gingerjon

Current board: https://www.rugby-league.com/article/63584/rfl-board-update-|-21-march Strategic review: https://www.alloutrugbyleague.co.uk/news/rfl-strategic-review-nigel-wood-1039268

It gets dafter on the same page: "Change, in my opinion and that of others, is what the sport has been seriously lacking and if we continue to carry out the same practices why would we expect a different outcome?"

Dotted cue ball is an excellent idea. Not a shot clock but happy for the refs to be compelled to sanction players deliberately slowing play down. No need to change the miss rule. The restart is fine as it is.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Getting misty eyed for the high street of the year 2000? Smiths is another example of private equity coming in and doing things for quickest profit not for either consumers or long term investors.

It would also fit with the, if you remember, apparent double counting of some sales owing to system duplication.

The article says London are hoping there will be a move to 14, not that there is any new information on whether there will be.

The negative consequences will happen now anyway. That’s fixed. You can’t save this. It’s therefore about being credible. Promoting a club to take on another side’s fixtures at the quarter point of the season is not credible and looks, far too much, like a body and a sport that will always be reactive and never sensible.

I think the least bad is expunge the record.

And, on balance, you think promoting a team mid season, unprepared, to be the whipping boys is a better idea than not doing something so monumentally stupid?

You’ve just deprived some of the most vulnerable clubs of a home fixture for no competition benefit to either Super League or the Championship, whilst also doing the same table damage to two divisions instead of one. It doesn’t seem very smart to me.

Do we do more or less community engagement than other sports and do those sports do better or worse at securing commercial income as a result? I think you’re right that we don’t do well - I’m just not sure that a sport that is so far behind on basics like women and girls visible participation is going to strike gold until it does a bit more “going woke”.

What happens to the Championship when they lose a club midseason then?

If we really did have the chilling suppression of free speech that some claim, Widnes would already have been charged and found guilty.

If the owners cared that much then it would be a minimum standard - and so failure would mean you couldn’t even get a grading - or they would have given it a higher worth within the grading. They didn’t so we have to assume they don’t really want a rigorous financial assessment to play a major part in an assessment of their own clubs. But you know all this already.

Expectations of the event experience too. It can’t just be “put the game on” at that price.

There is no sane option that replaces them. The only options are removal from the league or having some shell team called “Salford” play out their games.

Is there anyone who isn't from those countries who would be able to drag the organisation forward - given the politicking involved? Would love to see it happen.

I'm not going to blame Everton for this. They're a football club. But the RFL should have been on hand with branded Ashes RL balls - complete with ABK Beer Test Series logos. It's a brown M&M moment. If you're not doing the small unimportant things, what important things are you missing.

I know it's a fluff piece so there will be a lot of retrospective justification but ... (a) I don't really believe the reasoning but, more importantly, (b) I don't like this idea of pushing the same groups around the grounds. Wembley should definitely be being marketed to people who will only go to that game and who do not go to RL games week in week out.

I think it went through a phase of being common but, thankfully, seems to have died down now.

The words they use and the opinions they express kind of give away they they often really don’t.

It’s because it’s pretty late if you’re selling a major event in London to be held during a very busy period of events in London. HTH.

Officially or an assumption following the Vegas score?

The only way you sell many at Wembley given the Everton new stadium draw - and this is a good thing - is if you pitch it at people who are highly unlikely to attend tests two and three. Downside for me, only one I can see so far, is no announcement for women's games which means that either they will be added on double headers (versus or not versus Australia, it won't matter) with no value, or, my suspicion, the women won't be playing at all.

I'd reply but there's this massive new moon that's just hoved into view.