gingerjon

You're going to have to join the dots for me on this one. Why, given London's smoke and mirrors is even more pronounced, are you disgusted with Salford?

Not bad but the away top looks like a ref's kit.

You could be right. My personal view is that it's right that running a women's team is a minimum standard and covered accordingly, but it would be wrong to have the on-field success of the women's team be a metric for which division the men's side play in.

Hadn’t realised her contract with Bristol was so short. It’s been a very visible move in the media here. Probably the most visible domestic RU story right now.

Yes. I remember it being discussed on here that we’d gone from £75k to £15k last year.

Really fun video to go with it.

Cheers. God, we really do need that injection of cash from somewhere.

As I understand it - and I'm happy to be corrected - it's not quite as severe as during some of the previous iterations of unbalanced funding. I'm not a particular fan of it, TBH. Central distribution should be equal and rewards for placing/Cup progression should be distinct from it. I do, however, know we don't even have a brass farthing, as revealed by how little clubs were getting in Challenge Cup prize money.

We had unbalanced Championship funding for a long time. It didn’t work.

The article: "If running a successful women’s team is not going to have any bearing on a club’s ultimate success in the eyes of IMG, what’s to stop them pulling the plug completely and using the resources saved there to earn extra points elsewhere?" The IMG grading handbook: "Minimum standards will be in place alongside the grading criteria. These will include, for example, the requirement for adherence to insolvency regulations and UKAD regulations and, in the future, the requirement for Category A clubs to run a women’s team."

Did these issues arise with the funding of rugby union in Fiji by the Australian government?

It’s not what I would have done but, combine that with what will hopefully be several distinct TV packages being sold next time around, it’s also not the end of the world.

It's better for SL+ for the games to be spread out.

I *think* I'm right in that the 'rugby' culture in Utah, such as it is, is because of that. So we may see a rise in US participation because that's just where some Pacific Islanders head anyway.

There are around 700 registered players in the states to give you some context. As I said elsewhere, that’s smaller than floorball (which no one has heard of) is in the UK. But this is a diversion. We should be celebrating this excellent news for the Pacific Islands.

And is used excellently for comedic purposes in Radio 4 series Cabin Pressure.

PNG is just getting millions to spend on RL development *and* an NRL team. Nobody needs to convince you of anything. That is what is happening. It is not, “ Here’s an NRL team, bet you’ll beat the Kangaroos now.”

I know this is your dream but we should leave flushing money down the American toilet to the rahs. They’ve been doing it for decades and it’s only getting funnier as it loses more and more money for no forward momentum at all. Only reason to change: actual Americans with a minimum $100m to spend come forward. Until then … there is a whole globe to conquer.

The one where you split off the franchise from the associated investment? No, because the premise is wrong.

The Oz government investment is why the NRL franchise is happening. The two are one and the same.

Yes. The need not to clash games has been explained multiple times. This helps to sell SL+. The need also to have proof of concept in place for different slots across the season has also been explained. This is for selling the next deal or deals. I don’t know what the Disney Corporation’s view is on this so maybe when you bump into them in hospitality you can ask?

How many millions did the UK government put into the Catalan region at the same time?

That London number is a fiction. No idea how they got some of the figures that year but, let’s just say, they were creative.

There is a reasonable, and positive, article to be run that, in terms of visibility, the Challenge Cup is the most visible club rugby in the UK. There's too many long words and not enough ragebait in that though.

Absolutely fantastic news and a clever piece of soft politics from the Australian government.