If you mean Koukash then I’d rather he not have bothered. All he brought to RL was inflated player wages for a few seasons. Nothing else.

We don’t need or want that kind of wealthy owner. We need ones who are more forward thinking and less short term and build for the future.

Exactly as the Union fella in that article said - we need to spend money on club infrastructure and the matchday experience, that’s made harder for everyone when a billy big bo||ocks comes in flashing his cash at players for a few years and then sods off when things don’t go his way.

What a load of tosh. Remind me what Davy, Carter, Hetherington and Lenegan have done for the game other than reduce their average gates

Regards

King James

A big part of the reason that we are so far behind RU is the a***holes on here constantly griping about clubs other than their own not being good enough or fit to play the game. If there are teams that can replace those teams, and in that I include my team then it will happen. until that day comes along stop moaning and support the game.

But the only thing that allows the likes Salford to beat any of the Championship top 4 is the fact they receive £1.8 million in central funding, while the Championship top 4 only receive a tiny fraction of that figure. Because of this it’s not a given the 4 stronger clubs in the Championship will replace them.

We really attract the idiot, inept and incompetent admin don't we to the code.

RU is rub by successful and admirable competent administrators and people with vision, no wonder they are moving forward at a rapid rate!
Unless this game grows a pair, it will become even more of a irrelevant niche sport for a few working class council estate suburbs and villages along the M62....
Open your f*ckng eyes people.



It's a big world out there and the game has great potential if this ship is captained and steered well!!

Sunday Times - 26 August.

The RFU make regular financial losses....... A loss attracts less tax. As for hush money...... Its hardly news that the RFU are as corrupt And ruthless an organisation as you could find...... But christ on a bike they run their game with assurance and Confidence that we will never have in league....
.... I wonder how many pies we had to give big nige to keep shtum when he left....

Nigel Wood left with a huge payout

Plenty I'm sure, but I guess it goes to show the sports can be very similar in some ways. The RFU certainly isn't whiter than white or wholly "rub by successful and admirable competent administrators and people with vision" as Joff/RLRealist put it so well.

Bristol Bears (yes that is a new animal themed name in 2018!) have sold 25K tickets for their return to the Premiership. Helped of course by clever scheduling in getting them to play Bath (sorry Barrrrth) from down the road.

the fact a yo-yo RU team can attract a bigger crowd than the SL record in their first game says it all about the difference in marketing skills and budget between the two sports.

Rugby League doesn't do marketing.

So you believe RL is a well run as RU do you??

We do sport.... They do professional business...... Ergo we will soon be extinct and they will continue turd polishing of the highest degree and making money..... Tickets for England v the all Black's later this year are changing hands for over a grand....... A flipping grand...... But let's all laugh at the fat boys eh..

You don't think that like vultures, they might pick at a dying corpse for any assets including the rules?

As a game we had a short window of opportunity to become a national sport when Sky First started to bank role is and union were in a disorganised change over to professionalism. Since then union has looked at our model and seen what worked and what did not.
Look at the state of the London experiment, what would have happened if we had not panicked because London/Fulham were only getting 9000 on? Perhaps we were too risk averse and we should have parachuted new teams into expansion areas and backed them to the hilt. Of course it is not my money that I am spending.

It does not need to, it has the heartlands the lifeblood of the sport, all they have to do at Featherstone, Leigh, Oldham etr is open the gates and 10-12000 people flood out of the mines and factories and into the RL ground on a Saturday afternoon. The heartlands are the lifeblood this is what props the game up, why waste money on expansion and marketing when we have 100's of thousands of hardcore fans turning out every week.

Sarcastic @@@@

Which mines might those be then??? Not heard of May opening salt mines in Cumbria or West Yorkshire!

You do realise that those crowd figures include a regular round match played at Twickenham. London Irish for example didnt get many crowds last season over 4k yet had an average of 12k which was bumped up due to a 55k crowd at Twickenham. Same with Harlequins, Bath & Saracens. They all have crowds registered above 50k. Take away the Twickenham crowds which totalled 6 games and you'll see rugby unions reported average attendance for the league drop by almost 3000.

Good point.

This is satire?? Surely?? Then again....

I'm surprised you've heard of Cumbria.

you would think so would you not.

There's no common vision as to what the RFL and SL think the top end of the game should be - look at the messing around with playoffs/super 8s etc and the lack of agreement on a system for next season.


Thursday and Friday night games make it more difficult for fans to go to games if they have to travel. One of the great thing about our game was families being able to go on a Sat or Sun for a reasonable price. My club (Warrington) have (or will have by the end end of the Super 8s) played 15 home games this season - none of the Super 8s is on a Sat or Sun and 1 home game all season was on a Sat/Sun plus 1 home game on a bank holiday and 1 at Magic weekend. That's pathetic. It is all very well chasing Sky's money and allowing them to dictate the schedule but half empty grounds make the game look terrible.

Increasing attendances is also massively beneficial to the clubs as well as for some clubs ticket income makes up a substantial portion of total income. It costs around £7m to run a SL club looking at the accounts of Wigan/Wire/Saints. If you say the average ticket price is £15 and a rough average attendance of 10,500 then gate receipts are around £157.5k per game which over 15 games (plus cup games) is £2.3m. Capacity of the HJ is approx. 15,000 so we're missing out on another potential £1m per season. Gate income is more important in RL than say PL football so we need to be better at marketing the game and getting attendances up.

It's worth correcting this to say "the clubs don't do marketing". Lots of people talk about marketing and how "the RFL should do more", but I would bet a pretty penny that Bristol Bears did not get any marketing support from either the RFU or Premier Rugby. They will have done the whole thing by themselves.

So the million dollar question: Are RL clubs just too lazy to do it, or are they just inept at it?