https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/57733743 Lindsay Hoyle has made some sense in this. We need to do more and bring the sport more mainstream. He supports the club. His dad was chairman. And he loves the game as much as we do. The comments aren't that groundbreaking as we all know the problems the game has at the moment. Maybe having the speaker of the house speaking up and looking to improve the game isnt such a bad thing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/57733743 Lindsay Hoyle has made some sense in this. We need to do more and bring the sport more mainstream. He supports the club. His dad was chairman. And he loves the game as much as we do. The comments aren't that groundbreaking as we all know the problems the game has at the moment. Maybe having the speaker of the house speaking up and looking to improve the game isnt such a bad thing.

Agree with this - the game is at a crossroads but the World Cup is a great opportunity to review and reset - clubs need to look beyond self interest and get on board with all stakeholders for a fundamental review.

Totally agree with your sentiments, but I have doubts that Australia, New Zealand et al. are committed to play in the UK this autumn.

Fans and the media massively overrate the importance of the world cup. Both in 2013 and 2017 people were saying if England won the WC it would create momentum of a new generation of fans that will start playing rugby league. In reality, most people will just note on the news that England won something and no more. Even most RL fans won't go to many or any world cup games, they will just moan about the lack of RFL marketing on messageboards. But also other sports have overrated these 'big moments'. I've seen various articles over the years bemoaning the 'chances missed' for cricket following 2005 Ashes or for various sports after London hosting the 2012 Olympics. People within the sports have unrealistic expectations that a major tournament is going to be transformative in terms of the popularity of a sport. Probably everyone looks at Italia '90 and wants to recreate what that did for football but it doesn't happen. RU didn't get a mega boost from winning in 2003 and I'm not sure cricket has really gained from 2019 but its a bit early to judge.

The game is at a low ebb at the moment and we seem to have these root and branch reviews every few years and the same stuff comes up, need to spread the game outside M62 corridor, need more marketing and so on.

I think at this point there is something more fundamental. 10 to 20 years ago people used to say it's all about marketing because the product on the field is fantastic and all you need to do is introduce it to a new audience and they will be hooked for life. We used to laugh at the other code - "yawnion" because it was so far behind RL as a product. But these days the product is nothing special, even hard core league fans think the games are often boring. You have to sort your underlying product out first, otherwise you just increase the reach of people who will look at it and think....yeah, nothing special here.

Back in the early 90s we used to be able to pack Wembley out for major internationals and even though people used to say the BBC /mainstream media was biased against league, it was often on Grandstand and casual sports fans had an awareness of league that they probably don't now. Martin Offiah, Ellery Hanley, Jonathan Davies were well known sporting personalities.

Independent reviews will generally fail as soon as they affect anyone's (short term) bottom line, and, sadly, the self interest shown by some clubs will always trump a move for the common good.