Success: Huge television audiences for England games because of choice of BBC as main televiser.

Success: Publicity boom for the tournament because of choice of BBC as main televiser.

Success: Large crowds for pool games because of good pool groupings, good grass roots publicity, and even contests between most minnows.

Success: Huge crowds for Semi-finals and Final, because of decision to hold Semi-final double header at Wembley, and Final at Old Trafford.


Success + Failure: Sale of entire tournament television rights to Premier Sports.
+ It gave audiences the pleasure of Andrew Voss.
+ However Premier Sports has a very limited TV audience, so most of the World Cup action was not seen by the vast majority of the British public.


Failure: Non-sale of television rights to USA and Italy, thereby limiting revenue and losing future development opportunities in those two countries.

Failure: Sale of television rights in Australia to Channel 7 allowing its relegation of the competition to inferior (not universally accessible) digital outlet 7mate.

Failure: Decision to hold the Opening Ceremony and England-Australia game at Cardiff's Millenium Stadium instead of at London's Wembley. That event deserved 60,000 attendees, which it could have attracted in Olympics-excited, affluent, and more centrally located London, not the 45,000 it got in apathetic, provincial Wales.

Failure: Choice of Wrexham as a venue.

Watching the USA play Cook Islands at rugby league in Bristol in front of a busy, enthusiastic, crowd who turned out in numbers even though the weather was grim.

Wow !

Old Trafford would have been a far better venue for the opening ceremony and the double header if it was available with the final at Wembley if London has to have any involvement.

Hmmm.....ing rain for the opening ceremony before 68 burly blokes spend 160 minutes ripping the turf up....yeah, I can't for the life of me think why Old Trafford didn't leap at the chance



Success = Everything about it.....it's been fantastic (Just watched NZ v Samoa AGAIN)....really ed off I didn't organise a trip home for it!


Failure= My questioning the organisers ability and predicting 360k attendance

Successes.
Bringing top class sport to RL fans at reasonable prices.
Being in full grounds at Spotland and LSV.
Seeing 'full house' at Avignon and Perpignan.
Watching Fiji get better and better.

Successes: Crowds have been generally good, good coverage in the papers and BBC site, good competitive and exciting games, sides like USA, Scotland, Fiji showing the WC wasn't all about the big three, new fans being attracted to the game, opinion of IRL and RL as a whole changing from some reporters, passion from the players.

Improvements: Too many games on the M62 corridor (I think Doncaster should have got a game, and London a group one), some disappointing crowds, still a large reliance on heritage players in some cases (teams like Ireland, Samoa haven't kicked on in the last 5 years), half time interviews (just find it cringey), not being on terrestrial TV for the whole tournament- though likely the BBC would have only shown it in the north anyway, Aussie press denigrating the cup.

Success - getting Mark Radcliffe to be the principal host for the Beeb. He is well known on the footy shows and his enthusiasm and professionalism for our code will have caught some footy fans flicking the channels and kept them watching, growing our audience.

Success - Premier Sports showing all the games. Can't remember that ever happening before.

Success - the crowds, and the noise at Warrington when Samoa went wild, amazing

Success - Having 14 teams, none of which were going to get crushed by 100 points

Failure - The edict that said foul play should only go on report

Failure - not really a failure but what am I to do after next Saturday until February? Would love to watch the amateur leagues but I live a Sea away from them.

Area for improvement - The cross group games, not fair on some of the teams who got tougher fixtures, just have 4 groups of 4.

Success - RL, the greatest team sport in the world demonstrates its best world cup ever!

Always end on a high note!

Mark Radcliffe?! Did it do it in the style of Fat Harry White? That I'd like to see!

10 pence short !

Sorry Mark Chapman, my mistake.

When you get to my age you start having brain farts.

Biggest success for me started 3 years ago when some Italians decided to start a local comp to comply with WC qualification rules, then put together a good enough squad to beat Serbia with local players and get invited to play in the qualifiers, then with the help of about 10 heritage players squeeze past Lebanon, Serbia and Malta to qualify for the cup - then they put together a mostly heritage side that had fantastic results, including a win over England.
There is now an opportunity for Italy to put some sides into the French comps and rapidly improve their local comps. Apparently they have applied for government funding and have the support of the strong Italian Rugby Union to get it.
I think we have seen the fastest development of a minnow nation yet. They have done in 3 years roughly the same or slightly more than the USA have done in 14 years, and the fact that they have more heritage players and are positioned near the south of France means they should be able to build rapidly on what they have achieved.

Including having two conflicting governing bodies which needs to be sorted out in both countries ASAP.

Failure: An assumption on my part that you couldn't post anything positive.
Success: You've just proved me totally wrong.

But on a serious note.....

Success: The atmosphere at the stadiums and the sportsmanship on the field. The feeling that every game is an event worth being at.
Failure: A couple of iffy venue choices is about all I can come up with.

7 getting the rights in Australia is definitely a success. Having every game live is definitely not what we would have got with 9. Their history suggests we wouldn't have even got every game shown. 7mate is in fact available to the vast majority, so it's an almost negligible point.

7mate has been good.
after the first week or so they started showing replays in the early afternoon as well as live matches.
all the games, even the minnow games, are getting replayed.