gingerjon

I accept that some of this may not be direct from the NRL - it may have come from the client journalists - and I'm not bothered to check. But here are a few things that they haven't (yet) done: Make money, sell betting rights, get regularly on Fox Sports 1 or equivalent, engage significant numbers of Americans. And, and this is the major problem if this is anything other than a really good event, there is now nothing else planned in the USA. And the only Aussie sport with a regular slot on Fox Sports 1 remains the AFL.

Have you seen the state of rugby union in the US - even with fawning articles on a regular basis?

Not sure the game will recover if he puts on a Bergerac repeat instead

I think it's in the sweet spot of being simultaneously both a bit disappointing but also really not bad. The event looks like it's been very well staged and a decent few days in Vegas. If that is all the NRL had said they were doing, I think you'd say a success. Given that that isn't what they said then I think it moves towards the, "Hmmmm... not really deserving of the gushing from journos on a jolly". Love to see them do it again. And absolutely no reason for Super League to be anywhere near it.

Going back over recent-ish winners, it's certainly both hard to spot a trend and hard to find one that really meets the criteria of 'humorous' and 'uplifting'. At least the UK appears to have moved on from "cheap but camp as Christmas" or "veteran with no staging budget" as its entries.

It goes back further than that and sometimes in slightly different ways. There was a documentary on Wimbledon's FA Cup win which said that the team would be briefed about the ref's personal situation - wife, kids etc, and than they would practice asking natural sounding questions to the ref when warming up and in the tunnel. Just so the ref would be their mate. They still got cautions and sendings off but far fewer - because they'd convinced the ref they were decent blokes.

So, and this is the bit no one really seems to be able to answer, what value to the NRL is there from that?

The Dutch entry is quite the thing

Allowing people to get away with hitting players in the head is not common sense and has always been something refs are not supposed to do.

Deliberate contact with head now fine if someone has hold of your shirt.

Literally looked up what are the most watched TV stations in Las Vegas and that was one of the major ones. And its top video is of the NRL game at Allegiant stadium. I was quite surprised and so shared. Enjoy your walk.

I suspect you're right in that there is much less than we think - because we are distorted by looking through the RL channels. However, this is the top video I can see on KVVU's main page (Fox Las Vegas channel): https://www.fox5vegas.com/video/2024/03/02/nascar-drivers-swap-jerseys-with-rugby-players-las-vegas/

It's not cynical to point out that Toronto themselves had no money to pay players, had already, before Covid, not had money to pay suppliers and, even now, have not paid the players everything they should have done. It's not cynical because that's just an objective fact. It's a series of things that happened.

Did either of those lines sound like they had anything to do with the point when you wrote them? Toronto blew themselves up and, rightly, lost a lot of people's sympathies when they decided that paying players and suppliers was optional.

It's probably heading on for 20 years now, but, as rather infamously noted at the time, their shirt sponsorship of the Broncos yielded BarterCard two years of decent visibility on Sky, and the Broncos about enough money to cover a team trip to Pizza Hut.

LIVE SCORE UPDATE FROM THE OTHER GAMES YOU BEAUTIFUL THING OF BEAUTY

Now TV?

It makes it look the alignment is off. It's really poor. Obviously, it works well on the black top.

This annoys me because it's (a) a very impressive 'signing' but (b) Brewdog, who are ######.

Ireland have won a Test match.

The UK entry. I like it.

Toronto blew it. SL let them.

I was wrong. It's actually the second game - at 4.30am

Still, sticking to the resolution to watch as many new films as possible but also go to films not seen before when they come up on the recommends. The first-time-seen films in February were: Nomadland Bottoms L'Innocent (The Innocent) Nothing Sacred (1937) The Hunt (Jagten) Fallen Leaves The Iron Claw Arctic The Outfit Wicked Little Letters Dunki The Gold Rush

I presume it was although I didn't check. As far as I can see, the only RL on Main Event this weekend is the first game in Las Vegas double header.