nadera78

The problem there is twofold; there's not enough of them, and they're spread so far and wide it's unreasonable to expect them to travel in high enough numbers.

I don't think there's realistically anything you could do now to revive RL in London, no matter how much money spent. The Broncos are a dead donkey, having been slowly killed over many years. The people who used to support the club are gone and they aren't coming back, they've been gone too long now. Could you replace them? No, not in my opinion. Cities like London always have a demographic churn, it's the nature of the place, but the changes seen in the last 10-15 years have been astronomical and I think you'd struggle to find more than a couple of thousand people here who even know Rugby League exists. Sure, quite a lot of people have heard of 'rugby', but all they know is there's an England team that plays out in Twickenham and occasionally plays in word cups on the telly. They've also heard of the All Blacks. Beyond that, they have no interest in it at all, and that's a sport that does get national reach. Expecting them to know about RL, a sport with no real presence in London or the media, is like expecting someone in Latvia to know about it. It's just completely alien. Meanwhile, there's another thread on here detailing the community game in London and, from reading that, it looks smaller than it's been in 20 years. So if you wanted to do anything here, you'd essentially be starting from scratch. You'd have to fund a dozen development officers, for a decade at least. You'd have to fund a professional club - not just a team on the field, but club as a whole - for the same period of time. You'd have to find a home to play out of, and stay there permanently without falling out with the owners, which is something the club has never managed in its history. And you'd have to get pretty much every decision right over that time, day in day out, week after week, for a decade. Make any significant mistakes and you undo any successes. On top of that, the ongoing churn of people coming here for a few years and then moving on means you'd also have to be committed to an ongoing cycle of finding new players and fans to replace the ones who leave. And doing all of that in a media environment that thinks you're irrelevant. Not only would it cost an absolute fortune, but it would require a level of expertise - and luck - that none of us have ever seen. To transplant an alien sport to a city with a transient population and a million competing entertainment options...nah, sorry, I don't think it's possible. It might have been, at the dawn of SL and the move to summer, but that's many years and many failures ago now.

Yeah, Wales are in a decent(ish) position. They've got a good schools, Unis and clubs scene, a handful of lads have moved to SL academies, and have a fair scattering of players around the leagues. There is an issue that the generation of players who came into the game via the Crusaders have now almost all retired, but that happens. The national team needs some re-generation - and hopefully a new coach with fresh ideas - but they'll be assisted in that process by Scotland etc finally being dealt with by the IRL and consequently not coming up against teams exclusively consisting of ex-pats. They could really do with some financial assistance, but then the said could be said of everyone else.

Bookies paying for content is quite rare. In the UK they pay a set fee for horse and greyhound racing, but that is only so that the events actually take place because, frankly, who goes to watch horse racing on a Tuesday afternoon? Bookies do not pay for the rights to offer bets on any other sport. I know this is not the case in Australia, where bookies do pay for content, but getting any money out of the US is going to be very difficult. In fact, I think the British bookmakers have entered the US market pretty hard since the laws were liberalised and them not have a history of paying fees will make it harder still for the NRL.

I think the 2021 PNG season was still disrupted by covid, so that might explain why 2022's figures show such a huge leap. The wider issue in PNG, or one of them anyway, has always been that leagues had to pay an affiliation fee to the PNGRFL in order to join. However, in a country where 80% of the population are subsistence farmers, the vast majority of players don't have that sort of money to spend. So, there have always been lots of leagues all over the country which are not affiliated to the PNGRFL, which means participation numbers are very misleading. That said, the new development systems coming online should see a big uptick in official schoolboys competitions, which will see another big rise in official playing numbers.

Just had a look at the Broncos website for the first time in a very long while. How long has Jack Hughes, the owner's son, been listed in the squad? Wasn't he a union player?

Given the focus on high tackles, he'll likely spend more time banned than playing

Delusions, same as ever

It might have been, it's near enough30 years ago now(!). In my head, that chapter was entitled something along the lines of "The Season of the Win" and included the description "a losing team, not a team of losers" but I may be confusing them with another chapter.

I was going to mention Tameside Borough because they were featured in Dave Hadfield's XIII Winters book, which I read many times over when it came out. Being a Londoner, and new to the game, it served as my introduction to some of the teams, towns, players and fans of the game and forged a little connection to them for a youngster in a RL outpost.

There are no sleeping giants in RL. There are, however, a few clubs who, with the right conditions, could replicate the smaller clubs in SL. That's part of the problem the sport faces.

If anything describes the, perhaps irreversible, shift in power in RL it's the RFL being rejected by Samoa and then asking the NRL-run IRL to ask the Samoans to change their mind. Even the sternest critics of the RFL failed to see this coming.

Offering salary cap dispensation for union players isn't really about bringing in a star name, although it will offer a sprinkling of additional NRL-standard players. It's really about sticking the knife into a rival sport that is on life support in Australia.

It's good to see clubs have someone else to blame for their mistakes, it's a fine RL tradition.

Did you know about David Hughes' latest insane decision when you were telling everyone how positive it was looking...*checks diary*...3 days ago?