Leaderboard

Countdown for new Oxen shirt I imagine?

Warrington tried non-contact in Vegas. It's not for me..

I didnt but I'm glad I have been shown the way by the faceless oracles on this internet forum! I wish I hadn't wasted the last 30 years of my life on amateur and junior Rugby now and just waited till I won the EuroMillions or sold my business when I could then get all the plaudits and make a "worthwhile" contribution to sport, rather than the many hours every week that I put in in the freezing cold winter months stood outside when I could be inside keeping warm. Oh and spending my own money (so it doesn't go through the business as my business partner wouldn't agree) to pay for sponsorship etc of the teams.. No I shouldn't have done that I should know my place as someone who knows nothing and doesn't spend enough time in the stands (becuase I am too busy actually coaching and adminning clubs) but I cant possibly have talked to people about it the sport and what they think even though I spend most of my spare time at Rugby Clubs.. The irony being we are looking to sell the business, for a not insubstantial amount which could make a nice difference at a club at champ level if I decided that was where to invest some of it, at which point I go from knowing nothing to being a visionary.. it really is quite odd. But while I did consider it as an option about 6 months ago, the last 2 weeks has made me decide that there isnt a chance I would risk my money when long term strategies and plans can get torn up like this, its maniacal and no business in its right mind would act like this, so when/if I do reinvest it isnt going to be in RL.. Some of the attitude is daft on this forum at the moment,... maybe time to take a hiatus.

Jesus Martyn, you must be the most thin skinned person around, often on behalf of other people I would add, and I am surprised that you are in the business of owning an RL discussion forum if this is what gets you riled. You have far more to say about anyone challenging your mates than McManus gaslighting us with his selective version of history, or Beaumont offering fans fights on social media, or posting antagonistic stuff late at night, clearly fuelled by alcohol, or Nicholas character assassinating people in statements. You should probably tell us what views we are allowed to hold on your group of mates. And if you are worried about the anonymous element of this - well, your site has my details, feel free to let Eamon know that some bloke on TotalRL thinks he lacks class. My first name is David, not Dave (see what I did there?), and my surname begins with T (again, very sneaky of me)- I'm comfortable with you sharing that if it's such an issue.

Going along with this for a little bit, these fantasy RL threads are always fun, but let's play along for a bit. In reality, they need a minimum of 10 teams. I think if you were starting a brand new team you'd need to invest £4m per year or so per club. So maybe you could have Catalans, Toulouse, Leeds, Wigan, Hull, and then you really are moving into overlap territory. If you are genuinely trying to future-proof yourself you wouldn't have Wigan, Leigh, Saints and Wire all within 5 miles of each other. And if you go with them in the short term, well you're asking them to buy in knowing they'll be tossed aside in future. I do think it's difficult to see the road map to a geographically diverse Super League. So maybe that wouldn't be their main concern. Maybe they just offload the weak teams - Salford, Hudds, Cas, Wakey(?) and bring in London and Toulouse and there's your 10. That way you could easily find places for another 4 teams over the next 10-15 years as new clubs. It's a difficult one to play through. Our strength (currently) sits in really narrow geographical areas, and it would need real care to widen that if you were gonna go bold. The risk is that an SL of Wigan, Leeds, Saints, Catalans, Wire, Leigh, Hull FC, Hull KR, London and Toulouse doesnt look hugely different from today, yet you've smashed the gane apart to do it

Yes, Harry Stottle, I wonder …

I'm not sure who is classy because I haven't met many rugby league chairmen or senior administrators. I know Derek Beaumont and Eamonn McManus lack class because they have a habit of publishing rants that would score poorly as a Year 5 writing exercise. Plus Beaumont wears a leopardskin coat.

Indeed. A strong London club would be a genuine asset to British rugby league, not a threat. It would enhance the sport’s credibility, attract new sponsors, and create fresh broadcasting opportunities all of which would ultimately benefit the northern clubs. Yet, because London has never received consistent financial or strategic backing it has become an easy target for sneering fans and short-sighted chairmen. The M62 mindset prioritises protecting its patch, even if that means the sport continues to shrink into irrelevance. Most M62 clubs are barely keeping their heads above water, clinging to local rivalries and derby gates to stay afloat. With such narrow margins, they see little incentive to embrace expansion when they are struggling to fund their squads. IMG was meant to provide a long-term, strategic vision for rugby league, but so far, it feels more like a rebranding exercise for the same old short-term thinking. The grading system may have rattled a few cages, but it hasn’t forced M62 clubs to look beyond their backyards. Instead, they remain fixated on box-ticking their way to a Grade A rating rather than considering how to grow the sport as a whole. It’s the same parochial mindset that has held the game back for decades. If the NRL were to turn its attention to the UK, it could be the catalyst rugby league desperately needs. A trans-hemisphere competition or the NRL cherry-picking elite British clubs would expose just how insular the sport here remains. The NRL’s financial power, broadcast reach, and genuine ambition for growth would make IMG look like little more than a PR agency overseeing a superficial rebrand. An NRL-backed takeover, even a partial one could finally break through the glass ceiling that northern clubs continue to reinforce. For the sake of the sport’s future, London must succeed. Fingers crossed for a partial NRL/Dolphins helping hand.

I suggest you read it then because that's a massive simplification and distortion.

If it goes to full size, it will be nearly as big as the pitch!

I dont think I can definitively define class, but what I can show you is a very good example of a massive lack of it. What an abysmal load of nonsense written by someone who seems to want to "make RL great again". A vile, childish load of digs at people aimed entirely at demonising them to his followers.

These guys might own the clubs but they don't own the game. Clearly McManus only cares about Saints, otherwise he'd have used his property development and Chinese finance experience to help Salford. This lot act like Victorian mlll owners telling us what's best for us. However. we are not grateful workers doffing our hats and tugging our forelocks.. thank eee sir. Who are THEY to tell ME how it's going to be. We're in the first live playing season under the long term strategic "Re-imagining Rugby League " project...the first in the sports history. And what do these patricians do? What they've always done: screw it up. Clubs (and yes, it includes you, Leigh) have clearly upped their game on all fronts since the project was first thought of. It's nonsense to suggest otherwise. Attendances look good, social media presence is off the scale, more access to live games than ever before. And now, in this first season, already a few games in, the SuperLeague table is looking healthily different to the norm. After 66 years or so following the great sport, I'm asking myself, "why bother....stuff 'em".

A quick skim of this thread shows the usual rugby league divide. The old guard is clinging to tradition, fearing NRL influence would mean mergers, relocations, and the erasure of club identities. For them, any change threatens the sport’s heritage. Meanwhile, the younger, more forward-thinking crowd are crying out for radical reform, NRL investment, rebranding, or structural overhauls to keep Super League relevant and competitive. It’s the same tug-of-war: romanticism versus realism. IMG could play a key role in this evolution. Their focus on commercial viability through better marketing, broadcast deals, and competition structure could make Super League more attractive to NRL investment. They may not drive radical changes themselves, but if they boost the league’s value, it could pave the way for bigger moves. I’m all for NRL intervention, but let’s be honest this could all just be a pipe dream with any NRL intervention. Even if it happens, it’ll take a decade to succeed.

I don't think the Australians really understand the British game's history and structure and the dominance of football in this country. And if they really wanted to help us they would speed up their approval of the Ashes test arrangements.

The NRL has and remains very conservative and cautious when it comes to expanding in Australia/New Zealand. The idea that they're going to burn tens of millions of dollars on expansion in Europe is delusional.

Maybe when Leigh was a Championship club...

The NRL’s plan is starting to leak Down Under. Woodward can be a reliable source. Further in the thread it describes a plan to set up their own comp, with TV deal, and to pick which clubs they want to invite rather than take them all. It’s the sensible way to do it, why fund something that you can’t control. But you can now see Brian Carney’s point… could be court cases a-go-go if this happens.

The bigger picture affects the clubs though. If RL wants to grow, it needs to break out of being an M62 league. It's short-term thinking which limits long-term growth.

And yet you have no idea what level these anonymously cloaked people on this forum have given of their lives to RL either, yet you and the anonymous leigh fan seem ok with calling them out?

Sorry, just to clarify, you don't think people on a discussion forum should express opinions on people in rugby league, unless they provide their name, address and perhaps two written references? This all seems pretty standard stuff here. I don't think saying someone isn't very "classy" is the world's most egregious insult.

But nor do they seem to be interested in making the sport rich. They are an odd bunch of insecure fellas prone to Trumpian blame projection. As a group, they also seem to be suspicious of anyone not in their image - women, folks with PhDs, quiet achievers, etc. And now they seem to think they own the actual sport. McManus's attempts to grab my, your, our £5m (if I have understood him) is just outrageous. Re. Salford - to get this back on topic - the failure is actually one of both process (executive) and governance (non-executive). Whilst governance is indeed a mess, processes must also have failed in getting us here. And yet all the guns are aimed at the part-time NEDs.

Similarly my kids should be congratulated for securing some great Christmas presents after persuading me to buy them.

She refereed our game yesterday and was probably the best referee we have seen for the last year and a half even if we were on the wrong end of the penalty count. Everything was well signaled and she didn't want to be centre of attention

I will say, the RFL/SL have brought this on themselves. They’ve just been really quite rubbish at managing the sport in this country, for at least the past 10 years. For me that’s what this all boils down to, when I offer my agreeance/support for NRL involvement - what I’m actually saying is I don’t trust the current powers not to run the game into the ground. The NRL undeniably have their own agendas - I laughed before at whoever posted the Death Star, but in truth even without knowing their full intentions, can it honestly be worse than what we have now? If so, why would they even bother - they’re thriving and looking to expand, killing the only other place that could truly make them a global brand would never make sense.

I disagree, i think think they can. Good governance and a clear focused strategy goes a long way. From personal experience i've seen leaders come into a company, put some good processes in place, get the right people in the right roles, put trust in the talent available and things change for the better significantly and quickly. The NRL has done exactly that and grown quite organically - albeit with the help of a friendly media and genuine broadcast partners. We wont be challenging NRL standards any time soon - but we would be in a hell of a better place than we are currently. We have a great product. The NRL currently is evidence of what can happen when packaged correctly.

Spot on. The idea that the sport has any significant and sustainable future just focused on a handful of clubs along the M62 is nonsense (need Cumbria too). London has to be crtitcai.

Just seen on the Hull KR ticket site that we only have 3 tickets left for the Wigan game on 11th April, which is just nuts this far out. All singles, and 2 are restricted views. Any Wigan fans know if you're bringing many over? I know it's a long way on a Friday after work. I really do think we need to get another short-term temporary stand up at the South end now, perhaps just the western half of it so we leave Craven Streat where it is. I think the club is planning to do something like that after the Coldplay gigs in August, but we're missing a trick if we wait that long. Lots of sporting events put structures up for a few weeks - days even - and then dismount them, so it can be done. There's people that want to come, and we can't assume they'll always be there another time. The time to build our audience for the next decade is now.

The latest I've been told is that the NRL would establish an eight-team competition that would include London and Catalans and six others, which would probably be Wigan, Warrington, St Helens, Leeds and the two Hull clubs. Eight clubs wouldn't be enough.

On a topic that will divide opinion so much, can we at least all agree that they will need a snappier name for the league than European NRL Super League

Full credit to Leigh in that I think they are strong enough these days not to worry about this. Its all very well to think the NRL will do this and that but SL can't afford to jettison a club that gets good crowds and is well backed. For the NRL to replace Leigh with a random expansion club would cost millions.

He just walked in, said You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full time job. Now behave yourself.

Some of the comments from club owners seem to disregard the fact that as a National Governing Body for sport, Sport England has some requirements about NEDs and make-up of boards in general that the RFL can't really ignore. This overlap between a governing body responsible for drugs testing, national squads, recreational players, coaching, match officials etc vs running a professional league is something that seems to cause problems over and over.

In around 2007, Hull FC had sold out their away allocation for the Hull KR v Hull SL Derby of that year. I offered to go down to Craven Park and get a few tickets for me and some of my black and white mates. It didn't feel right but needs must. As I approached the front of the queue, which was in the main reception to Craven Park, , I heard the girls at the counter asking what team everyone queuing supported as they weren't supposed to be selling tickets to Hull fans. I could almost feel my late father spinning in his grave as, for the first and only time in my life, I claimed to be a Hull KR fan. My other concern was that I was quite some time in the queue and, at that time, I was doing some work on a summer room at Neil Hudgell's house which was then down Salthouse Road in East Hull. So I had this dread that, at any time, he might appear and ask "Now then you black and white ba**ard, what are you doing here?". Thankfully, he didn't turn up while I was there so, feeling somewhat unwashed, I was able to purchase the tickets I wanted.

It’s Whataboutism

I mean, obviously it can.

Agreed. We’ve had plenty of tours and world cups and tri-nations, and not one of them has resulted in any fundamental improvement to the long-term trajectory of the game in the UK. Our problem is *us*. It’s our clubs. The same ones who will all say they want the game to grow long-term, but will always take decisions based on the short-term interests of their own club. We’re almost in the sporting hospice here. The idea that 3 matches watching us get mashed by the Aussies will change anything is for the birds. We need saving from ourselves.

Managed to get my tickets for the Hull quarter final, one of the lucky few (I missed out for the league match), and looks like Rovers sold the away allocation in under 8 minutes tonight... nothing left at 18.08 🫨 What a time to be alive!

Yes I agree. But we have 93% of the home section pre-sold as memberships for the year (artificially capped at that figure, so we can still allow some occassional buyers). We could easily add another 500 to 1000 and still have people fearing they can't get in - in fact in 2024 we sold more than 1,000 memberships during the season itself, rather than by this stage. In sports marketing generally research shows you sell the final 25% of your gate in the final 2 weeks before an event, that's the customer segment made up of people with uncertain other plans, occassional buyers versus regular buyers, and referral buyers i.e. people who are coming with friends who had already planned to attend. Having 9,600 members suggests you could have a capacity of at least 12,800 and still expect a close-to-100% utilisation. Rovers won't ever get near that with a temporary stand, so I think the demand is there to expand and maintain the FOMO you rightly point out is important. We've no reason to think rugby league fans in Hull behave any differently to the wider sporting attendee audience, those customers are out there.

I think it is too. I think the idea that they can make a substantive difference without spending tens of millions is *even more* delusional though.

I don't see what could be gained from shaking the game up to the point where teams like Saints and Leigh weren't in any sort of reformed top league or breakaway league. If a club like Saints were not on board, you're on the back foot straight away and there just isn't enough interest in the sport in this country to start dropping new teams in and hope that they catch on in rapid time. To my mind, there are 9 teams in Superleague currently who I feel are in a reasonably good place. Some have work to do in certain areas (squad strength, academies etc) but if those 9 weren't all involved in any plan (or didn't want to be), I don't see the point. The other 3 have some work to do IMO and they are Cas, Salford and Huddersfield. There are varying issues at those 3 clubs, that would make them the only teams currently in the top flight who would be at risk IMO of not being involved. Even those 3 have some strengths to bring to the table but I don't think it could be denied that some improvements are needed.

I'm not entirely sure how many more times this needs to be stated: IMG did not conduct the assessments. The RFL did. This idea that the failure to flag Salford's impending financial collapse was the work of a 3rd party is just classic rugby league "othering". It wasn't somebody else, it was us. You could argue that the financial component should have had a greater weighting in the scoring system. You could argue that the financial component could have looked at different financial metrics. But the clubs and RFL chose and agreed the model that we have in place, and then the RFL did the measurements. It's on us. There's no doubt about this. It's just the facts.

A European super league you say. This is what Valencia Huracanes have been waiting for. Hope they will also make room for the Vrchlabi Mad Squirrels the Brussells Gorillas and Birmingham Jaguars

And possibly Batley. If they can raise enough for some new light bulbs obvs.

As requested, adding this here as well as the Nigel Wood thread. News of the NRLs plan starting to leak Down Under…

Couldn't the Bulls just say its a certain size to meet criteria? I mean that is what they did with the crowds a couple of seasons back.

Of course I do, but I do find it something of a bad faith argument. "If we're allowed to do this, we'll be forced to do it" absolves the club ownerships of agency and responsibility for their actions. But I also think that the focus on the salary cap is something of a diversion tactic - the salary cap is perhaps the one thing about running an RL club that has got cheaper over time, yet we seem to spend a lot of time talking about this as if it is the problem rather than, for example, the lack of commercial growth at the clubs. That's on McMannus and he knows it.

Ah! "Who can squirt up against the wall" still played in Leigh? Are SHEWEEs not allowed?

Martyn was, at one stage, pushing for some of the owners of the other clubs to provide Salford with bridging loan(s) that would only have increased Salford’s debt and as predicted by others would have been unlikely to be repaid.

It’s not that they should do it, it’s a question of whether it is economically beneficial to do so. And if so, what are the consequences to Salford for getting to that stage. Hopefully it doesn’t get to that stage.

The only thing shared in RL is TV money. Beyond that, you have to generate what you can , or not. Why would other club owners fund a rival club that can't (or won't) manage their own finances? It's a ridiculous suggestion.