RL has flopped the way it has because the big wigs have let it. We are forced to believe that SL is better than all that went before it.

As Rogues always says, look at the England v Wales semi final in 95 and then look at the friendly in 2008. Tell me the 2008 version was better. Tell me the 2010 England side would beat the 1995 one. (or the 2007 GB side would beat the 1992 one).

The game has gone backwards because we've let it.

RU is bigger as it focuses more on the international game, domestic RU is popular but I wouldn't say any more so than SL. They just prioritise the international games, and make those the marquee tournaments.

If we did the same and had a 4 nations running throughout the season with clubs just having to grin and bear it without their international players, then you'd like to think that you could get big crowds for those games. However most fans would feel pretty unhappy that their club side was being weakened.

In one way, we already are - as I've mentioned before, for domestic club games we have the second highest average viewing figures on SKYsports, behind football. This is a fact that the RFL and others should be pointing out to the media at every opportunity, but of course they don't.

Where we lose out to the other sports is with our international profile, which is virtually non-existent.

We need another Maurice Lindsay to drive the game forward.

We need strong Wales, Scotland, Ireland + France teams. To grow the international game we need to play them more regularly, and have them mean something. Games against Aus + NZ are great, but they can only happen once or twice a year. A 6 nations style tournament gives regular competition and therefore hopefully more interest.

The problem is that the other 4 "home" nations don't have any real domestic setup and as such aren't competitive enough to make it interesting.

You're not wrong there, Maurice had Vision and never accepted average when driving the club and RL forward.

The 1994 challenge cup final pre-match entertainments show what Maurice was capable of, nearly 20 years on we're no where near that level.

Russell Crowe has that same vision, he's gone one step further and teamed up with a succesfull and ruthless businessman who appears to understand RL as a business. Whelan and Maurice fell short there.

The RFL now understands the benefits of expansion, demographics internationals which in turn leads to greater TV revenues and sponsorships. They just produce half d attempts at growing the game. Take the magic weekend for instance, 40000 ppl from the North went to Cardiff to be joined by about 100 locals. What's the point. The RFL should have been hell bent on promoting the 'event' to the locals.

Agreed.

For all the talk from union about how national their game is
and how succesful their comp is etc. It's interesting to see that the
bottom three teams in the table are their "expansion" clubs.

The RU/RL debate is the same as the Warriors/Latics Debate IMO, all it does divide opinion rather than creating a positive opinion about either sport.

yes IMO football and Rugby Union are less entertaining than Rugby League, but there has to be an acceptance that football and RU are both enjoyable.

The problem IMO is that RL slags off every other sport to try and win favour and seek the media exposure it craves... Do we see this in other sports such as cricket, tennis, darts etc.. etc... no they don't care how many "johnny come lately" fans watch their game.. they just embrace that they are there.. IMO we could do a lot worse than positioning ourselves as a "Football Fan's" second sport, A lot of people watch RL on Sky on a friday/saturday night but don't see themselves as RL fans, lets find ways to get them through our gates.?

I am a great believer in "If you do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always had" and this is no more true than with RL.. I love this sport, but many of its administrators/fans do it nothing but harm.

What RL needs is to get an outside organisation to investigate why (with no rose tinted glasses) why we are where we are and more importantly, we need to know, as a sport how are we going to achieve the goals of our sport into the next century, ATM we are no nearer being reconised as national sport IMO.

Once we have a report into the findings, Us as RL fans/custodians need to buy into it and get behind its findings. Otherwise there might not be a professional game for our granchildren to play.

I suspect the end of full time pro-RL will come much sooner than that, unfortunately.

We have on this thread the comment yet again that we can't afford to raise the SC. This misses two points, first that the SC is not a means of controlling finances of clubs (or if it is, it is an utter failure) and what we need is a proper system of financial and business planning and monitoring and secondly the inescapable fact (it's just basic maths and economics) that if the cap continues at its current level then inflation will continue to erode player earnings until before long RL won't be able to support a full time pro-game.

The fact that clubs can afford to spend more than 30% less in real terms than they could at the outset of the SC means that the game is in a potentially terminal decline. It is a crisis in my view and people need to stop burying their heads in the sand.

All very laudable sentiments, however the inescapable fact of the matter is that the vast majority of clubs (Wigan included) simply cannot afford to spend more money on players' salaries. Many people on here seem to think that if we increase the salary cap level or abolish it entirely, all of a sudden the clubs can afford to match the packages being offered to our players by RU. Totally untrue.

RU, through tv deals, money generated to the clubs via the international game, corporate sponsorship etc is simply is in a better position to generate profit. This money inevitably finds its way down to the players and hence they are better able to offer large salaries that we simply cannot match.

Many of our players and, I suspect, many more to follow, will take the RU $ and the benefits of playing on a truly world stage. Alternatively, many more will not for a number of reasons none of which will in the foreseeable future include better money in RL.

Expansion has to be the way forward for our game. The more people that play our game, the stronger it will be become throughout. Look how many kids are now playing the game in the South East and yet many on here want Quins to be kicked out of SL because their crowds are disappointing. Similarly, in the South of France the game has had a real resurgence since Catalan's formation. More RL players, wherever they are is good for the game.

Don't forget, only the very top RU players earn the big bucks. Yeah, we'll lose a few and good luck to them and we'll also lose a few of our very promising young players, particularly the ones whose fathers are employed in RU which is unfortunate. The young players steeped in RL will on the whole stay in our game and if we can expand the game, improve it and increase the size and quality of our player pool, we will begin to compete on the international stage which provides a better pathway for our young players than we have at the moment.

It's pretty obvious stevo loves rugby league and tore in to barnes about our game being better to watch and union are using the rugby league blueprint as a guide to them going pro 15 years ago.

How long as rugby league been fully pro?

I think it's hard to debate against a sport thats international level is leaps and bounds above rugby leagues international game. The rugby union world cup just blows leagues out the water and same for the 6 nations ( 4 nations in RL).

At club level league is miles better, better to watch, better crowds and most weeks has you on the edge of your seat.

We need an International Federation with a mandate to make the International game stronger and not pander to Australia/NRL.



In fairness to Stevo, his point was about RL being visionary, whilst responding to Barnes' comments regarding the World Cup. Not a 'we did it first'

How is rugby union so big at international level but league is very small?

Played by more people in more countries

The 6 Nations (5 in reality) being a reasonably even/competitive competition, that is before you look at the Tri-Nations and RUWC. International RL has always been a competition between a couple of teams.

I think a lot of it is down to the parochial nature of a lot of RL fans, a large number of whom will always support club over country. RU fans come out of the woodwork to watch England (international crowds are massively higher than club crowds), whereas RL fans stay at home. There are typically about 70,000 fans watching RL club games any given weekend, and roughly the same for RU, yet they easily fill Twickers for an England game while we struggle to get half that. We couldn't even fill Wembley for the '95 World cup final, our biggest occasion in recent years.

They give tickets to all the rugby clubs in the country who want them, they apply and get them, we just sell them through the RFL.

Can you blame them/us/me as has been mentioned the international game in rugby league is crap and more people coming to watch the crap will not improve it.

I think the first step to improving the game comes with a bigger deal for the tele. Whether it be with Sky or ESPN, more money will allow us to raise the profile of the game and hopefully push harder into the expansion areas. Expansion is the life and death of rugby league. More money would even allow a raising of the SC.

Very well said mate

I don't see how that can make the union international game some much better than ours.

It's not down to who the rugby union give the tickets to sell.

Because it means more to them. The whole domestic setup of union is geared towards improving the national side.

Added to the fact that a lot of the international games are competitive, in the 6 nations you have 4 teams who regularly win the tournament + Scotland who can beat anyone on their day. There is only Italy as a "weaker" side but they have still improved significantly.

Even when they play the southern hemispheres side, with the exception of NZ the games are very competitive.

We know that we'll get beaten by Aus + NZ, and very very rarely win. But we also know that we can steamroll over France/Wales/Scotland etc.

If you had a regular tournament throughout the season, you'd like to think that the home nations would have players declaring for Scotland/Wales etc and not waiting in hope for an England call up, that would strengthen the other home nations and give us more regular competitive international games throughout the year.

You're missing the point on the SC. If we raised it that should not necessarily mean a club could spend more. If we had proper financial controls then the club would only be able to spend an amount (whether under or over the current cap) which it could afford.

Keeping the SC at the same level for a prolonged period discourages growth in revenue. If the people saying there is no way we could raise the cap in the forseeable future are right then the result of this will be the end of full time professional rugby league.

We need to put in place structures that encourage financial stability and sustainable growth.

Simply arguing for the status quo because of the current failure of the SL clubs to generate a reasonable level of income is not an option, unless you would be happy with a semi-pro French RL standard comp.

I think you are missing/choosing to ignore the mechanism of the SC. It is all very well stating putting structures in place, but do you honestly believe that every SL, and RL club for that matter chase down every last penny they can bring in? Why will the SC staying at the current level bring about a semi-professional game? The game was semi-pro before Sky poured their millions in, they will be the dictators of whether the status of SL changes, nobody else.

You appear to think having a business plan will dissipate all our woes. Do you think sponsors will blow the phone lines up trying to inject capital on the strength of creating a plan?

Do you honestly think any multi-million pound business, which every SL club is, goes about it's business in an ad-hoc manner?

Give Sky a product that demands greater returns and then see the SC rise, at the end of the day, they are the paymasters of the game.