[urlhttp://www.skysports.com/video/inline/0,26691,12610_6757795,00.html[/url

Barnes looks like a school boy in this, stevo give him his due is realistic although a tad embarrassing at times

What was embarrassing? Thought he did a good job sticking up for league

Stevo was fantastic in this IMO, his passion for the game cannot be questioned. I would much prefer it if we good get Ryan Giggs to say it on SNN and all the other famous people who love RL.

As much as Stevo gets on my nerves, he is passionate about RL and gave that prize goon Barnes a good run for his money.

Union is a more world wide game that's a fact, there's more money involved at all levels and more fans at international level but club rugby is bobbins unless it's the Heineken Cup, this is where we are better with more fans, more skill, more speed and atmosphere in the grounds.

The RFL need and independant inquiry into the game and how we can make it more appealing to larger world wide audiences and how to make the game, career and lifestyle of a RL player more appealing to our star players, I'd start with GB tours down under and proper tours with a 30 odd man squad playing club sides, NSW and Queensland and get it on the BBC at a time of year when there are no other sporting events to compete with and make that spot our own, if it messes the season up with one or two clubs missing their star players then TS (not Tony Smith BTW). Have them tour over here too evry 2 years and visa versa, with Kiwi tours in between.

Have an England A team to play in another tournament (Please don't call it the four nations as it would get mixed up with Union) against Wales, Scotland, France etc.

For us to fill big stadiums we need big thinkers and I don't think the RFL are at the moment, what we need is someone like Uncle Mo who had vision (M Magic is a good concept in theory but poorly executed), think GB v Australia at Old Trafford, Elland Road and Wembley (1st game) in a series where 30,000 of the tickets are divided up and given to amatuer clubs and told to sell so many so that the crowds look big, also give away tickets to local school kids even if it's 2000 to local schools in the area, its better having an extra 2000 and making the money on food and drink than having 2000 less in the stadium. Reward the schools and clubs by sending players there to coach the kids and give them rugby balls and equipment and maybe a signed shirt.

Thers 80 open age teams in the North West Counties, if something was set up so that if a club sold a certain ammount of tickets for the International they would get rewards and cheaper tickets so buy in bulk and get a big percentage knocked off the overall price and free stuff like balls, tackle bags, shirts etc.

you can say whatever about stevo but you cant question his love and passion for the game which is brilliant, ok as for commentry hes very annoying and hopefully will be replaced but hope he can still be involved in the game some way even if him and eddie was studio presenters and let passed players such as carney,clarke,scully ect to commentate on the game

Fair play to Stevo for passionately defending Rugby League and giving it to Barnes, and the blatently pro-Union host, with both barrells. For all Stevo's faults he is a Rugby League man through and through and it showed.

On the crowds point - at club level, I believe that RU's average Premiership attendances are now ahead of SL's.

We really do need to have a strategic rethink about the way the game is going, not just because of professional RU but because weak SL club financial controls and business planning and misguided structures such as the SC mean that the long term ability of RL to support a fully professional game in this country is under serious threat, regardless of what RU is doing.

The RFL really needs to get with the times to fend of the RFU. Increase the salary cap for starters to attract players from union, better marketing of the game, we shouldn't be kicking off our season infront of an half empty stadium in a city that is never going to promote rugby league nor get it established god knows they've had long enough trying to. The same can also be said for London, if it was going to take off then we would have had a 2nd pro RL club by now, its 1980 since Fulham were introduced to RL how long do they need down there to develop, 31yrs and only one team in the making, a team that has folded more times than a sheet of A4 in an origami class plus has a fan base that is made up of a mainly northern relocators and southern hemisphere emigrants. We need to work on the core of our game and get everyone upto a standard that befits the title of "superleague" and not the current format of four "super teams" plus a few more teams to make up the league.

I actually thought Barnes came over quite well there.

Steveo also to be fair, though he needs to learn not to steamroll in a debate!



I have said all I need to on the CC.

Disagree there, we've GOT to continue to try and establish the game out of the heartlands. Union is just as sheltered - besides Sale, are there any clubs up here? The difference is the media - but they only way they're going to change their opinion is if we continue to promote the game outside of the M62 corridor.

As for the salary cap - again, until the clubs actually start to turn a profit it'd be madness to increase it.

Newcastle and Leeds??

Thought it was pretty silly and childish how Stevo came across talking about the Union World Cup,
'Well we did it before you so there!'
You have to be blind, stupid or damn right biased not to think off the field, International Union is far superior to us.

Barnes was a bit off a div in reference to RL being 1 dimensional and Stevo having a 'flat cap' and the presenter saw Stevo as a bit of a joke.

We really do need a major overhaul on the marketing and media side of the game and it would start with an inquiry into how we can become more popular in the public eye than Formula One, Tennis, Darts, Golf and the likes ruling out RU, Football and Cricket.

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.