Well considering we don't have any top Welsh, Scottish or Irish teams then they'd be no interest in BBC Wales/Scotland/NI/Alba or S4C in wanting any RL which would leave us with the BBC main two channels. Even they can't get the live Autumn internationals of England RU even and for all the talk of Sky's scheduling of RL it pales compares to the shifting around of the CC to suit the BBC's wishes (something you've bemoaned about many times btw). The only reason football and International RU are on the main BBC channels and ITV is because those events have to be. If Sky were allowed to have those then the football and RU would gladly take their events to Sky or BT and leave no exposure to FTA channels.

ITV has very little interest in having sport on their main channel apart from the ones on the 'Crown Jewels' list. We might (if they were even interested which I doubt) get a midnight slot for a highlights programme much like the current BBC One......is that really worth it or great exposure?

You like to mention the Darts/Thursday night thing quite often. There's a sport which can be found on BBC and ITV4.....yet in reality they've done little for it exposure since the PDC and Sky blew it up big time. Another sport and one you're a fan of, cricket. It's dominated by Sky yet does absolutely fine.

That leaves BT Sport, well more people have Sky so people can't really argue exposure and then say we should go to BT.

Has anyone seen the newest Sky Sports advert for 2015 featuring all the sports they show including RU, American Football, boxing, golf etc and closing with the tagline "more of the sport that matters"? The only notable absentee was RL.

I blame the editor of the daily express

For your own mental wellbeing, please find another hobby. I have never seen a post from you that is not utterly negative. It cannot be healthy to dislike everything about your main interest. You must have hated the Four Nations.

There is one positive, I guess: only a few weeks until you get to cast your eye over the opening week attendances.

The irony is, I guess, is that someone did buy Salford, and is discovering that it's dying!

Bring back Winter Rugby, Scrumdown highlights show on ITV & delayed "live" broadcasts of the 2nd half of CC games.

Those were the days!

There is one reason for this, Jon Wilkin went around it a few weeks ago, the British weather, the elite talk about these things obviously, RL needs good weather, you only have to see most of the matches in Aus, only the very very best can play good football in poor conditions, like the Manly v Melbourne match in march 2014. But as Bill Harrigan says, "Each week you'll have one very good match, one very poor match but most will be somewhere in the middle.

As has bn said b4, RL suits indoor artificial pitches more than any other sport, and we need more of them down, why don't we contact David Rockefeller and ask him to pay for an 80,000 capacity (NOT all-seater) indoor stadium with a 4g pitch in Sheffield for us, to play the SL GF there and all internationals?

In fact it actually said "More of the sports that matter", after listing Premier League, Champions League, Football League, Capitol One Cup, Formula 1, The Ashes, International Tests and ODIs, ICC World Cup, US Masters, Boxing, NFL and 'European Rugby'. This honestly seems like a deliberate snub and an intentional slap in the face to RL.

The level of paranoia on here is quite alarming

You could well be right!!!

People see/read/hear things and pass them on or comment.

What's that all about?



As another piece of conspiricy, and to keep the Daily Wail types happy, have you noticed that RL ALWAYS follows Union on the Sky ticker at the bottom of the screen and that when RL gets to the front or nearly they go to an ad break.

They seem to do things in alphabetical order but U before L!!!!

Right.

Because RL is clearly more important than the US Masters. Or Formula 1. Or the Ashes.

Seriously, take your tinfoil hat off and give your head a shake. The SL regular season is not an event in the same way that these are. The only one I might query is European Rugby, given that some of these games will be the likes of Glasgow vs some obscure French side in front of 6,000 people. But even then, the Heineken (or whatever it is these days) Cup final is every bit as big an event as say the SL Grand Final for example.

I havent watched SSN for a few years now,does that still happen?

Don't know, the presenters just seem to spend their time nowadays reading out tweets and hashtags from famous sports people.

It always felt like it was on a loop just going round & round.
A pointless channel really.

Reckon Sky Sports News is important, it's often on in pubs and a lot seem to watch it, though it hasn't been on freeview for years. I've never noticed that things are usually in alphabetical order on there.

Perhaps we should be asking the RL press office, just how hard are they working, and just how many clubs in RL have a full-time Press Officer, pumping out stories, the reality is we seem to have a mix of lazy and incompetent people. Newspapers and News Channels are DESPERATE to fill up column inches and spare air-time with some actual NEWS.

OK, I do get that the BBC won't publish/broadcast, but most of the others WILL, the reality is we are S**t at getting the stories, pictures and VT out there. Years ago as a Student (27 to be precise), I worked for Hayter's (the sports news agency) based just off Fleet Street.

Football Clubs, Cricket Clubs, Boxing Trainers/Promoters used to inundate the offices with STORIES, Union Clubs too, but in the five months I worked there I cannot remember a single call, fax (or even Xerox as we had back then) from a Rugby League Club, NOT A SINGLE ONE!

RL clubs don't seem to take Marketing seriously at all and yet it's a major part in growing the sport. Infuriating to witness!

Right, so you agree with Sky that RL doesn't matter and isn't an important or must-see sport. But 'boxing' is.

Boxing is a sport that Sky can sell at £16+ per event on PPV (Froch v Groves generated £15.2m in PPV sales). Of course it's more important to Sky than Super League.

It also generates much more betting revenue that RL, something that a company like SKYBet might be interested in.

Honestly with comments like that you would think that "eyes on the box" was far more important to SKY then bums on seats, which we all know is far far more important to them.

Honestly some people

As far as I'm aware the BBC highlights are broadcast nationally on BBC2 around 1:30pm on a Tuesday, they moved the slot from silly hours of Monday morning as of the start of 2014 season.

What's the full run down on the CC not being shown free to air, is it just the rounds that are being removed from the BBC schedule?

The idiots in charge just can't seem to understand the long term damage they are doing to the sport, it's enough to make you weep..

Similarly, what stories can we make a big deal about? We don't really have BIG transfers, we don't have the BIG names, we don't have an international competition we are building for, games aren't being played.

The game is shut down, there is nothing happening, and we aren't creating nothing happening.

Iv mentioned this before but I read an interview with Eric Weinberg the EP of the NFL network talking about how the 'eventize' the NFL, that is the stuff going on around the game building up the game itself. So you get breaking news about injuries and rumours and the combine and the draft etc etc so when people weren't talking about the games themselves, they were talking about the things around the game and it is constantly in the conversation.

We don't do anything like that, there are very few talking points, we don't have a Burgess level signing, we don't have any possible game-changers, we have this crazy new system being explained constantly but that doesn't make anyone excited to see a particular game.

We have a game perfect for tv but don't really seem to be doing anything to present it well in the media age.

The NRL has a massive media dept and a massive budget, very little in the press about RL here at the moment (aside from the weekly drongo DUI charge). Its the off season, nothing happens much. I'm sure the local papers are covering pre season and the local clubs new signings but somehow I doubt the nationals are that interested in how Sio is finding the winter weather in Hull. Only big news story really is Todd Carney due to his infamy and he is in France well away from the English hounds.

so then we create it.

Why are all our signing dribbled out throughout the end of the season? Look at the attention the transfer deadline gets in football. Its wall to wall. We probably can't replicate what they do, we don't have enough clubs or moves to do it, but imagine if for instance we got reps of all the teams in a hotel and they had 1/2/3 days to hash out transfers and free agent signings. Sky Sports would go nuts for that. Have something similar to the combine with players publicly showing some of their athleticism.

Why aren't we watching an off-season documentary series from some young production company given completely unfettered access to a club?

Why don't we have a festive 9's series? it doesn't HAVE to all the best players if some don't want to play but as long as we get some of them, maybe a few legends and ringers involved as well people will watch, it will become a tradition and build.

A 4 month build up to the 2015 season should have started October 2014