Wakefield are making more errors and conceding more penalties this season than 10 years ago.

Agreed.
With our sport being so far behind NRL and Union, in terms of revenue, a small increase in the cap wont do very much at all.
Having said that, the RL PR machine is totally non existent and it's important that we at least put what we have into the public eye.
We are far too insular as a sport and although the tag line "rugby league, the greatest game......." is positive, the only people that see this are current RL fans.
Sky, despite being the sports main sponsor, do very little to help and as far as the national media is concerned, we don't exist.

Well I'm a Cas fan and have said for two years that the standard of SL has fallen. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the brand of rugby we play; I expect to be entertained and I am, but take away my club allegiance and is blatantly obvious that the standard has dropped. Yes, we've got better and others have got worse, but you only have to look at how poor saints and Wigan (and let's be honest; they're awful) and the fact they are still competing in the league highlights how poor the overall standard has become.

No, l'm saying we have to adapt to circumstances and be realistic. As we and other competitions have had to for many decades.

We can flap about, moaning on about how somebody, for some reason, probably incompetence, has failed to find millions of pounds in extra revenue, without giving more than the vaguest or most unrealistic indication as to where it might be found. Or we can accept the reality that the gap to the NRL is currently unbridgeable and develop a model that works for us as well as possible.

Which isn't to say that we shouldn't strive to be successful, just that our potential for revenue generation is significantly lower than the NRL's, for a whole host of reasons, most of which are not the RFL's fault.

The game is the master of its own destiny. I've said it before and I'll say it again. What terrifies people in this game isn't that the NRL and RU are unreachable scares them is that they are. Everything is excusable while NRL and RURAL are some far off monsters operating under different rules but those excuses stop ringing true when we remember that they are not only reachable but beatable.

Our potential is limitless, the only limits are the ones we put in place then blame for our lack of growth. If we do what we need to do growth will come and we can be the biggest rugby comp in the world. Others have shown us the changes that bring growth. The game over here is still refusing to learn, insisting we are different and can't do what works elsewhere

So what are these mystical changes ?

Agreed.

Soccer (Football League/Premier League) and RU have grown and have promotion and relegation (last football play-off for promotion at Wembley on Sky now) (Bristol RU was full for their promotion play off last week). We need a few more years for our Super 8s, Magic weekend and Summer Bash to bed in and grow, just like the Old Trafford Grand Final event has done.

I'm not saying everything is perfect. I agree we have huge potential and hard work and vision is needed to fulfil it.

But I sometimes think people forget how things used to be. Leeds (around the time of the water splash Wembley final) and with that great team struggled to average 5,000 crowds. Now they get 15,000 even though bottom of the league. Old Trafford was full for the World Cup Final in 2013 (Aus v NZ). Didn't we get less than 10,000 at the World Cup Final at Headingley in the early 1970s (even though we were in it)?

More penalties maybe, more errors than 2006 the year we stayed up after a lst day win against Cas - think not.

11.6 errors per game in 2016
10.6 errors per game in 2006

Here we go standard trot out line from Smokey the walking cliche - OK remove Wakefield from the list I really don't care. Hull are playing stonking RL at the moment as are Catalan and Warrington whilst Cas, Widnes and Salford can be very entertaining and by that I mean skilfull on there day - there there, is that better.

You and the parasitical Sky team missing their favoured sons can down play this season all you want, but we all know it's boll*cks don't we.

I'm really enjoying the RL I'm watching at the moment as exemplified by the Magic weekend.Leeds though look awfull and will hopefully be shown the door or should be by the phoney standards you peddle

Really, I can't be bothered to check it out so good for you - what a pedant you are, think you need to get out more.

Irrelevant as the season isn't over.

Also 1%! and that seriously shows a downturn in the game. Don't recall any in the Wigan game.

There is a saying in RL that players that don't make mistakes arn't doing anything so hey as positive - thought you'd like that.

Hull are playing some decent RL. Not great. To avoid your victim mentality from it completely leeds won the treble last year. That side is nowhere near the quality of the 2004 side.

Psst it's 10% not 1

if you wish meanwhile the super rugby and NRL are taking giant strides and you are looking to the 60's and 70's for succour

That would be a 10% increase. Do they not teach maths in Wakefield? Come to think of it do they teach anything?

Again, carry on being a sensitive little flower, it doesn't make you look like an overgrown child at all. Nope.

Okay, but we're not 'starting' from the same place as the NRL. It is harder to fulfil the same amount of our limitless potential.

By extension, Peruvian volleyball and Kazakh ice hockey have limitless potential.

RL in this country has been adapting to survive amidst doom-mongering for 120 years. I don't want to stick my head in the sand, but those 'end of the world is nigh' arguments are as tired as they are familiar.

Survival is not such a lofty goal I admit, but this is a thread about fear rather than hope. As far as the latter goes, I hope for better than 'alright', but I'm not going to be furious or disgusted if we fall short of world domination.

But we aren't catching up. We aren't even keeping up. We are being left further and further behind. We aren't consolidating. We aren't laying foundations. The games 'plan' right now is simply to lower expectations and lower ambitions. That's it.

It's less about where we are but where we are going and we aren't even trying anymore. We have no plan to catch up and even if we stumble ass backwards into success we have no idea what to do with it.

Take Toronto for example. Here, through no effort of our own we have someone who is willing to bankroll an entirely new market for us. What happens if they succeed? How are new Canadian clubs submitted? Are they going to be treated as half-d as toulouse? Our entire plan for expansion is just hoping.

Then we look at growth. Where does it come from? What's our plan to create it? I'm fact where is the motivation for it? You can stablemate off the field and be kept competitive by the SC which itself has been stagnant for years.

We seem to be hoping that if we stand still and take it easy everything will just work out fine. But it won't.

We are never in the same place anyway because the RFL are always changing the goal posts to cover up there lack of efficiency in seeing things through. One of the first objectives in the first 10 years of super league was to increase the quality of players via the salary cap and bring in overseas players to attract the fanbase, the RFL then proposed in the last 10 years to reduce the overseas players quota and bring through home grown talent via sports funding at grass route level.
This season and last we have lost sports funding because we don't have enough people participating in our sport and the amount of overseas player is as high as ever and of lower quality.

The RFL also came up with the future model of clubs owning there own stadia, 10000 projected fans capacity, youth development. What we have now is a wasting of talent of the o/19's covered up by dual registration. There are only 3 clubs who currently comply with the future model in Leeds, Warrington and St Helens............The RFL are very adaptable to change but most of the time its to cover up for there own slippage.

We have a fast paced, exciting sport with thrills, spills, controlled violence and a huge amount of skill. Games attract a family audience where old folks mix with youth. Glamorous young ladies who you might expect to have got lost on the way to the night club mix with little old ladies with flasks of tea. And yet... we cannot seem to market the game outside of one small corner of Northern England. It says a lot when people are posting about how they will continue to watch the game when it goes semi-professional. One commentator even said that he did not want to watch players who expected to be paid to play. Welcome to the 1840s. This is a world that values those who value themselves. Our game is saying "look at me I have low self esteem. I am not worth my wages." Do we really expect players to put their health on the line every week for little reward. Not so long ago we saw a super league regular give up the game and move to Australia to be a plumber. You can make an excellent living in televised sport in a number of ways including sailing and beach volley ball but not it seems in rugby league. The RFU has a whole world league of 7's traipsing round the globe with huge names like Kenya and Portugal and Russia whilst we are planning to let a single Canadian club fail in the lower leagues.
I am not a fan of the good doctor but we seem to be preparing for the twentieth century and preparing to fail.

I agree - those are good questions.

Rubbish questions like 'Why can't the RFL get multiples of the cash they got for this broadcast deal?' and 'Why is the NRL so much richer?', distract from what 'we' need to do for the good of the sport here. Your questions would all still make perfect sense if the NRL didn't exist or was skint.

Yeah, iirc Bryn Hargreaves jacked it in, when still in his prime pretty much, to be a landscape gardener or similar. I thought then that that sort of thing was probably a bigger threat than Graham or Burgess going to the NRL.

No-one who posts on here remotely convinces me they could do any better than those paid to do so. Could this be because it's actually a bigger ask than it at first seems? If it isn't, at least throw some ideas into the ring.

The first idea would be to sort out the grass roots game - it's a complete mess and with some exceptions, junior teams are extremely badly served; they are unattractive propositions for parents and families, and for a lot of kids other than the big 'uns - and in many cases, they learn very little. The raw material of SL is not nurtured properly - which results in fewer kids playing the game, and for those who do, some serious unlearning is often required when they're picked up by professional clubs; and because there aren't enough of them, certain pro clubs shop around and hoover up kids from outside their catchment area - which often leads to stockpiling and lack of development opportunities for young players. And that goes right through to the criminally short-sighted decision to drop reserve teams and the subsequent increase in the use of DR - SL chairmen who voted for that should be ashamed.

It's not very sexy nor will it have an immediate impact on the quality of the game at the highest level, but the whole system is built on extremely shaky ground so long as the junior game is allowed to be owned and operated by well-meaning (usually) volunteers.

So - step 1 - take ownership of the jr game, reinstate the development officers that were sacked off a few years ago, and introduce some common, robust standards for coaching and governance of junior clubs; and force *all* professional clubs to be more involved with their local jr teams - not just the ones that have a couple of lads they'd like to sign up to their Academy.

Quote ="bren2k"The first idea would be to sort out the grass roots game - it's a complete mess and with some exceptions, junior teams are extremely badly served; they are unattractive propositions for parents and families, and for a lot of kids other than the big 'uns - and in many cases, they learn very little. The raw material of SL is not nurtured properly - which results in fewer kids playing the game, and for those who do, some serious unlearning is often required when they're picked up by professional clubs; and because there aren't enough of them, certain pro clubs shop around and hoover up kids from outside their catchment area - which often leads to stockpiling and lack of development opportunities for young players. And that goes right through to the criminally short-sighted decision to drop reserve teams and the subsequent increase in the use of DR - SL chairmen who voted for that should be ashamed. It's not very sexy nor will it have an immediate impact on the quality of the game at the highest level, but the whole system is built on extremely shaky ground so long as the junior game is allowed to be owned and operated by well-meaning (usually) volunteers. So - step 1 - take ownership of the jr game, reinstate the development officers that were sacked off a few years ago, and introduce some common, robust standards for coaching and governance of junior clubs; and force *all* professional clubs to be more involved with their local jr teams - not just the ones that have a couple of lads they'd like to sign up to their Academy.'" funnily enough, as part of our rebranding and updating of the club, Roger Draper did this. https://warringtonwolves.com/club-news/ ... bassadors/

Quote ="bren2k"The first idea would be to sort out the grass roots game - it's a complete mess and with some exceptions, junior teams are extremely badly served; they are unattractive propositions for parents and families, and for a lot of kids other than the big 'uns - and in many cases, they learn very little. The raw material of SL is not nurtured properly - which results in fewer kids playing the game, and for those who do, some serious unlearning is often required when they're picked up by professional clubs; and because there aren't enough of them, certain pro clubs shop around and hoover up kids from outside their catchment area - which often leads to stockpiling and lack of development opportunities for young players. And that goes right through to the criminally short-sighted decision to drop reserve teams and the subsequent increase in the use of DR - SL chairmen who voted for that should be ashamed. It's not very sexy nor will it have an immediate impact on the quality of the game at the highest level, but the whole system is built on extremely shaky ground so long as the junior game is allowed to be owned and operated by well-meaning (usually) volunteers. So - step 1 - take ownership of the jr game, reinstate the development officers that were sacked off a few years ago, and introduce some common, robust standards for coaching and governance of junior clubs; and force *all* professional clubs to be more involved with their local jr teams - not just the ones that have a couple of lads they'd like to sign up to their Academy.'" funnily enough, as part of our rebranding and updating of the club, Roger Draper did this. https://warringtonwolves.com/club-news/ ... bassadors/

Quote ="Fantastic Mr Cat"funnily enough, as part of our rebranding and updating of the club, Roger Draper did this. https://warringtonwolves.com/club-news/ ... bassadors/'" That's a good start - but I'm talking about a root and branch shake-up of the community game, involving common coaching standards and RL development officers paid to ensure that junior players are being properly looked after in terms of skills development, technique, conditioning and recovery. We're a million miles from that right now and always will be so long as community clubs are run at the largesse of parents and local businessmen, who pay a few bob to have their name on the shirt. SL club employees should indeed be involved at community clubs - but to deliver coaching, skills and conditioning training; notwithstanding the ambassadorial stuff, which is certainly helpful, but a tiny part of what needs to be done to improve the grassroots game.

Quote ="Fantastic Mr Cat"funnily enough, as part of our rebranding and updating of the club, Roger Draper did this. https://warringtonwolves.com/club-news/ ... bassadors/'" That's a good start - but I'm talking about a root and branch shake-up of the community game, involving common coaching standards and RL development officers paid to ensure that junior players are being properly looked after in terms of skills development, technique, conditioning and recovery. We're a million miles from that right now and always will be so long as community clubs are run at the largesse of parents and local businessmen, who pay a few bob to have their name on the shirt. SL club employees should indeed be involved at community clubs - but to deliver coaching, skills and conditioning training; notwithstanding the ambassadorial stuff, which is certainly helpful, but a tiny part of what needs to be done to improve the grassroots game.