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It’s a big weekend for the Vipers. Saturday sees the men’s team take on Bedford Tigers in the East RL semi final at Wymomdham. The weather is looking good and a decent crowd is expected. The winners will take on Hemel in the final a week later, also at Wymomdham. On Sunday the ladies travel to Hull to play the Hull KR ladies development team as an opener to the Hull KR v Leigh ladies Championship game. The team have just finished second in the East RL comp. This will be a great experience for them and they’re really looking forward to it.

Sad to see but a lot of it is of their own making. Every year they seem to budget for much higher gates than they actually get, you'd think they would have learned that lesson by now. Then there is the "we have had no home games for a few weeks" excuse - sorry, but the flip side of that is that you had a run of home games with no away game costs (Buses etc) so should have been putting some money away to cover that. Also, they have 7 Aussies playing for them - the cost of that must be very high when you factor in accommodation, travel etc on top of their wages. So yes I have sympathy for the Haven fans, but the Haven club seems to make the same mistakes over and over again without ever learning their lesson. The fact is, whether they like it or not, they can't afford to compete at Championship level on their current income streams. But they don't want to accept it, so they end up in situations like this regularly and relying on the same group of fans to bail them out. Its a lesson our club has had to learn the hard way before and are now taking steps to address - get the income streams in place before you take the step up, not just hope for the best.

Jeez Harry, that's really small time thinking. You think IMG are in this for commission on half a dozen telly sales.. Jeez, you're making yourself look a bit silly on this.

And to add, Zac Hunter who played for the Vipers in the 2023 season has just been selected to make his NSW Cup debut tomorrow, in the Eels v Panthers game at the Commbank Stadium. Brilliant news for him.

Course they do

Both deserve a point.

See what exactly? "If players run in they'll be sat down." Partington ran in. Partington got a yellow card. Pretty straight forward.

Great effort from both teams neither team deserve to lose a draw was absolutely the right result. Having said that although Saints are still well off it its results like this that could start building some belief again.

He told them he would sinbin any player running in, stupid from Partington.

Or, the players are idiots.

Yeah it's awful reading but there still bringing players in, brought in god knows how many overseas over the last few years, how can the expect to do all that on awful gates. This isn't the 1st season it's happened, it's basically every year. Bounty competitions have thrown money at them and there still in such a state, I feel for there fans who get asked to continuously dig into there own pockets to bail them out,but that's a very poorly run club I don't care what anyone says

SL is the only other professional rugby league competition in the world. There is always going to be plenty of movement between the two leagues. Including NRL players wanting to move to the other side of the world for a few years. Not sure which players you are referring which made you post this. The most recent NRL-SL singings have been TPJ, Nick Cotric, Tristan Sailor, David Armstrong, John Bateman, Reimis Smith, and Luke Keary. All of those guys besides Keary are 23-28 and in the primes of their career.

I hate it

He literally just explained it on tv.

That's disgracefully levelling up from Kendall.

Not the first and not the last young man to throw up in St Helens on a Thursday evening. It's the new Friday after all.

Can’t blame him to be fair , he was something else !

The match review panel have watched the footage of the red card incident and have decided there shouldn’t be any further action against Budsy, so no ban or fine for him which is pretty rare for a red card these days. Speaks volumes about how Forster milked it though.

I'm not aware of any league, in any sport, in any country across that world that doesn't allow foreign players. RL has had overseas player bans at various times in the past, it never worked. I think the answer is about getting the balance right, not adopting one extreme or the other.

At times, you can have the same broadcast across multiple channels, one of the particular challenges is that there may only be 2 live broadcasts, (say darts and super league) yet SL will be on the equivalent of Sky Sports 8, while 2 to 7 are full of random repeats that at times literally nobody is watching. This year it has led to a SL game beibg shown live on Showcase, which isn't primarily a sports channel, despite not having live sport on around 4 or 5 of their channels. It's all a bit random, and whereas in the past you'd maybe have 3 or 4 premium sports channels to flick through for content, it's now much more but with less on. I actually think now would be the time to return to say, 4 linear channels and have SS+ behind it where coverage overlaps. But I think they've made their bed with committing specific channels for certain sports. Logistically it looks a pain for both Sky and customers tbh.

Really feel for Les, the players and the fans who are there week in/week out. Hope the rest of the community rally round the club for the rest of the season and we get to the end. New faces and new ideas need brought to the club so hopefully their help is accepted. Hopefully we get someone on the board who is used to dealing with business plans etc and can start slowly putting our best foot forward to a brighter future. It ain't over till it's over

6,000 nits …… I knew one or two lads from school who could beat that number of nits on any given school day!

Hopefully they sort themselves out,we don't want to lose any clubs.

I'm sure he very much cost us the game away at Widnes quite a few years back allowing them to score in the 7th play and win. Didn't see him for a while after that, but he definitely go his career back on track as I remember him taking charge of the CC final Hull vs Warrington, in as much as you hardly noticed him that day, and on the odd occasion you did he seemed to be 100% spot with his calls

Not just a new club. They should all have to do it

For a club that was on its backside this time last year ,I was very surprised they decided to bring in even more imports in with Owen mccarron,edene gebbie ,Lachlan hannigan ,then furthermore Jake maizen from Halifax ,clearly spent well above there means or projected income . absolutely criminal being in that situation last year and then repeating the same mistakes within a year

For IMG to be so precise with the particulars of a 'Big Screen' if one was cynical they would think IMG were on commission from the manufacturers of such equipment for every new screen sold to those they are advising of the required standard.

The difference here is that the USA team were I believe entirely from the state of Utah, where they actually have a fledgling Rugby League competition going at Junior level. They have a 4 team league at senior level too. There are a lot of Polynesians in Utah and there are a lot of them that are already familiar with league. This is the start of a long process for Rugby League in Utah, but they are trying their best to build up the sport and not rely on Union.

Going to be very difficult for Haven to survive this time but hopefully they can pull through however there has to be something the league can do to stop clubs grossly overspending. I think our board has done great work in developing the community side of the club and are gradually reaping rewards with both increasing attendances and sponsorship

Epic break from Bell; knock-ons both sides, with Clark diving into Watkins' leg and dropping the ball.

Yep. Ritson and then an immense tackle from Mbye.

Young Burns and Robertson are so promising and exciting.

Didn't you hear Kendall explain it quite clearly?

Sky Sports+ linear channels gives a red button option which then loads the app. Will be interesting to see how far behind the streams run compared to betting websites, score update apps and social media. Although it’s nailed on to be WAY behind compared to live TV coverage. Just feels like a huge step backwards on all fronts. And that’s before I even start on the effect it’s had already on EFL fixture scheduling.

Jake Burns.

Good timing by the cameraman

GOT to get their fingers out then,get out into the community.

Whitehaven RLFC interim CEO Les Messenger launched a plea to the club's fans to 'come to the aid of the club', saying that the club are in 'dire straits' following a period of lower footfall in the last season. The club has said that the players haven't been paid contract money for July, which equates to a total of £14,000 between the players, with winning money for the game against Swinton Lions also not being paid out, and the board is now down to two members. In a 24-minute message to fans posted on social media, Mr Messenger said: "On a financial footing we are behind the black ball. We are suffering from virtually five away games in July which meant we had no income coming in, and we had £1,000 roughly to find for buses to take the players to away games. We had the one home game against Toulouse on a Saturday which had 331 fans through the gates, so the footfall was horrendous there, so it was virtually written off. It was like another away game." He added: "I need you people, the good people of Whitehaven, to come to the aid of the club. We're in dire straits, I make no bones about it." The CEO said he will 'not let the club fold' and will be the 'last man standing' at Whitehaven RLFC. Source: Whitehaven News. Aug. 7.

I see we’re your coming from but my point is they never seem to learn. Little story for you. A few years ago Widnes were about to go under always had a soft spot for em. Came to barrow and had the buckets out for a collection so chucked £10 and said to a fair few of there fans hope it all works out for them. Following day chatting to a mate that was at a wedding Saturday night at a local hotel were the Widnes team we’re staying the night before the game. Would have taken my £10 back given the chance

So, our star centre is hanging up his boots, we desperatly need to find someone to try and fill them, and it needs to be sooner rather than later. I hope we can get someone equally as talented, we also still need a big powerful forward or two for next season. Lets hope we can send Jimmy on his way in style with a victory and a couple more tries .

Great to see this news.

Clubs sign players to fill a void in quality. Whether they're from a different English club or overseas doesn't negate the issue with juniors. Juniors will never develop to a higher level without being in a high quality environment. So unless you already have a high quality environment, you'll need to bring in people from somewhere else. There appears to be a line of thinking that simply giving more game time to youngsters is all that is needed to develop them and that simply isn't true. We don't have the depth in quality across the league to simply produce a high enough standard of junior in high numbers. There needs to be a mixture of importing and producing.

C'mon Dave, I cast out knowing I would catch someone, didn't expect it to be you albeit I fully understand the response from the one with the first laughing emoji, but there we go.

I did and Workington the season before if i remember correctly.

Eh? I've seen the Whitehaven chairman's video where he talks about the players not having been paid their bonuses etc. I just don't think it's a good look for fans to talk about exploiting the situation, especially when we have had our own share of cashflow problems ourselves. Surely we can have a bit of empathy with their situation rather than immediately trying to think how their misery could benefit us?

Really hope we can sign him. He’s a very talented young man.

Around 200 there today for a 36-36 draw against Canvey Island, Vipers Ladies also played beforehand as did the men’s second team for the first ever time in a close fought win against the Deeping Ducks.

It was a great evening in Wymondham today as the Vipers played local Union side Beccles under the lights in a rugby league friendly ahead of next Saturday’s East RL grand final. A crowd of over 150 gathered to see the Vipers win 58-28, but the score didn’t matter as some great rugby was played and the Beccles lads had a good first experience of rugby league. Hopefully some of them will want to play league next summer now they’ve had a taste of it.