Naughty Sally. WUM.

Why would we merge Hudds/Cas/Wakefield to make way for a nomadic London side which following 36 years of trying cannot muster a following in 4 figures*?

*2017 Average attendance, source Wikipedia

Try and get a Russian or Saudi billionaire to take an interest in Wakefield, Hudds or Cas.

How do you think football got so much income, do you think it was because of "good marketing"? FA putting up a few more posters than the RFL...

yeah well that would be true if the Illawarra steelers weren't formed in 1980, and after poop load of wooden spoons merged 17 years later...hardly a traditional old Club, Illawara..!!!

North sydney went bust waiting for a new stadium to built and unfortunately for them being $4 million in debt meant as a stand alone unit they were ineligible for the an NRL spot. So they Merged with Manly and became the northern Eagles, that lasted 3 years. The bears slipped back to become a feeder club and the NRL licence Was simply given to Manly who crack on like nothing has happened.

that sounds like huddersfield Sheffield merger or gateshead Hull... Im Not sure which.....
which one do you think Eddie Hearn Will think was a winner...???

and Balmian tigers and Wests ????
well while on the pitch all seems well but even Marwaan Koukash was frightened off from buying the club due to the infighting over the West magpies and the Balmain Tigers NSW sides. you see the clubs dont really merge a new club takes the name and the original clubs just play in a lower league


now if they Wanted to create a single sydney Club...you know one that could then fill the stadium it would play in, then that would be a start Sal dont you agree....???


still it stirs the juices all this merger nonsense

I can see the argument for rationalising down the number of Sydney clubs.
Bring back Perth and Adelaide franchises, and then increase the number in Queensland. There could be franchises in Sunshine Coast, a second one on the Gold Coast plus give the PNG Hunters an NRL franchise.

Quote ="sally cinnamon"Try and get a Russian or Saudi billionaire to take an interest in Wakefield, Hudds or Cas. How do you think football got so much income, do you think it was because of "good marketing"? FA putting up a few more posters than the RFL...'" LOL I think because football is an international game with international reach and the Premier League is played by 64 nationalities, watched by 156 countries and 212 territories across the globe and a TV audience of fans who watch the Premier League each week has reached a 4.2 billion people*. The PL has posted year on year growth and TV revenues and offers global marketing options like no other sport. I doubt merging Wakefield, Hudds and Cas will create the same attraction to an Oligarch or oil rich Sheikh. SOURCE Eurosport, 2017 https://www.eurosport.co.uk/football/pr ... tory.shtml

Quote ="sally cinnamon"Try and get a Russian or Saudi billionaire to take an interest in Wakefield, Hudds or Cas. How do you think football got so much income, do you think it was because of "good marketing"? FA putting up a few more posters than the RFL...'" LOL I think because football is an international game with international reach and the Premier League is played by 64 nationalities, watched by 156 countries and 212 territories across the globe and a TV audience of fans who watch the Premier League each week has reached a 4.2 billion people*. The PL has posted year on year growth and TV revenues and offers global marketing options like no other sport. I doubt merging Wakefield, Hudds and Cas will create the same attraction to an Oligarch or oil rich Sheikh. SOURCE Eurosport, 2017 https://www.eurosport.co.uk/football/pr ... tory.shtml

The talk of mergers is all about £ and nothing to do with what makes sport, sport. The representation of where you are from manifested as a sporting alliance that you can be part of with your neighbours and those of common interest.

Take the "Warrington" our of our club, move it to Birmingham and see what happens to the fan base.

Your right....but it would grow as did Gateshead but just attracting locals.
...it's not the location really but about celebrity...who is there?...just like the celebrity football matches Robbie Williams does...no affiliate to any town buy bring fans of all ages in by the 0000s.

Ask a sports watcher in Birmingham, as mentioned, to name a rugby league team you might get 5 out of 10 could...ask them to name a curent player!..?....I'd stick a months mortgage payments it would be zero.

Ask again who Johnny Wilkinson is...youd pretty much get all of them say an England rugby player.

If Johnny Wilkinson turned out for Warrington over the weekend the press would be all over it like like a donor kebab and chilli sauce over me at 3am... people would turn up who has likely never seen a live RL game.

The bottom line is....we need sports people with profiles bigger than Nigel Woods breakfast.

I am excited at the prospect of hearing “Wire...Wire...” sung in a brummy accent.

EDIT: Surely a link up with Wolverhampton would make more commercial sense, and limit the need for rebranding?

Yow will not get Bromwich watch the Wolves!

We need to be careful what we wish for. Ok Premiership football has far more money sloshing about than it did in the old Division 1 days but for me the product is much much worse. The players are remote prima donnas and the whole thing is a business first, sport second. Nah not for me.

...and people don't want Hearn near our sport.....?

He knows how to work an audience/crowd/sport

Get him in, NOW, before he loses interest.

I agree Lefty...Deontay Wilder the main challenger to AJ is playing out in front of Crowds of 11,000 to 14,000 fans.
While Eddie Hearn filled the Cardiff Stadium for a boxing match between Anthony Joshua and a New Zealand Boxer that largely no one will have heard of, or ever seen box just a few months ago.

I saw Parker fight Hughie Fury last year and to say I wasn't impressed by the quality of Parker would be an understatement. To then think he would be boxing in Front of nearly 80,000 fans six months later is testament to What Hearn can achieve.

AJ was Rank average tonight barely getting out of first gear... it was an ordinary spectacle but Hearn could sell wembley out twice over for an AJ vs Wilder fight...

and he started that selling process five minutes after the final bell tonight....

Perhaps there is a golden opportunity to market rugby league as the game of the northern powerhouse.

Bar that Scouse lummox being put on his Aris, last night was 4 hours of my life, that I won't get back. 3 of the most drab fights I'm ever likely to see, and a decent knockdown of a non achiever, and Hearn will peddle it as The Greatest Show On Earth, and he will be promoting ANOTHER 90,000 sell out, in 6 months time. He certainly knows how to put bums on seats, for very little entertainment (a bit like Adele and Ed Shearan).
Get this fella at Red Hall (or wherever RL's headquarters are) NOW.
He knows what he's doing.

No doubt about promoting one off events - but an entire sport ? (I'm not saying he cannot just raising the question).

He's done it far darts and snooker (with his dad's help). They were both dying a death, years ago. Now, they're never off the telly.

I'm hoping that smell in the air isn't some perma-optimist planning an Easter barbie, but the whiff of gunpowder promising a RL revolution.

The chairmen of all clubs need to rise up and demand change from the RFL, or instigate it themselves. The game needs radical change and the suits at Red Hall are too self-serving and insular to stop their gravy train and act for the good of the gane as a whole.

As lefty says, Hearn will walk away before long and the game will be ushered a little closer to obscurity as a result.

I emailed the northern powerhouse some months ago suggesting that they became sponsors of RL. Their response suggested that they'd considered it but other than that was fairly non committal which I suppose sums them up.

Hearn is like the the girl in the pub on a Saturday night, that you secretly fancy.
Do you
a) make a move, and hope she doesn't blow you out
b) dither each week, and never have the courage to ask.
c) walk up to her, only to find the pub pretty boy has got there before you
d) cry into your Labatt's, and get a kebab on the way home.

It's about time the RFL took option A, and grew one.

e). Get drunk to biblical levels then cop off with her less (generally considerably less) attractive but morally unsound friend/sister/mother then indulge in a little Jim Bowen-esque (RIP) "look what you could of won" banter.

I bet she looked like Bully, too.

f) After the effects of that gallon of Labatts have worn off, you wake up to the realisation that the beer had had some 'shallow Hal' effect on your senses and she wasn't after all the prettiest girl in the pub.

Not only that but it's a few weeks off the chemic and a fortnight of penicillin to get rid of the itch

Boxing has been selling stadiums out for fifty years and more. Got nowt to do with the Hearns, they’ve just got lucky we’ve got a bunch of British heavyweights come through around the same time so they can do it while they’re in charge. But go back to Ricky Hatton, Joe Calzaghe, Lennox Lewis, Frank Bruno, Barry McGuigan and British boxers have filled stadiums. Even Henry Cooper fought Ali at Wembley back in ‘66.

Plus these are events you might see twice a year. That’s like selling out the Challenge Cup Final and the Super League Grand Final. No big deal there, we do well in that respect already.

There are 12 teams playing 136 regular season games, then 8 teams playing 28 games, plus seven rounds of the Challenge Cup with over 100 clubs competing. Then we have the semi finals and finals of both cups.

How has he got on with ping pong and Leyton Orient?

Don't disagree with your wider observation but we don't achieve sell outs now. Even Magic Weekend attendance is less than the aggregate attendance for weekends SL fixtures.