Fair enough! I've just binned off SkySports after a huge price hike so don't get Super League any more but I subscribe to WatchNRL and Premier Sports so get plenty of RL to watch. WatchNRL for £130 a season is a bargain. 8 games every week you can watch at your leisure and also the RL programs like Matty Johns show etc. Different gravy as they say!

I wonder if the lack of competitive/exciting derbies is playing a part.

Just be thankful you can watch the Australian league and the State of Origin. Without that we'd all be snookered.

Super league is dead and so is the challenge cup.

I'd suggest to any young, ambitious rugby league player in this country to set out for down under.

No Super League like other sports have decided that as people in Ukraine are white with blue eyes they must stand in solidarity. Plenty of other wars and there has been nothing. The hypocrisy is disgusting. When wars have brown people being bombed and land occupied nobody in sport cared one bit.

For example a Few years ago UEFA fined Celtic about £8,600 because fans waved Palestinian flags in support of Palestine against a brutal illegal occupation of there land by Israel.

I see Ukraine flags all over football grounds and no fines are being issued.

No one can argue that St Helens aren’t the dominant side in the competition at present. It won’t last forever though and someone else will take over. The sport goes through cycles.

The aim for the rest of the clubs should be at first match, then surpass St Helens. The way to do that is through youth development. It’s no coincidence the last 16 winners have been Leeds, St Helens and Wigan. The best 3 academies in the game. The sooner the rest of the clubs get their development up to the standards of those three the sooner we will see a different name on the trophy.

Its a salary capped sport in terms of playing squad but I'd be interested to see a breakdown of staff numbers and spend on areas outside the salary cap.
I suspect you'll see those that have/spend the most win the most.

Clearly using those resources effectively counts for a lot but ultimately you have to have the resources in the first place to consistently challenge.

Yeah, you don’t see the ‘no coincidence’ line trotted out so much on that point!

I don’t mind the pay-to-win model or the self-mythologising bs from players, fans and management at the successful clubs. I’m sure it has always been like that, to some degree. I do get a bit frustrated when fans of other less wealthy clubs lap it up, but everybody is entitled to an opinion.

I have been looking at what Saints are and and what the current team is doing, and I don’t want to undercredit them. It is very, very impressive.

and where do those resources come from? sponsorship, which is easier to get when your team is winning. a self fullfilling prophesy, and its not just in RL.

Another interesting one - the sky money may have been divvied up equally but the exposure certainly is not.
Leeds has been on tv in all but one of their rounds so far this season. Cant imagine their marketing department needed to do much to sell sponsorship early in the season knowing that - whereas likes of salford / hudds / wakey marketing team will have had to do a lot more.

Not much more interesting in the championship either. We are all waiting for Fev to go up and Toulouse to come back down to us so they can compete with Leigh for who gets to replace Fev when they come back down.

Mind you, the way Fev are patting themselves on the back they might be the team to give the mighty Saints a real test.

Joking aside, it just shows how mix matched the sport is at the moment. I don’t really see a plan to address it but these things come in cycles. How many did saints ‘lose in a row’ to now ‘win in a row?’

Saints have always had good youth development like a few other clubs in Leeds and Wigan the problem has always been the transition of these young players into Superleague.
The last couple of seasons the Saints have got this process right, don't forget we let go high earners Theo Fages and Laclan Coote and replaced them with 2 academy players in Dodd and Welsby. Wingfield and Bennison are also getting game time and looking comfortable in the team.