Apologies in advance if a similar thread has been and gone but I generally spend my time on the Rhinos board so haven't seen one.

A lot has been written recently about the reduction of RL writers in the mainstream media and indeed the lack of any credible coverage in most media despite growing SL attendances and the fact its the best damn game on the planet.

My question is if our game is so good, and supporters numbers are growing we do we appear to be, from a media view, in decline? And of course how can we halt this and change the perception of our game.

I appreciate its the 64million dollar questions for any true RL fan, and I dont profess to have THE answer but I would be interested to hear the views of others on this.

Growing SL attendances?.....only at 5 of the 14 SL clubs

The dominance of association football, a moribund international game and a relative lack our demographic (whatever that is these days) in the national media while local newspapers have suffered a serious downturn. London dominates England, especially the media (see the coverage of their mayoral elections in the national press, for example) and RL is struggling to build a presence there.
The most natural comparators are Cricket and RU because they are of similar size. But if the media is divided by class and RL is a traditionally working-class sport, then we're competing with football and that is a one-sided fight. Also RU and Cricket are accessible to the floating sports fan who maybe never attends or even watches a club or county game, because their England teams have such a high profile, whereas we're a club-first sport.

Agree with you Rover though I find it very telling that when this question is asked people can find a glut of reasons why we dont get the coverage we believe we should but very little input on how to fix. Dont take this as a personal jab at yourself, its very symptomatic of RL fans in general.

As I say Id be very interested to hear views on how we can propell the sport forward....

Freshening up the RFL personnel would be a start. The current crop are clueless and can only get us publicity through foot in mouth gaffes and clearly rigged franchising processes

I guess the real reason why there are fewer RL writers in the national press is because sales and advertising revenues have fallen over the last 3 to 5 years. A friend worked at the FT. It went through a massive redundancy programme for reporters and other staff about 3 years ago.

When times are good, papers can afford all sorts of reporters: gardening, theatre, food, cars, etc.. When times are bad, I guess the less versatile, less main-stream reporters get the boot. You sack your theatre writer and send your general culture reporter to cover his job. Likewise, you sack your RL writer and send the junior football reporter to a few games or use freelance staff.

I know of a well known local paper sending my bosses son (fresh out of journalism school, with no interest in sport) to cover RU matches. When times were better, I bet they'd have employed a full-time sports reporter to do that job.

I don't think it's any comment on RL.

Only way to turn it around is to go on the front foot and get a decent pr team in the RFL and at clubs. The RFL should impose a SL requirement that every club has a media manager and every club HAS to send news stories out twice a week to EVERY paper in the country. If the papers decide to print them that's up to them but at least they can have no excuse not to and knowing how lazy most media is these days they probably would more often than not if the story was of the slightest interest.

Extending beyond your core audience is a toughie. The big thing for me would be a prestigious non-club event that really matters and gets crowds up there with the Challenge Cup and GF. Ideally free-to-view. Suggestions on a postcard...

Ashes series anyone?

I'd say to get ourselves off this plateu on which we currently sit we need to get the international game growing.

For this to happen a massive shift in thinking needs to take place, not at RLHQ, but with the fans. It may be a bitter pill to swallow but its the mentality of the everyday fan that is stopping the sport from growing past its provincial roots.

Ask a Warrington fan, a Bradford fan a Quins fan, any club fan; what would they rather see, their club win the Super League or England to win the Four Nations? I believe in 19/20 cases it'll be the SL with a middle finger to their country. Ask a Saints fan would they like to see Kyle Eastmond play for England in the four nations but it'll meen him missing half of next season, given the chance most fans would grab his passport and run it through a shredder. How can we expect someone from Birmingham, Newcastle, Bristol or Lincoln et al to align with a sport with that sort of attitude at its core?

The lack of press/media coverage has been an interest of mine for quiet a while, I put it down to the percieved image of league as a predominantly working class game. That is true to a point but we must in my opinion push on with the game in the Universities & the Southern conference it makes no diference if it is not a high standard as it gets trhe game known to a larger audiance, The RFL should do its bit by promoting the game to younger kids & thier mothers as this is the way to attract people into grounds & to watch on TV. It will be a long slow prosses but will work in the end. just look at the effort Union has put in to raising its crowds in the last ten years. It will be hard to shake off the working class image, it is somthing we should be proud of but realise that there is no money in advertising to lower wage earners what the advertising people want is middle income & high earners to pitch there products at. We should also build up the game in the North by ensuring no clash with live TV , my sugestion is all non TV games played Sunday afternoons.

Time for the RFL to think BIG and splash the cash, get a TOP PR Guru in and a TOP Press Officer to really push the game in the media, on TV and push the magic weekend, Challenge Cup and SL GF like never before. Also the RFL needs to really push the National Leagues. Max Clifford????

you cant use football as an example here as most successfull footie teams(man utd,liverpool etc) dont like their stars playing for the national side for the abuse they get and in case they get injured.club football is more important to the fans of big clubs.when clubs spend fortunes on players in almost any sport,the national side invariably takes a back seat in the eyes of most fans(and their clubs for that matter regardless of what they officially say)
for me id say if you want more coverage in the national press get yourselves organised and try and get as many fans as possible to write to their fave papers to complain about lack of coverage and petition for more.
you know what they say "he who shouts loudest" and all that.
im pretty sure the daily national i read has had 4 nations coverage every day this week.

I didn't use football for that very reason, football is a special case, like a previous post indicated RL is not in competition with football, we are however in competition with the second/third/fourth tier team sports such as Union, Cricket, Athletics, Cycling, Hockey etc etc, in all cases the clubs are only ever in support to the national team, to the point that in cricket players playing 'club' (county) level are contracted directly to the national side... can you imagine a situation in RL where teams didnt own the contract of thier star players and could only rely on them playing 10 times a year or less due to international fixtures!

In terms of British sports, football aside, RL is the only club-centric team sport I can think of.

No national newspaper now has a full time Rugby League writer.
They are London based and do see us as a "northern game".
The main reason though is newspaper's circulation is dropping like a stone due to the internet and 24/7 news coverage on sky and bbc news24. As has been said they have made massive redundencies over these past few years and until their circulation improves, if ever, things will continue that way.

The one bright light appearing is the BBC sports being re-located to Salford Media City. The RFL are moving their media dept to Salford because of this.
With the Reds new stadium not being too from complettion (1-2 years) this could give RL a massive boost on BBC Sport.
To me the RFL should pay for a corporate box in the new ground at Salford to entertain guests from the BBC and other media. This could be a massive boost for RL if the RFL get it right.