gingerjon

With talk of a revised one to follow. You love to see it.

Lifelong soccer fan these days, apparently. This was on the cards once the ownership transfer happened. Credit to folk for trying but not a surprise. Still, another one for the “look, we’ve tried expansion” crowd.

Literally anything negative about RL will have someone saying it’s “copied from football”, whether or not that is remotely true.

I mentioned the BBC Radiophonic workshop in a meeting a few weeks ago. I might as well have said I started working in the era of papyrus.

Wodehouse died fifty years ago. The Fry & Laurie Jeeves & Wooster was thirty years ago. I'd be surprised if people my age didn't know who created Jeeves, possibly not that surprised by anyone younger.

You are right and it is personal interpretation. We shall see.

They do it because the crowds are low and because there is no sanction for not doing so. The 9th/10th tier soccer league near me has an actual rule - I don’t know if they all do - that all matches must have an official and published attendance.

Nobody else is, apparently, being asked to justify their very existence within the system.

Which is why I also added the context of joyless fun sponge Aaron Bower.

Dodgers start 6-0 which is probably ominous for everyone else. It really does seem to be a case of everyone else hoping that they pick up injuries or have players lose form at the business end of the season. The As played their first game at the minor league park of Sacramento yesterday, losing 18-3, with Carson Kelly, the Cubs catcher, hitting for the cycle. 12,192 there, which appears to be the capacity, or close to, for MLB games.

And yet, oddly, the statement from a couple of days ago said they didn't have access to RLWC purchases and it would only be people who'd bought England home internationals in the recent ish past.

RLWC doesn’t count

Oddly, on my phone, the Twitter link is showing the wrong one - but on my laptop it’s the correct Aaron Bower one.

We find out tomorrow.

I don't think it's ever felt more like a local game for local people with the appearance of other clubs and locations tolerated at best. And that appears to run through everything. Even the sales window for an international in London appears to, by accident rather than design perhaps, give priority to people in the heartlands who are the only ones who have had non RLWC internationals to attend in the past decade.

The RFL didn't need to fund an expansion strategy but it needed to have some strategic thinking - for Toronto and Toulouse, it had neither. We do know that the original IMG/RFL framework capped the number of non UK clubs. I have no idea if the strategic review will address that again. I'm neutral on whether Wood, or anyone else, is really pro or anti expansion. I think that's a distraction. I'm more concerned by their wrecking ball impression and the likely damage that will do to the game - regardless of their wonderful thoughts. Lastly, given Wood is on the actual board of the RFL now, I would include him in the ongoing governance failure around Salford.

The only one of those that was proactive was Catalans. That's the key bit. It has mostly always been reacting to someone else turning up with a location and their own money. That's not a negative but I think it puts a more honest perspective on it.

A cynic might say, when combined with comments from other authorities about working with the man now leading a strategic review at the RFL, that the lack of partnerships in an era of partnerships could be quite revealing.

The new Wembley is a pretty poor stadium but it has plenty of atmosphere. The old Wembley was also a mostly rubbish stadium, the bizarrely distanced shallow seats in the lower bowl for example, but looked good with the towers.

As above, a staggeringly high percentage are presented as being victims of changing circumstances beyond their control and/or being poor experiences when, with a little bit of checking, it turns out that it's private equity either seeking a very quick return which is usually better for them if the company fails and/or a PE investment that so hamstrings the company that is simply cannot function. The only recent one that genuinely doesn't follow any of that is BHS - and that was the owner being a c-word. So I blame unregulated capitalism which uses its faceless but effective propaganda to blame pretty much everything but them.

Who do you blame for these changes and how could these changes have been avoided?

Every single Salford fan is doing this including the one you are replying to? Huge, if true.

Which division are Midland and Cornwall in?

Proper rugby league man. Zero respect for officials and determined to shout about it.

Difficult tightrope this. On the one hand, you have to find a way to blame IMG for what the clubs have done, on the other, you have to praise the clubs for their spirit of radical independence in calling out IMG.