Maximus Decimus

I'm in.

Sometimes decent ideas don't work in practice, this is one. They could massively speed it up, but we all know they won't so scrapping it seems like the best option. It couldn't work with captain's challenge but I saw something in RU that seemed in equal parts bizarre and interesting: there was a head clash and the VR was looking at it to see if it was a foul. They sin-binned the player but continued to look at it while play continued to decide whether to upgrade it to a red or not. At least it saved on a bit of time while they argued the finer points of the decision.

Gone are the days of people trying to sneak booze into the game, now it'll be sneaking water!

Even worse is Croatia, runners-up in 2018 and semi-finalists in 2022 yet barely get a mention.

There are far too many variables for any predictions to be taken seriously. I remember Derren Brown did one bit where he was sending people a letter saying which horse would win a race on a specific date. He then filmed the final race and the person who had been sent something like 5/6 winners in a row. It ended up being a situation where he had just sent out so many so that one person out of however many thousand would have all the winners and then filmed them being amazed at his predictive powers. Whenever somebody has 'picked the winners of every x' I always think of that. In my youth, I used to be a sucker for all this sort of stuff. I can remember one tournament (maybe 1998) where the order of the winners was in a pattern to suggest it was England's turn again. I genuinely saw it as an omen.

I'm upset Nicola Sturgeon didn't get the band back for a reunion.

I've just come up with my idea that will finally make me a millionaire. A Eurovision of World Cup songs!

Hot off the press: I don't think Beckham deserved a red card against Argentina.

The RFL says yes.

I started a post in AOB about this, as I wanted to genuinely know whether clubs in sports actually do it and how. Ironically, this thread has answered part of this in that they genuinely do as what they report to councils doesn't match. In my experience, there are a lot of people who are more than happy to believe that other sports do it, but to suggest RL might do it is to not show sufficient loyalty.

For me, both situations look like it would eventually be scrapped. At the moment, Wembley isn't a very positive event from my perspective. As you say, it is just sea upon sea of empty red seats that are growing. Obviously, Everton is new but it is an attraction in its own right to the point where we almost certainly would have sold it out this year I think. I just think that would have been a much more vibrant image for the game than Wembley. The only scenario where the CC ends up being viable in the future, comes from it being something distinct and exciting that people look forward to attending. Wembley year on year certainly isn't going to do that.

It doesn't but it's very hard to compare. Bolton's end was chock full all three tiers, but Stockport didn't even have anybody in the second tier.

I was going to make this point, especially when we're talking about the pre-2017 crowds some of which were actually only in the high 60s. The one caveat was that Club Wembley and the middle tier was virtually empty, meaning it is a little more difficult to compare as they are now much more full. Even with that, the difference looks quite substantial.

That's essentially my point. I'd rather see 52k at Everton (or even something like 45k) than 56k at Wembley. To stand any chance of medium to long-term survival, the event needs a bit of optimism about it and something to look forward to. Year on year decline at Wembley isn't going to do that.

Every poorly attended RL event in history has been put down to poor marketing. Any ideas about better marketing, targeting community clubs or selling to a London audience is just pie in the sky IMO. Whether or not they are actually feasible to increase the attendance, the reality is that they won't do any of it. We should talk about facts and reality. The event is almost certainly in decline, and IMO whether or not we stay at Wembley should be based on what will happen not what we'd love to happen.