can just rip off, it wont matter that they dont have specific RL journalists trying to dig things up.

Look at the RFL website latest news - its all either negative (players being banned) or pointless (Eorl Crabtree's testimonial dinner). Not one thing that would be of interest to a national sports editor.

couple of examples of stories that might have a wider appeal off the top of my head - Jonny Lomax battling back from a life threatening injury as a kid to Saints superstar, or Ryan Bailey's redemption from jailbird to Leeds Cup Final hero. i.e. personal stories, heartwarming tales of triumph and battling through adversity.

Force the clubs to make the players available to the media more. Get some players in London every week doing the media rounds.

How much national press does the Steve Prescott story get? The fact that he is guest of honour at the cup final doesn't even warrant a mention on the RFL site. Has anyone from the RFL attempted to highlight his charitable efforts, his fight against cancer, and his OBE. Blitzing the media with that story the week before the Cup Final would be fantastic for the game - and for Steve's charity.

The game cant sit back and do nothign, then complain that the media and sponsors are not battling the way to Red Hall.

SL clubs wanted to "go it alone"

They created their own "business" and sod the hindmost!

The one thing the SL clubs are REALLY good at is marketing and media relations.



You can tell by the column inches they get. The whole x minutes they gate DAILY on SKY ([size=50sports[/size) Mo & Rons Ball Game News channel and the whole daily y minutes they get on the beeb.

Add to that the z minutes on ITV and the non existant acknowledgement the game even exists on Channels 4 & 5 .

So that is ALL the major media in GB covered.

Regarding radio, Radio Mong won't touch it nor will Radio 2. Radio 3 is so far up it's superior air that it couldn't care less and Radio 4 may still cover the colonial game of cricket and mention the establishment sports of Oxbridge.

Radio 5 is Mo & Rons Ball Game orientated and demotes RL to DAB if it can be bothered

As for Talk([size=50sport[/size) Mo & Rons Ball Game it covers nowt else except Mo & Rons Ball Game.

Don't blame the RFL for the inadequacies of the SL clubs.

They made their bed they have to lie on it regarding media promotion etc.

Can't correct you as I don't remember that statement. Today's Mirror had small corner of rugby league news just after the horse racing section. I'd say The People is probably the best national for rugby league nowadays.

the championship 'not long ago'was the fourth most followed league in europe,so i would say that leagues doing ok.

by the way i didnt say RL was a dieing sport.i said two thirds of its member club were dieing on there and 7 or 8 clubs in SL are living from hand to mouth.

Media coverage used to be even worse. When I came down to London University from Warrington in 1973, the only paper which was guaranteed to print on a monday Sunday's RL results was the socialist rag, the Morning Star! RL coverage has not been too bad in more recent years, although I agree that in the last three or four, it's gone backwards again.

There's no doubt that wendyball is seriously to blame, as even the 'quality' papers are obsessed with it. It's not dissimilar abroad. In Italy they have two daily 'sports' papers which are 85% wendyball with the balance shared between motor racing, basketball, volleyball and athletics. A while ago The Guardian reprinted it's coverage of the 1966 World Cup wendyball final - you know, the one England actually won. The entire thing was about five paragraphs long. Were this to happen today ( thankfully unlikely with the dross that count as pro-wendyballers in this country ) The Guardian would have a 16-page supplement!

I'm sad for Chris Irvine, and the Times can sod off - I can't imagine anyone paying to access their website.

That socialist rag used to cause my normally 40 minute paper round to take an hour or so. Rugby League news and results from Division 1 right down to amateur level.


A rugby league journalist friend was told to 'take the weekend off' following the death of Bobby Robson. In the following days there wasn't enough space for rugby league and a few other sports.

are going nowhere.

its difficult not to throw in insults with people as patronizing as you.

am i harking back to 1995 or just to the inception of SLE?im not sure.

can you bring the rest of that post forward please so that people can judge it in its entirety[then they can slag me off if they choose to.thanks in advance.

While some clubs are growing, working on advertising, marketing, facilities, community, player standard, others just sit on their backsides expecting some kind of helping hand. I think rugby league at club level is being dragged towards the lower end rather than the top.

because once it was a sport now its a box ticking competition.