Yes. In Australia, which means everyone is watching it over here Friday morning.

My point was why not play the game Saturday night in Aus so we can watch the game Saturday morning (ie when it’s not a work day for us on the UK).

If they have a Friday night launch then they get the momentum with a weekend full of other games (3 games on Sat, 3 on Sun).

IIRC RLWC schedule for this year is based around Fri-Sun games, which should maximise the attendances, and avoids midweek matches.

Great predictions fun time frankie.

'It's a joke' RLfans go to phrase.

Just noticed the bbc are showing Oxford university v Cambridge university rugby union tomorrow. There must be close to zero interest in this game, it smacks of the public school old boys brigade, what next Eton’s under 16’s games?

The attendance will be better than any World Cup game bar the final so hardly “close to zero interest”

Regards

King James

Tbf they showed the rugby league varsity on sky sports for a fair few years

yep , "its a joke" is a joke.

BBC and sky sports are quite different, one a dedicated sports broadcaster, the other a public service broadcaster.

Was it a good standard? I know for current universities they're nowhere near the best. Leeds Met and Northumbria dominate the Northern Premier League and country at BUCS level, with Loughborough and Uni of Gloucester being the best of the Southern Premier League.

What was the attendance? I watched a little bit of the HSBC Dubai sevens last week, there looked less than 100 people at that major global sporting event.

It’s always around the 25k to 35k Mark. To be fair though, Army v Navy gets around 60-70k so maybe the bbc should show that. As another comparison the RL navy v army gets about 1.2k

Regards

King James

Pretty decent, probably next step down from that. Unfortunately in recentyears Cambridge have struggled somewhat

25,133.


Couple of things here.
First up, why watch a sport you evidently don't like and secondly, having attended numerous HSBC 7's events around the world I can confirm that there is very little "spectating" going on, but rather a lot of Drinking on the concourses......as I am sure was the case at the aptly named SEVENS STADIUM in Dubai....
I might be wrong, but I believe that whilst it isn't a major event, it is actually a global one that sees UAE, South Africa, 'stralya, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, England and France all host weekends......if I a wrong and you are actually a big fan of the game (why else would you have watched it?) then I can highly recommend the Las Vegas event which is in March next year....but be quick because it regularly gets 80k crowds.

It was around 25k last year, 26 in 2012. Tbh the varsity attendances have dropped considerably since their heyday in the 90's when they used to get 60k regularly watching.

I quite like watching 7’s thanks very much, when did I say otherwise?

I was just commenting that there looked less than 100 people in the crowd, just big empty stands, the kind of sight some RLfans members would wet their pants over if it was an RL event and claim it would never happen in union.

No idea what the stadiums called but there were lots of HSBC and Fly Emirates adverts, didn’t notice any others. I don’t think anyone was on the concourse either.

I wouldn’t mind watching the Army v Navy on the BBC. I don’t think the pompous in charge of sports should show their old uni’s varsity game however.

How are the university’s in the Challenge Cup selected?
Loughborough and Hull University in round one.

There's a big difference in quality for that step down imo. Oxford University aren't the better side in Oxford anymore, Brookes have been the better team recently from what I've seen.



I've got no idea. From the few articles i've seen on it I think it's random, or the best of the rest.

Northumbia have the same coach and share some players with Newcastle Thunder so that may rule them out. However, bringing in 2nd team players wouldn't be a huge drop as they're a good team too.

I don't know enough about Leeds Met to know what would rule them out, but they're Northern Premier winners for 2017 so are probably the best team for this season.

Loughborough have won the Southern Premier so deserve their place on the basis of being the best side in the South.

Lol no they're not. They've beaten oxford once in their history and last week lost 49-6 to Oxford...

Really? I've played against both in recent years and found Brookes better.

Did you catch any of the SA Sevens? Here's an old workmates selfie.....I suspect the concourse wasn't full at the time

Yep, really