gingerjon

I saw yours was the last post on this thread and I guessed entirely what you'd be saying. You need a better act.

Bingo. And this is, by the admission of its most fervent proponents, an idea that only exists because of a lack of alternatives - not because anyone wants it.

If you aim for mediocre and miss ...

Nice try.

But there are more casual followers of rugby league who will be gutted when NSW lose. There are no casual followers of county rugby league out there to give this game any meaning and you can’t really fake meaning. I’ve said before because this thread comes up all the time. State of Origin is massive outlier. They couldn’t even make it work with other states in other sports in Australia. But because it’s big in rugby league we think this unique rep level game that is bigger than internationals is something we can copy. Experience, literally a century of Roses games, shows that is not true.

So far, your idea is: play it, market it. The rivalry between NSW and Queensland was real and already had a RL angle. Is it really going to ruin your season if Lancashire lose to Yorkshire?

The rivalry is all at club level. You’re more likely to find rivalries within the sides than at their opponents.

So what are we doing differently to the previous 100+ times this fixture was played?

Exactly. We all hope it works.

If they have to register with a club or just fill in something to say they are running? It doesn't seem particularly challenging to get to 1 in 6 of a population doing some kind of sport. The bigger deal, for us, within that, is how tiny rugby league is.

If they include running and jogging then you'll easily get to that. In England, that comes in at 16% of the population (Active Lives Survey) so close to 1 in 6.

Literally why the work with IMG's main purpose is getting more money into the game. That's the reality of the IMG grading.

The Cubs are in the National, not the American League. Honestly, some people ...

Even then, retiring a number is incredibly rare. My boys - the Chicago Cubs - have been going since 1876 and have retired six numbers, one of which is the number 42 which has been retired for all baseball clubs. That's basically one number for every thirty years of franchise history.

Wigan seem to think that's where they're playing.