Tex Evans Thigh

Great assessment and the highlighted sentence in particular is very true, along with how well a club fits any person's outlook on expansion. Add a fairly new stadium (no matter how suitable) and you've got the new SL club dream ticket. York always seem to be a big beneficiary of this mindset with them being in a lovely location and a city not quite in the heartlands with a new stadium despite the fact they still look a fair way off in a lot of areas such as fanbase and on-field.

They're a little bit farcical but you have to do it with some kind of objective metrics. Do they only update this yearly or more regularly?

Game 2 tomorrow at 4pm local time so 2pm GMT. Expecting a backlash so should be a good game.

Cheers mate, really good so far. Hope you’re well.

4 we’re selected and they all dropped out for various reasons. This was largely self-funded so it was obviously more expensive for guys on the west coast. In any case, I might be biased, but I thought that was a really tough, competitive international game with all domestic players.

Should be a good tour with a couple of good tests with only domestic based players in both squads. Looking forward to being a part of it!

This was always going to be a transition year for Fev, we've had it good for a few years but the IMG shift and failure to get promotion last year was a massive jolt. Hearing good things about next year though, increased playing budget and lots of plans off the field. We've had more than a coach per year on average for the past 10 years so some stability won't go a miss, although James needs to start delivering out of the gate next year, no excuses. Let's not forget some really good times this year like beating Wakey in the cup, Toulouse at home, giving Leigh a real shake away. Looking forward to next year, good luck to the rest of the teams in the comp playing for the right to clap Wakey into SL.

We can all hope but it barely means anything.

Good, pragmatic analysis as usual. There's a chance we could win but I feel like the club have drawn a line under this year given the turmoil and zero chance of reward for winning. Bradford by 16-20 is my guess although it's a child size pitch so could be close. Hopefully Bradford host the game more appropriately than they have in the recent past.

Sam Walker has really kicked on this season though and is way ahead of Dodd, not that Dodd can't improve. Walker of course qualifies for England, although he looks close to origin now with DCE aging out so doubt he will be an option.

I suspect any NRL interest will be around 1) players and, more importantly 2) eyeballs and revenue. This would mean a restructuring of the league to have a more geographical spread at the top and the championship becoming a feeder league. I expect they would invest their money into player pathways, coaching, maybe some grass roots investment to expand the potential player pool to take advantage of the pathways. This would, in theory, produce more high quality players for their expanding NRL competition as there is a genuine fear they can’t sustain the additional teams and maintain the quality of the competition. This would be a relatively low investment with a good return given it can support their NRL expansion plans and thus get more revenue down there. There are residual benefits then as well such as selling ‘NRL Europe’ rights and/or creating more content for their platforms and broadcasters. They might also increase interest from Europe if more European players end up in the NRL, a similar model that US sports are following with some success. If they could affiliate European clubs with NRL ones then they would be delighted but it’ll be hard to make that stick and keep up the pretense that this isn’t just a play to support the NRL competition. Anyone who thinks they’ll be doing this to grow the game in Europe are delusional. If it happens grow as a side effect they’ll take it, but RL is not going to grow to the point where it’ll significantly contribute to their growth targets. They want Origin as their pinnacle, they don’t want the superiority of the NRL challenged so there’ll no encouragement to make NRL Europe better than the NRL and no promotion of the international game in case it challenges Origin. This is business and unfortunately SL has very little bargaining power. Careful what you wish for because I think the negatives outweigh the positives.

There are rules that have been in place for a long time around how many non-Americans can be selected in games. Independent divisions could run their own thing but once it got to play offs, the rules were in place. i don’t agree with them and lobbied to get them updated with minor success but not to a large extent. URL didn’t back the wider proposals to have long term visa/green card players not count on a quota. I found it unbelievable at the time knowing a lot of Utah and Californian teams have a large number of Polynesian players, particularly in Utah where the vast majority are not American citizens. I can only assume they didn’t understand the actual rules at the time and it’s come back to bite them. hopefully George stays involved as he’s done great work there and the rules can be amended next year so they aren’t as harsh on preventing people who live and work in the country playing in an amateur rugby league comp. We need players and teams to grow the game.

Only people who know and like rugby league would attend. Outside of the sport NSW v QL is irrelevant and insignificant. No one cares. Yeah you’d get some Aussies turning up and some northerners traveling down but I doubt it would be the hit you think. A successful origin in the uk would be just about the final nail in the international game and would do significant damage to the uk domestic league.

The real national final was last week. It’s probably hard for people in the uk to appreciate the climate at this time of year in the US. It’s a shame we have to play this time of year because it’s debilitating and ends up in blow out scores at times, but for now it’s the only choice as we’re still heavily reliant on Union players. Good progress all around this year though.

Yes, you may have mentioned this. Will you be as forthcoming with praise for positive news?