RP London

other vaccines are available at the same cost.. thats just the one i know..

i put the bit in capitals that is the key.. they just dont want to. you can see it by the general attitude to the vaccine roll out.. something like 4% are jabbed.. its pathetic.. Supply isnt the issue as they have it available they just cant roll it out (doesnt help that the AZ vaccine is one they deem unsafe due to a low number of blood clots [statistically minimal and other medicines give them more apparently, but are deemed safe] and the rest of the world seem to think it is ok!) Vaccination is the ONLY way out of this unless you want to wait for umpteen years for the thing to die its own death but by which time your economy will have done that too.. Australia is a mess and they are just projecting that outwards... like it or not you will always see a peak when you reopen its whether it starts to come down as per the modelling that will be key.. if they do then come october/november the models have us not knowing we are in a pandemic basically.. the need to even go into a bubble could be gone, still may chose too which is fair enough.

agree with this... also sounds like its still game on.

the astra zenica jabs the UK bought apparently cost about £3 each.. double dose £6 they recon 500 people £3k... v'landys could pay for it from his next pay packet ffs... if they WANTED to they could do it without an issue... (they could vaccinate the whole bloody NRL for about £10k! including support and office staff)

Its certainly brightened my day up! Nice to see them stand up for the international game too.. bring it on.. play the tournament.. have 2 rebel teams "THE Australians" and "THE New Zealanders" and there can be some good news out of it potentially... the "We Will Carry On" mentality can be used.. no cant see it either but its a nice thought.

dont disagree but more so at that moment with a potentially succesful england team going into the tournament. this year we would just have the premier league to contend with and i think we would have got good coverage as we are national and its a world cup.. we wont with another national team and another world cup of a bigger sport. But I'm sure you see that.

its not just the fixtures.. how long do the papers and tv spend building up to this sort of thing... everything will be around the world cup, especially if we qualify in any sort of style for it and the confidence of the nation is high.. no one will give a toss about us more so than normal.. and thats saying something.

but its balls... there is 3 months to go and they are ignoring the experts (of which we have many) who are saying that will drop away... and yet they are happy to send olympians to a nation that is in a state of emergency as they go there ffs!

The more i sit here and stew and think on it, the more I am done with the it.. If the sport doesnt care then why should i.. i've got irons in the fire with eagles about developing a couple of things with both work and the Rugby club i coach at.. not sure i can be arsed now as what does the game actually offer to the kids or to business anymore.. no national presence and this game is going to just retract and retract.

The international game is in trouble now.. the World Cup if moved to next year will be swallowed by the football world cup in qatar... newspapers and tv will be all about that and people will just forget about us. And that is IF it goes ahead. The shot in the arm the tournament would have been for the game on the national consciousness here has gone and they cannot expect it to be as "in your face" as it would have been with a fee pass this year. Sponsors are not going to line up to come on board now, what we have will hopefully stay but not sure we will get anymore because the impact it will have will be less, the coverage they will get will be less. The games will continue to diverge to be almost 2 different sports without an international game to hold it together. Its an utter joke and its the insularity of the NRL at its finest.. No international game and my interest will fall away for sure.. i'll still keep an eye out but wont be as avid a fan as i was.

sue them for everything they are worth.. the NZRL signed the participation agreement for a start.. Absolute disgrace.

its easy... we have one of the biggest testing regimes in the world that is picking people up and then keeping others safe my isolating them. But by October/november (3 months way) if the modelling of experts is correct we will be one of the safest countries on the planet. Vaccinate your players (500 x £3 a shot that we paid for astra zenica vaccines is £3k ffs!).. and get on.. if the excuse is concern of players getting it then this is rubbish.. Longer away from home after being bubbled for so long is perhaps a more understandable argument but then let players decide.

cannot explain how angry I am!

If England were to win the backpages and news articles on TV and radio will lead with "England World champions" (if the media machine works and so far I don't see why it wouldn't, they've done a great publicity job so far). A photo of whoever is captain holding the massive trophy up. That is great publicity its the shot in the arm the game could really do with. Somewhere in the article Australia's absence will be mentioned but it will be skirted over and people won't pay much attention IMHO.. the Wolrd Champions will be the bit that sticks on the mind. Then, of course, Super League and the Rfl have to make a massive thing of it at the start of the next season and next international set of games (please god we need some sharpish after this world cup)... It may be a hollow victory for the players and those of us that know/care but the PR that we could get from winning it can still be massive and a game changer.. Thats the key to all of this IMHO

exactly the same on this.. support them heavily (as well as the specialist cancer hospital in sheffield) but agree with your second paragraph too.

If i were a club boss i would be very wary of going for him.. I rate him highly but his injury record would be far too much of a concern for me..

Of course they are not the major issue.. thats why i said it was an example of an issue. I am not saying go to 22 games versus 29 either.. i dont know why you think i am.. but the simple fact of just add the same games against the same opposition was the easy solution.. doing something different would have been the hard but probably (butterfly effect.. you can never know) better solution.. Do you really think the clubs are making the most of what is available to them in terms of media, hospitality, catering etc? some will be, absolutely, but some are woeful.. I'm not asking for less, i am asking for better.. As i say though its simply an example of simple thinking instead of "actually whats the best way to do this".. but i dont want to keep going on on this you know what I am getting at and we are broadly agreeing on the general principle of what we are saying.. i think we are getting bogged down on little tiny bits that actually i'm not saying at all.

i wonder how many lawyers are involved with administrations across the world of Rugby League.. In a lot of other sports there are quite a few on boards with a legal background.. if RL mirrors this (I really dont know) then the NRL may want to have a little word with themselves.. or they may be prepared to pay whatever price it will be to keep those boards quiet (which they may as some of those boards are hardly bursting with cash).

We're getting stuck on something that was not the point i was making though.. Its not the number of games its the thinking behind why we needed to add the loop fixtures... we need more income therefore we play more matches.. rather than lets make the game day better, things more profitable/worth more therefore make more money out of less matches. You can then add more and more matches but with a quality game day your making even more money... its not easy to do but nothing good is easy... but it was the simple idea that to make more you must put on more.. where as in fact by adding loop fixtures you devalue some fixtures because you play the team twice at home (maybe 3, or 4 depending on cup and play offs).. you mention the crowds "holding up fine" for the loop fixtures but how good could they be if they were not loop fixtures?? that is the question that needs to be sorted.. they may hold up but why are they not higher.. how can we get them higher.. etc etc THAT is the point i am trying to make.. not add more games but get the games themselves better supported/more profitable. This is all I am getting at, I dont have an issue with playing 29 games it is purely how we play those games and why the idea came about that was the example i was using for "simple thinking"..

As I said at the start its an example of one of the issues, I also said we were on a parity.. which we are 2 games depending on how you do in the comps is a parity surely.. premiership cup is designed to be on at the same time as the internationals so are weaker teams giving youngsters a run out/trial (if only we could think to do something like this) where you can test the strength of the next generation without it impacting on the league..

DP

i seem to remember reading that the millenium stadium/principality stadium pitch was on "pallets" so that it was really easy just to pick up parts and replace them... early on it wasnt great as it didnt nit together properly and ripped up but i think thats been fixed now.. the idea is there though so surely it could be adapted.. how cost effective that would be i have no idea. I just cant get my head around why athletics tracks can manage this at amateur level but pro teams cannot..

If you REALLLLLY wanted to yes... there in lies the problem I would suggest!

not to mention the fact we will have this period of time pretty much to ourselves.. autumn 2022 is not a good time to be doing anything if you are wanting back page coverage and you arent soccerball

I do understand what you are saying but if we only have a set amount of weekends i think more can be made of those extra weekends than just playing loop fixtures, we should be looking at things that help the game as a whole grow which then means that there is more money for the clubs further down the line, international weekends etc. In terms of what you say re fewer games, that isnt true we have more league games than RU (they have 22, 24 this year) and some European games which it depends how far they go, but group games is maybe 6 more so we are on a parity. The difference isnt much. Comparing then to cricket (that get hardly anyone into county matches) and football where players can play more games in shorter time periods is a little unfair i think. The way i was using it though was more as an example of vision. Rather than maximising the revenue made from each game its simply add another game. (simplistic but as i say just an example of vision, there are many more including ignoring the international game)