Toby Chopra

Indeed. IMG is a partnership, yet large swathes of the game, including some SL owners, talk about them like they're the enemy.

Indeed, reads like the writer googled/AI'd a lot of the content and then stitched it all together without really understanding any of it.

You're right - but I'm not sure it involves a club like North Wales being professional or semi-professional if they're not going to be Superleague candidates. But a lot of clubs can't seem to be able to get past that point. We're looking for 21st century answers with a 19th century view of the sporting world.

And therein lies the problem with thinking the NRL has some sort of magic formula to turn round the UK game. It doesn't. The lack of media coverage is, mostly, due to the product the UK game offers - its size, demographic, location etc. There just isn't a widespread media appetite to cover it beyond what it gets now. We employ IMG - the world's biggest sports marketer - to promote us and they've found there's no magic formula to produce instant results (and to be fair, they never said there was). There's just small, incremental gains to be made over a long period. The only magic beans the NRL could bring come in the shape of stacks of dollar bills - and done right they are a unique financial investor that could create gains for all sides that others like PE couldn't. But it comes down to cold hard cash, not special insights and talents that somehow only the NRL has.

Very odd.

100% agree. For years I used to bring guests to the Challenge Cup Final, and although they could always appreciate the major spectacle of a Wembley final, they were pretty much lost once the game began. It's not like watching your first game on TV, where the commentators guide you through it. I do actually believe we have it the wrong way round anyway - we should be attracting newbies via TV, and then in person games are where they deepen their connection and get the live experience. That's what the NFL do - almost everyone at the London games is already an NFL fan.

And when it eventually all fizzles out all the cronies will be preaching that the UK is so dumb for rejecting the best deal ever.

How can he know it's going to put noses out of joint - there's no substance good or bad to react to. And yes, for all the game in the Northern Hemisphere's well documented problems, it's not so desperate to say 'yes' to a blank sheet of paper. The most interesting thing in the S*n article was that the NRL club bosses are squabbling over it - I'm not surprised, why would they want to redirect funds they could generate anyway to Europe on the basis of such few details?

Yes, I'd agree with that, although the margins for reducing the money spent on players and spending it on something more worthwhile have always been pretty small. We hardly pay excessive salaries so more than minor cuts would cause the whole full time model to unravel. Probably in the 2014-20 period there was the most leeway to have done something different.

I think we all agree that if an NRL windfall was just handed over to the clubs, then we're not guaranteed a good strategic outcome - which I guess is where NRL "total control" comes in.

This isn't quite accurate Martyn. The vast majority of the funds provided by Sky since 1996 have gone on having a FULL TIME professional top tier, which we never had before. People seem to forget what a momentous change that was and still is. It's not frittering away, it's what's kept us in existence as the sporting world has changed radically since then and the old semi-pro model wouldn't have survived. What we haven't arguably done well is use the couple of small periods where some additional funds were provided to build long term, and if there's an NRL windfall you're right, we have to have a proper plan. (For instance, whatever one thinks of The Hundred, cricket has a plan to share the windfall around including grassroots, not just payoff county debts) I'd be interested to know how grassroots rugby can get a proper seat at that table. But let's not suggest we've wasted all the Sky money, as some have claimed.

To my knowledge we haven't put out a tender document for the next TV deal - usually they announce this - although I guess RLCom may be conducting a parallel negotiation with Sky in private as the incumbent rights holder. I really hope we are or else we've blown our moment of maximum leverage.

That's just wrong. When people write this, it weakens the rest of their argument. It just sounds like the empty views of the talking heads on Aussie footy shows. SL has made numerous changes over the years - starting with formation SL itself just 3 decades ago and then multiple expansions and format changes. And we're in the middle of a major change at the moment - the contracting out the promotion, presentation and selling of the league to the world's biggest sports marketing firm - which seems to be slowly bearing fruit. I'm open to the right NRL involvement, but the idea we've never tried anything different needs to be put to bed.

The reason we have tiers with different eligibility rules is because there just IS a difference in the opportunities, player pool and infrastructure in the three tier 1 nations, compared with others. Although the situation in men's and women's rugby isn't identical - the broad picture still stands. There just isn't a case for weakening the already generous existing eligibility rules (which I support) to benefit England and New Zealand. I only hope the RFL refuse to take it up, or do it very sparingly with extra criteria.

Hmmm... that's a really big call. Genuine question: do we think the RFL and NZRL were happy to go along with this or even encouraged it? What do we think up and coming GB/Kiwi women will think? Gotta be a few now who won't make the World Cup, which will be a real blow for them, given the rewards for playing women's RL are pretty thin outside Australia.