Liverpool Rover

For all the territory Leigh had in the first half Rovers defence mainly stood firm but once Rovers got into the game in the second half they were the better team. Even without the players Leigh were missing I thought it was still a strong enough team that they had out.

King has mainly been starting on the bench this year.

Rovers and Leigh have backers that were willing to put big money into their clubs, not many other non SL clubs have those kinds of investors. It wasn’t licensing that caused Bradford and Crusaders to demise, it was coincidental that it happened during licensing.

This will be the closest of the QFs but Saints at home against a weakened team will be tough to beat so Saints will get a close win.

Caught up with the game tonight. The quality dipped in the second half but it was still an entertaining game with both teams having to work hard to get a win. I thought Catalans would miss Abdulls kicking in a tight game like this but it wasn’t the case.

This country is obsessed with football. The EFL Championship is probably one of the best attended leagues in Europe and with the amount of money in the game there are a lot of EFL clubs who can be promoted to the Premier League and do well, so maybe in football P&R isn’t broken. However in both codes of rugby it is different. The RFL and RFU championship equivalent league in football would be well down their pyramid. Before starting this post I had a look at some of the RFU championship grounds and a lot of them are woeful for what is meant to be their second tier and will no way support a fully pro premiership team. Rugby League has a wide disparity of clubs condensed in to three levels that in football would be spread through ten so while League 1 clubs are only two tiers below Super League in reality they are miles away. P&R works in football as it has a strong pyramid to support it, RLs pyramid is too weak.

I won't be watching any live as I will be at work so I will be watching the Hull derby when I get back home.

The Sydney suburban clubs playing a full suburban grounds look a lot better than playing in front of 10-15k at ANZ Stadium.

The defence has been good but against a team with Warringtons firepower the attack is definitely going to need an improvement but I think it will be a very narrow home win.

The only club I could find that offered any kind of official club trip to Perpignan was Leeds. It's baffling to me that no other club seems to offer fan or corporate club trips to try and bring in some money to reduce the costs of teams travelling over, but then realised that it probably requires too much forward thinking for English Rugby League clubs.

If the NRL buys the RFL wouldn't they be taking on the legal action claims as well?

I think it would be better if we followed Union with the referee going to the video referee and asking if there is any reason why a try shouldn't be awarded?

Penrith should have been out of sight with how difficult Wigan were finding it to contain them and the amount of times they were in Wigans 20 while Wigan could only get into Penriths half on the back of penalties, although to their credit they took their chances. I can only guess that the in goal areas were probably shallower than what they would be used to in Australia which is why they decided not to use grubber kicks when they might have done. Wigan still had to defend what Penrith were throwing at them so credit to them. Penrith can feel hard done to though by the Wardle try and the ball steal penalty though.

Another win off the back of a great defensive display and there is still plenty of improvement in attack, get that right and along with the defence we will take some beating. Whitbread is proving to be a good signing though we are missing Abdull IMO, not just for his goal kicking but he was the one who led the team around the field and I still think Evalds should be the full back with his pace from deep. Under the new guidelines the Donaldson high tackle should have been a red.

That is what should have happened. What's the point of bringing in IMG at the expense that is coming with it if at the end of the day the clubs are going to have the final say and ignore IMGS recommendations? I came across a thread on twitter about RL in the 70s and 80s when the game was in decline and the RFL brought in a consultancy firm to advise on how to turn the game around and ended up not following through on the recommendations. Moving finals and GB games to larger football stadiums was met with opposition because "traditional" RL grounds were being overlooked. It looked a bit similar to now to me.