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.