Wellsy4HullFC
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Posts posted by Wellsy4HullFC
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Thus, if the assumption of some on here is coreect, and that no semi-final games will be held outside the UK, then if England is almost guaranteed a semi-final spot, then my argument about the virtues of using Wembley for a semi-final remains a sound one. Preferably at 2.30 or 3 pm on a Saturday.
The other semi-final that does not involve England should be held at Old Trafford on a Sunday afternoon, the day after the Wembley semi-final --- subject to the RFL's willingness to spend money promoting it all over England.
I think it is ridiculous to suggest that we could get anywhere near a decent crowd at Old Trafford for a game not involving England. Even if it was the World Cup Final that England COULD be playing at. To think we'd get a crowd even the third of the size of Old Trafford with the public knowing full well England WON'T be in it because they'll be in the semi final is very very poor judgement.
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Baring in mind that Wrexham was a last minute move as well, we could see even greater numbers next year with season ticket improvements, etc.
North Wales should have been explored years ago with its proximity to the heartlands.
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I'm not sure If France will get games, but I suppose if it's just there with gaurenteed bigger crowds then they'll use French venues. Not going to go into great detail but I'd like certain areas to have "adopted" developing nation teams, play lower drawing games at 10-15k heartland venues. It is essential to start with England V Australia at Wembley and play all other big games at 20k+ stadiums. A good mix is required IMO, a few games to "non-heartland" areas but most in the areas we know will draw a crowd.
Atleast 3 games in Wales and France, 1 at most in Scotland & Ireland and the rest in England.
Like I say, I don't think there will be games in France as they've specifically said that the host nation is the UK, rather than co-host or whatever.
I like the idea behind having certain nations being adopted by an area, for example Ireland being adopted by say Warrington (Carney connection), Tonga by Hull (Manu, Moa, Lauaki), etc. in order to get support from that area and develop a small connection.
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What I don't understand is that a Championship club is to be given a license in March so that they get more time to prepare to make the step up. However another Championship club that is already less prepared (as they lost to a better placed club) could still be included in July and not given this extra time.
Smacks of typical RFL to me. They go on about a fair system but in reality they look to have already picked one Championship club to replace one Super League club. The only issue is which clubs, which is most likely Widnes for one of three others.
The minimum criteria for the Championship are a nonsense too in my opinion. Mainly because there are about 3/4 Super League clubs who probably wouldn't meet them if they were in the Championship. How fair is that for a system?
That's the bit I found most interesting:
What happens if a Championship club meets the minimum criteria, but is not the successful club announced in March 2011?
Those Championship clubs that meet the minimum criteria but do not obtain a Super League licence in March 2011 still have a chance of obtaining a Super League licence. These clubs will have their suitability for a licence assessed with the Super League clubs who submit applications in April 2011 (see process graphic attached).
Whilst I agree in part with what you're saying about them being less prepared than an already more prepared Championship club, I think the whole point is that if they are to succeed at this final stage then the RFL must feel that they are in a better position for SL than one of the current SL clubs.
This part is essentially just a backup in case more than one of the SL clubs look God damn awful in the application process. It's a good plan for a "just in case" moment that probably won't be needed. The fact that only two clubs meet this criteria means that basically after they've given Widnes a license, they'll just see if Halifax are a better proposition than the other SL clubs.
As for the Championship criteria, I agree with it. What I don't agree with is when they chose to release it. Back end of the last season? Ridiculous. It should have been known from 2008. You cannot implicate such huge changes to a system without having the final details in place BEFORE it. It's like introducing a relegation place 3 weeks before the end of the season after being told there wouldn't be any.
Interesting to note no mention of the foreign clubs invitation however. Doesn't look to be Toulouse's year yet...
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your business skills and vision are really coming to the surface now ! NOT
So are your IT skills
Enlighten me, otherwise you're just making unproductive noise.
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I'd like to see what format we use before specifically picking certain venues. If England are in a super group or not would completely change the type of venues we use IMO.
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Richard Lewis has said that most of the 2013 World Cup events weill be held in the northern heartlands.
I have no problem with that, so long as there are important games held at Wembley and in France.
But we must also restrict the venues in the north to those grounds which are modern and have a decent crowd capacity.
Let me propose the following list, which rewards those clubs which have a modern stadium. It should be a stadium with a capacity of at least 15,000, though at least 20,000 for all matches involving England, Australia, and New Zealand. This precludes Halliwell Jones, and the smaller stadia in out of the way places like Leigh, favored by the arch lowballer of rugby league, Nigel Wood.
I am sure that if this event is marketed properly you could be expecting crowds of 12,000-15,000 even for minor nation contests, like Lebanon vs USA.
Pool games:
DW Wigan,
St Helens,
Barton Salford,
Galpharm, Huddersfield
KC Hull
Headingley Leeds
Millenium Cardiff (for games involving Wales)
Ernest Wallon Toulouse (for games involving France)
Semi finals:
Old Trafford (for a match not involving England, Wales or France)
Wembley (if England is involved)
Charlety Paris (if France is involved against Australia or New Zealand)
Millenium, Cardiff (for a game involving Wales but not England)
Final:
Wembley
The controversial part of this plan is that I am suggesting Wembley for a semi-final if England plays Australia, New Zealand, Wales or France (which is almost certain). This event however should attract a huge crowd, because of the contestants, and because it involves England in a sudden death.
Should England lose a Wembley semi-final, there will still be a large core of people who attended the England semi-final, whose appetites will have been excited for the Wembley final in which England does not compete. It will therefore have boosted the final crowd over what it would have been had England played and lost its semi-final in the north of England.
The fact is that there is a huge soft core market for great sporting events located in London and the south. We saw that in the massive attendances for international rugby league at Wembley in 1990, 1992 and 1994. Many tens of thousands of them will attend a Wembley semi-final and final if it is marketed properly. If England is not playing, the crowd will simply be anti-Australia. Expect 30,000 London and southern England fans, and 30,000 northern England fans to want to attend a well publicised Wembley Final if it is a game that does not involve England. Expect a sellout (72,00 RFL ticket allocation plus 18,000 Wembley members) if England is involved.
1. The UK are the host nation. The Sports Minister has been pushing our tournament, so I think it would be bad to host games outside of the UK after finally getting support from the Government. They want this to be our decadeof sport.
2. You can't have four semi-final venues just incase someone like France or Wales makes it. It's ridiculous. We need to be selling tickets as early as possible (which for once I'm glad to hear we are doing). You can't do that if you wait until less than a week before to pick the venue!
3. The games need to be held up north apart from the odd big game and possibly Aus/NZ games. Wales can have home games as well, but I'd probably avoid Scotland and Ireland as they haven't really supported international RL well in the past crowd-wise.
4. The stadia you have named are too big for the smaller nations. We struggled to get 10k crowds over in Aus. But you think we can get 12-15k over here? Not likely. And not really that bright an idea.
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yes
can i also add..
How much do they want for the funding?? tens of millions... so 2 points
1. do the RFL actually have that type of money
The RFL makea profit, but they spend as much of it as they can on other parts of the game.
If they earmarked some money for this over the years, then it would pay for itself with increased revenue from bigger gates and lower costs. It's an investment that would directly pay back.
2. just think of what we can do with that money if we had it..fund junior development in umpteen areas
help championship and super league clubs get themselves sorted stadium wise and junior academy wise
get a London club a better presence both in the city ie a base and in the press and marketing
get the crusaders settled and developing
get the game started and promoted in Ireland and Scotland
Apart from first one,the rest isn't really the RFL's job to fund, and wouldn't really bring them much back in terms of direct money. It's just them throwing money at projects that won't be giving them money back directly.
With their own stadium, they'd. Be getting more money from events that they can then use to fund better projects over the years anyway.
as they cannot seem to do any of hte bits in question 2 then i would suspect the answer to quesntion 1 is "no". if it is "yes" then i would personally prefer any of/all of the ideas in question 2 to be done before we start frittering money away on something we dont need for all of JD's reasons.I would like to see the RFL being more effecient with the money they use as well as maximise its turnover in order to be able to fund further projects. Sometimes you need to specualte to accumulate. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to be standing still on the event front for a long time.
Bramall Lane for a WC semi. In fact a CC semi next year would be niceThe problem with trying to use Premiership football grounds is the fact that they don't desperately need the money (Man City certainly don't but Arsenal might to repay the costs of building the Emirates) and they'll be under pressure from the FA to only use their stadium for football. -
Why can't the RFL use nice 'sparkly' new-ish football stadiums (stadia?) like Man City's or Arsenal's for the likes of the WCC or 4 Nations Final? Would Brammel Lane be a good stadium for the WCC if Wigan or Wires get there next year or is it too far away/not good enough?
When Elland Road is redeveloped then hopefully it will be a nicer and sparklier stadium. There's a lot that needs doing to it. It's going to most likely be a smaller version of Old Trafford in the way it's being redeveloped.
And why would Brammel Lane be any better than Elland Road for Wigan/Wire? It's further away isn't it?
I also want to emphasize how crucial it is that all future England vs Australia games must be held at Wembley if rugby league is ever to be taken seriously in Britain -- by both mass media and general public -- as an important international sport. We got 73,000 there in 1992 for a World Cup final. No reason why we can't do it again.I disagree. Why is it a necessity we play at Wembley to be taken seriously? How many other sports play their national games there? Did we get taken seriously before when we used to play there?
Plus, when we play World Cups over here, it can still be used.
we have a national Rugby league stadium....and there'll be 85,000+ people sat in it on saturdayHow many games do we play there? Hardly a stadium to represent the sport!
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A few things wrong with this idea IMO.
It wouldn't ever be a true National Rugby League Stadium. It'd always just be Elland Road, home of Leeds Utd Football Club, where the RFL occasionally plays matches. Which is what it is now. What benefit would the RFL possibly derive from such an investment? It'd be cheaper just to hire the place out when they need it. Which in my view, should be never anyway.
It depends on how many events you hold there as to how people would see it. If it is a significant number, then people will more likely see it as a home for RL events. Otherwise, I'd agree with what you're saying. To me, it's just like a football club sharing with a Super League club but on a larger scale.
The idea of confining major RL internationals to Leeds depresses me enormously. It's a recipe for ensuring RL disappears completely off the national radar. We used to play internationals at Wembley and make a song and dance about them. The sooner we get back to that, the better.I disagree. We've been playing internationals up north for a decade now. How many England/GB gameshave been played in the south? GB vs NZ in 2005. That's it.
So we're not exactly exhausting all our options aroundthe country. Rather, just switching between the usual mid-sized 25k stadia of SL. I think if the RFL had a base for events, then the stability and familiarity generated would help improve crowds more than just chopping and changing venues. I'd love to see us return to 70k+ crowds at Wembley for internationals, but isit going to happen? We could still use it for the World Cup I suppose.
The WCC has done ok crowdwise at Elland Road, but that's when Leeds have been playing. One day, it might be another team, from another city.The WCC suffers greatly as an event because you only find out a few months before where it's going to be played. We know where the GF and CCF will be played every year, so why not the same for the WCC? If advertised and marketed right, then people will be buying tickets all year round rather than waiting to see if the two teams are attractive enough for them.
It would be perverse for the game to have a 'National Stadium' of its own but continue to play the two biggest games of the season elsewhere. Similarly, it would be a travesty to play the Challenge Cup final anywhere else but Wembley or the SL Grand Final at Old Trafford. Therefore, is there any need for a National Stadium in the first place?I disagree. I don't see how it would be perverse at all. Is it any different from a sports club taking its bigger games to a bigger stadium than their home ground because they can't fit them in? Quins at Twickenham and Saracens at Wembley for example?
Lets use the biggest and most iconic venues in the whole of the UK for our biggest, most important games. If that means never playing another RL match at Elland Road ever again, I for one wouldn't be unhappy about that.And what I've proposed won't change that. Unfortunately we only have 2 games that regularly get above 40k (and well above it at that). We need to start building our events to these levels, but because we constantly chop and change the venue and only announce it a few months prior, we don't get a proper chance to build these events up.
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Wouldn't they have to rip out all the seating & add at least 5000 more seats to each of the 4 stands to make it a decent stadium? If the RFL decided to help fund the redevelopment would it just be Leeds United & the RFL who would fund it or would Leeds City Council also help out?
Leeds City Council are the ones looking for funding apparently. Part of their bid to be a host city. They are the ones that will receive economic boosts from hosting the games, so they will want to make sure it's possible and secure funding.
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On top of which, I think it very wrong that Saints and Warrington are playing on different days. Surely the drama on the Friday night is who will come second with neither team knowing quite what the outcome will be. As it is, Saints will kick off knowing exactly what they need to do to clinch 2nd place, not a very "fairplay" situation.
Now I agree with you there. The fixtures for that weekend should be:
Saturday 4:30 (Battle for 4th-6th)
Hull vs Leeds
Catalans vs Huddersfield
Saturday 6:45 (battle for 2nd and 8th)
Harlequins vs Warrington
Saints vs Castleford
Crusaders vs Hull KR
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With England looking to get the FIFA World Cup for 2018, and a redeveloped Elland Road to be one of these stadiums, would it not possibly be a good idea to try and latch onto this development? From what I gather, the stadium needs more funders for its expansion.
The RFL have had some good success at Elland Road (despite it being a dump at the moment). It's right in the middle of the heartlands. If you keep the two major finals (Challenge Cup Final and Grand Final) where they are, we could use the New Elland Road as a base for international games, World Club Challenges, maybe even have the Challenge Cup games there as Magic Weekend-style rounds.
I think RL would benefit from a base for its major events. The RFL could offer season tickets for their events there which could boost attendances for our major games all-round. Would only be worth doing though if we could get a certain amount of events there per year, and so far I can only think of:
World Club Challenge
Mid-Season Test
Challenge Cup 5th Round (MM-style 8 games in two days)
Challenge Cup QF (4 games in two days)
Challenge Cup SF (Double Header)
Championship Finals Day
3-4 End of Season Tests
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Even though I hate Saints with a passion, I must say that I feel sorry for the genuine fans in this instance.
Sky really are taking the p!ss this time.
It's not going to be the last game at KR so it's not the worst thing in the world.
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If i knew we had second I would be able to say my goodbye to KR the following week but if we dont this could be the last game at KR.
Not true.
If you finish in the top six, you are guaranteed at least one home game in the play-offs.
If you finish 3rd or 4th, then although your first game will be away, your second game is guaranteed to be at home (win or lose). If you win, home game in week three. if you lose, home game in week two.
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Maybe we should start matching players up anthropometrically to positions at a younger age and push them for them positions. We need taller wingers!
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It's a no win situation for the ref but what I can't get my head around is the fact that we can't use the VR for forward passes because camera angles can be misleading but we CAN use the VR to determine onside/offside with those same camera angles.
Because offside is in relation to the pitch, and forward passes are in relation to the player.
With offside, you can tell where the ball is in relation to the pitch because that player is stood on the pitch. All you need to do is see if the other player is stood behind him by working out how close they are to the nearest line.
With forward passes it's not so simple. If the camera is at a different angle, the pass looks hugely forward when in fact it could be backwards. The players are often not on the ground when these things occur (like when there is a chip to the corner and it is passed in the air, etc). And that's before we even bring in the momentum rule, where it's nearly impossible to work out the momentum of the ball before it is passed and whether that has affected why it has travelled forward.
We need HawkEye technology for that sort of thing!
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It's APPARENTLY Saints - Cas. Daft if it's true - how many viewers will they get to see Saints steamroller the oppostion?
Last league game at Knowsley Road. Should get a fair few viewers.
Pleased the Hull game's been moved. Couldn't make it on the Friday because of Leeds Akkies annual end of season dinner. Now I can! Woohoo!
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what rubbish have i spoken?
Where to begin...!
I am a wakefield fan and i was at the game today, and i hate to say it but we were not even championship standard, sean gleeson is about as good as me, latu is a great player but cleary did not want to be there and the prop forwards have no clue what is going on, apart from paul king that is. But trying to speak truthfully we deserve a licence over a lot of teams, bradford may have beaten us today but they are an awful side who are living in the past, and this 60 quid thing is a false promise, ten thousand fans by 4th of october, more chance of me shagging jennifer aniston to be quite honest with you.Do you honestly think you deserve a license ahead of Bradford? I know they're in a slump at the moment, but they still have better crowds, a bigger and better stadium, more juniors playing regularly and currently sit higher in the table than Wakefield. And at least Bradford are trying to do something to get fans back in to the stadium. All Wakefield are doing is drawing pictures.
The RFL need to sort themselves out and realise that rugby league will not expand, the welsh dont care and the cockneys dont care. the catalans are good for the game but the rest are not, so why bother with them. When will the RFL realise that rugby league is a game for northerners and that is all it is ever going to be. something needs sorting.Why bother with them? The same reason we bothered with Catalans (who you acknowledge are good for the game). RL is more than just a northern game. You've not even given Crusaders a chance before casting them aside. They've had a really good start to life at Wrexham, andthis couldget even better next year for all we know. They could be the next Catalans.
And can i also say, that you frenchie have no idea about rugby league and its ways so please stay out of things that you cleary know nothing about. thank you
ParisS actually knows quite a lot about RL. It's a shame he/she chooses to ignore certain things in order to be an attention seeking wind-up merchant.
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I am a wakefield fan and i was at the game today, and i hate to say it but we were not even championship standard, sean gleeson is about as good as me, latu is a great player but cleary did not want to be there and the prop forwards have no clue what is going on, apart from paul king that is. But trying to speak truthfully we deserve a licence over a lot of teams, bradford may have beaten us today but they are an awful side who are living in the past, and this 60 quid thing is a false promise, ten thousand fans by 4th of october, more chance of me shagging jennifer aniston to be quite honest with you. The RFL need to sort themselves out and realise that rugby league will not expand, the welsh dont care and the cockneys dont care. the catalans are good for the game but the rest are not, so why bother with them. When will the RFL realise that rugby league is a game for northerners and that is all it is ever going to be. something needs sorting. And can i also say, that you frenchie have no idea about rugby league and its ways so please stay out of things that you cleary know nothing about. thank you
I know ParisS speaks rubbish, but speaking rubbish back won't help.
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Wigan v Leeds
Saints v Wire
Hudds v Crusaders
Hull v Hull KR
Thats my 1st round predictions
Reckon Rovers will beat Crusaders, leaving Hudds to play Cas.
That's 4 pretty big games there. 3 local derbies and the two biggest clubs in the league at the moment in the 4th game.
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How was that not double movement?!
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Just realised they signed Lee Smith this year anyway, so no doubt he will be reverting to the wing on a permanent basis once Donald has gone.
An RFL update
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
Exactly, but that was the old administration. And they didn't have as much time to implement that decision as we have had with the licensing situation. We didn't HAVE to implement the licensing system, we could have planned for it properly and then done it when we were fully ready. When the game turned pro, we only had a certain amount of time to get the details worked or else we'd have lost out on a lot of investment.