+1

Seconded

Biased? My personal opinion (coming from someone who doesn't like Union) is that GF brings balance and an unfortunate state of realism.

The only biased I see is usually RL fans, at the end of the day GF isn't saying anything that isn't already in the public domain, if most people on here are not mature enough to take it in and just stick their fingers in their ears going "nah nah nah, I'm not listening" then that's their problem, the only problem for me is our people that run it from Red Hall seem to have the same attitude.

If you understood the history of sport in this country you would know there is nothing league can learn from union.
The working class are the professionals.
The upper-classes are the amateurs.
Unless you think the RFL can persuade government to move its capital to the north and persuade private schools to only teach and pass on top jobs to those in Rugby League heartlands then union will always have the money and influence over league, i don't want to read gutterfax with his patronising emotocons give this as a reason why union will always be bigger and better than league, because i smile in the knowledge i am watching the greatest game!

But surely only by looking at and accepting what makes Union the bigger, broader sport can you ever hope to catch it and surpass it?

Unfortunately not. Admittedly, Union is run by very shrewd business men who know how to sell a
polished turd but union is also the sport of the Great British establishment (as George Orwell recognised) and it will always retain its position in the British sporting/social hierarchy. No matter how well RL is run it will never overtake union.

Overtaking it isnt the issue, but only an idiot doesnt look and learn from the success of others

Well sorry for being an idiot but it was you who expressed the notion of surpassing (overtaking?) Union. Anyway I never said we couldn't or shouldn't learn from union - we could and we should.

Well surely the ultimate aim of any business is to be the best in its field, so Champions League beware , the higher you aim, the more chance you have of success, simple as

Hey guys.....re-read the ing thread title




Irony accepted....you were the one who claimed the RLWC had paved the way for world dominance over Union

Actually, there is a lot that RL could learn from Union.....both sports have similar domestic averages in the UKyet one has the bigger TV deal, the naming rights sponsor, the column inches in the media, the greater number of replica shirt sales and an international stadium that delivered 300,000 fans to 4 games this autumn paying an average of £50 a ticket.

Are you referring to RL as professionals and Union as Amateurs? How is it then that the Amateurs are rolling in cash and sponsors whilst the professionals have foxy bingo?




...yeah, because soccer doesn't have the lead over everything else, isn't generally dominated by northern teams and struggles to attract sponsors, fans and corporates in RL towns like Leeds, Hull, Huddersfield or Manchester?


I want nothing more than RL to improve the way it is run.......at present, it is run like an amateur sport (see above) and I have never accepted that schools/old boys and media bias should be accepted as a reason for the inferiority complex that balances out the insecurity of certain factions of the RL community.

...good for you. Alas, more people watch the snobs from Eton, more money finds its way to the toffs at the RFU/IRB and they can stretch to a slightly better class of sponsor than foxy bingo

The things we could learn from union don't relate to "rugby" but to off-field matters, which could be just as easily ne learned from other sports. The learning has been all one way for a long time no - union learning from league. That includes all the things they / the establishment laughed at - club names, matchday fireworks, sons etc as well as coaching and on field matters. League has been the innovator of British sport for many years now. our problem relates to finance and that largely relates to the geography and the attitudes of its clubs and supporters.

I guess the issue will be how to charge one half of the supporters £75+ per ticket whilst offering the other half of the supporters £20 tickets together with a 50% off code.

Other sports? Other than soccer or Union what other team sports would be good to learn from off the field?
Soccer is #1 in the UK with hundreds of thousands of fans attending games each week....it is no mystery that they get the big cash, nor is it a mystery as to how they fill Wembley.
Union on the other hand is one of the cleverest con tricks ever. Similar domestic attendances but a massive interest generator internationally and decent TV deals.

As for Geography? Sales and Salford play out of the same stadium....so do the Leeds sides. The difference is the calibre of people charged with running the clubs/sports.

It's simple really when you think about it, union has been learning off league, they've stolen our coaches and players, they've looked at all our innovations and matched or improved on them.

We know our on field product is superior, it's vastly more entertaining.

So what is the solution, merge League and Union, have our game and their. ..well their everything else.

We then have a huge number of players to pick from , clubs all over the country One game we can all unite on, our own national stadium.

Union doesn't pull in big sponsors because they are innovative or forward thinking , it's because they wear the same old school ties as the CO's of top blue chip company's while RFL struggle to get appointments with the marketing arm of the jaffa cake factory down the road. Nothing to do with know how but who you know.
Lord Farqar Quentin III is not going to put a dime into Rugby League.

Without doubt some truth in that, however if we just accept that as the reason, we'll never get anywhere

It's not just that. That's the lazy, chip on the shoulder excuse. It's about what the company's get in return. What does a major multinational get from sponsoring British Rugby League? Access to a couple of hundred thousand TV viewers alot of whom are based a handful of postcodes in the poorer areas of the country? That's the reality. Football attracts big sponsors - not many of their people went to top public schools.

Acceptance of this ^^^^^^^is what is killing the game.

Gillette are a P&G brand by the way......regardless of how much or how little they paid, they are all over the England RL shirt.....there is nothing stopping other big names being engaged, even if it is initially for small amounts of cash. Emirates were linked with Leigh for a while IIRC and have hooked up with wire now.....Carlsberg Tetley are hardly minnows of the brewing world (probably)....the "names" are out there, it's the people RL entrusts to engage them that are the problem!

We are all of us lying in the gutter......but some of us are looking at the stars!

Ambition, determination and a certain amount of aggression/passion are what are needed at Red Hall.....look at a picture of Nigel Wood and tell me if you see any of those traits?

While our ( Leigh ) support by Emirates was due to the CEO originating from the town, we did get it by sending an e mail, pure and simple, this year our primary shirt sponsor is O 2, yes it will be prefixed by the local store, but ultimatly it must have been sanctioned by head office

If you dont ask, you dont get

I would ask the question, has the RFL contacted every RL club ( SL and Championships ) to provide a list of every ' Brand ' company within 5 miles of every club ?

Surely that would be the 1 st thing you would do , I'm sure some ' Names ' would crop up on every list and they would be the primary ports of call

The 80's called, they want their argument back...

do you run a correspondence course on internet forum etiquette and if so, where do I sign up?

Did you not watch Harrow school documentary on sky 1 ?
everything they do there is to do with 100 year old traditions (no league tables) to the point i was beginning to think what possible advantage there was in paying tuition fees to go to a school that does't seem to prepare their students for the modern world more like isolates them from it, then came the episode were top Directors came to see the students in their final year with job offers. And it wasn't to flip burgers!
These top Directors were old Harrovian's throwing a golden carrot like they got before them, they want like minded people to come on bored from the same background as them like the old estate owning Gentlemen passing down their worldly goods to their son and heirs.
A few days later The prime minister David Cameron commented Business leaders should go to comprehensives to seek out talent and not just go to the top private Schools, this was debated on loose women(wasn't watching, it just happened to be on while i was doing something else) it was obvious they hadn't watched the Harrow Doc as they missed the hole point David Cameron was making. as someone said, they didn't need a leg up and he was just being patronising to the working class.

Businesses sponsor sport not just for commercial reasons. They give millions to charities as well as sport to give something back for ethical reasons (you get behind a community the community gets behind you) and if your going to give something back you do it for things you care about. The only sport in England that is still divided by class is Rugby , Football is a bad example of a sport that has broken down barriers that don't exist and the premier league has over a billion pounds of debt anyway.
When Union turned professional kicking and screaming it looked to football for ideas how to run a professional sport and every idea they adopted was a unmitigated disaster, only then they looked to League.

I remember writing a letter to Open Rugby magazine and the RFL at age 14 on Rugby League policy , i mentioned the game should switch to summer and make more of an occasion on game day with cheerleaders mascots fireworks fireeaters jugglers big screen tv's rock bands , i mentioned dropping the county cups and the Regal trophy, changing the contract system, adopting a end of season play-off with a grand final ,having minimum standard for facility's to be in the stones bitter championship as it was then called.
The Magazine just published an extract on summer Rugby, but i got a very nice letter from the RFL going over every point i made and either said they wouldn't do this or that and why or said they were considering this or that idea but under another format to what i proposed, that was 28 years ago and everything in that letter has since come true. So i am more forward thinking than the most forward thinking and innovative sport in the country. I got idea's coming out of my ears how to grow the game but i'm not sharing them on here to get ripped apart from the "your a backward thinking flat cap wearing pigeon fancier" just because i see no future in wasting time and money trying to ram our game down the throats of those who for cultural and class reasons despise it.

Doesn't change a thing regarding your earlier sweeping statements though, but I am sure you felt a sense of overwhelming wellbeing typing that.

No comment on the working class roots of association football and their apparent refusal to stick to your stereotypical pigeon holing as a downtrodden non posh sport? Oh, that's right, because it has crossed the divide, you declare it as a "bad example"



By the way...good on you for getting it right 28 years ago. Having the foresight to see PSG, Crusaders, London, Wakefield, Widnes, Bradford, Salford, Sheffield, Gateshead and a pile of other clubs go to the wall (or near to it) was insightful and I am stunned you haven't been snapped up by the RFL to pave the way for the next super 28 years. It is a shame that your future plans don't seem to involve expansion, but I have no doubt that in 28 years RL will be a predominantly northern English sport that struggles in comparison to the other codes of football....and you can smugly claim that you saw it all coming AGAIN

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