Just Browny

That's very sad news. We had a few differences of opinion on here down the years but his contribution to the game, and his passion for spreading it, were enormous. Condolences to his family and friends.

There are some interesting thoughts in there and it is always nice to see an Australian calling for more internationals and strengthening of the international game. I am not sure how the NRL taking over Super League can be reconciled with his comments in the same article that the NRL is just a competition and should be cutting administrators and and handing funding back to the 16 Australian clubs though.

I suppose folk have got lonely during lockdown.

I sort of agree with this, but maybe they are just being very devious and keeping the surprise scrum move as, well, a surprise. I think people will make their minds up on no-scrums pretty soon, probably ten minutes into the first game. Agree that if it goes well there will be very few arguing for a return.

Best of luck to them, hopefully they can make it into Super League one day but it is early days on their road to Wigan-Pia.

And Alastair Campbell. Glamour club.

The two best players in that game were the two hookers.

Haha what's gone on here. I have said before on here that Sneyd is a very decent SL player, and a matchwinner in certain conditions. In terms of general creativity he couldn't hold a candle to Briers.

Doesn't it sort of depend on what we are doing with next season too? If the assumption is that we play next season exactly as scheduled, starting at the end of January, it clearly makes no sense to end this season in January. But if we decided to shorten next season, e.g. by getting of loop fixtures and starting say in mid-late March, I think that would work. And this year, uniquely, I think you could well tempt out some big crowds around Christmas.

If we re-start behind closed doors , I wonder if we could use stock crowd backgrounds from recent SL at all-seater football grounds (I won't name the clubs) to make it look less empty but socially-distanced. So fewer deaths in a 12-month period than COVID19 has notched up in the last 8 weeks? Not sure quoting the figures has helped your argument here.

Yes, never has any poster made such a poor choice of name.

DCMS is only responsible for sport in England, it would essentially be treading all over the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments' domains if it started giving cash to Welsh or Scottish clubs.

Haha sorry hadn't seen your post when I wrote my near-identical one above!

Your Warrington example doesn't really make sense as we signed Widdop before we signed Ashton and it wasn't possible to know Ashton would go so well. Moreover, our attack didn't nosedive as it has been garbage for 18 months: there were signs when we battered Hull just before lockdown that Widdop was finding his feet. For a good Warrington example, I'd go back to the 2000 season. We had just signed Langer, and everyone expected him to be a mentor for Briers who was about 21/22 at the time. We then also signed Steve Blakeley, a good player at the time but one there was clearly never a place for and he was back at Salford in no time.

Given it is a loan, it will presumably be distributed on the basis of whichever projects/clubs are likely to be able to pay it back down the track, or with a view to recouping it from future broadcast revenues. It would be interesting to see how favourable the terms are - I suspect not that favourable. Nevertheless it is good news and getting government support is no mean achievement by the RFL.