MidlandsJohn

Sort of - however given the economic difficulties they are going to playing out the season as the Slfrd Rd Dvls.

At this rate Salford will be relying on someone to hopefully loan them some knickers.

So basically, something like an RL version of the African Nations Championship in football? With the possible handicap of an "England" squad picking only from Championship and below, and Australia picking from their second-tier comps to avoid total blowouts.

Ice hockey knows it will never be a top UK sport, but teams do their best with what they have and try to have a (marketing cliche alert) unique seling point. In the case of Nottingham, there's a dedicated ice hockey show on BBC Radio Nottingham, I think occasional live matches are broadcast as well. For Belfast, the club is strictly non-sectarian - the only gear you'll see in the stands is Belfast kit and merchandise. Anyone attempting to bring in UK or Irish flags, or wearing certain teams' football tops, don't get in. This goes so far as when playing in the Champions League, where tradition is to play the national anthem of each team's country, Belfast purposely request no anthems are played at all, so ROI or Catholic N.I. fans don't have to sit through "God Save The King".

They should just rename it Northern Conference League so they can still keep the NCL branding.

Something else to add about the issue of "perception". Firstly, internationals (again) - a major brand would love to get involved with the England RU team (current form notwithstanding) because they can proclaim "Company X - proud sponsor of England" and know they are getting double-figure televised matches every year, many on free-to-air, to show their logo. That same company sponsoring the England RL team that goes completely AWOL for 2 years? Or when they do appear, instead of major markets like France, Australia, Italy etc. you instead are faced with convincing corporate hospitality to watch PNG and Samoa (after you've shown them where they are on a map). Secondly, I remember the thread about Sport 24 (the cruise ship/airline sports channel) and people moaning about how the NRL was covered while Super League wasn't and how much of an injustice it all was. Again, to a casual watcher who knows little or nothing about RL, which sounds more "glamorous" - Wakefield v. Castleford or Melbourne v. Sydney?

Internationals are THE big stumbling block, not just because of the lack of them - RU whether you love or detest it has the World Cup, Six Nations and Autumn Internationals, where you know the dates, teams, format and good idea of who will be covering it fairly early. Then you have RL with a World Cup where you're unsure about the teams, unsure about how much mainstream media attention it will get and possibly unsure whether it will actually happen at all. Then you have the international scene outside the WC where it appears the Wheelchair teams are working harder to play more matches than the Men's do. But also, the issue for me with RL is look WHO the nations being targeted are. RU's World Cup gets coverage in lots of rich or at least middling markets - UK, Australasia, North America, Japan, I'm sure mainland Europe is covered too. What does RL have instead? Cook Islands with a worldwide community of roughly 120,000, Fiji Samoa and Tonga who are less than a million combined and Lebanon which is an economic basket case. Why is a blue-chip company going to want to invest in sponsorship for exposure in Rarotonga and Beirut when they can punp money into the other code and get viewers in L.A. and Tokyo?