gingerjon

That's all good. But then no comments about minimum SL standards. Because you can't have both. You can either have guaranteed promotion or you can have enforced standards.

London and the wider south east has lots more RU than RL. It does not, however, have lots of RU. Not really.

A lot of this whole thing, even down to the fact that it’s being led by a 71 year old from out of town, just feels like it’s rehashing old ideas - and not even improving them, just kind of pretending they’ve not been done before so it’s all whizzy and new. They’ll be talking about getting onto the information superhighway soon.

Surely it's just football fans not real rugby league people. It's always football fans not real rugby league peopel.

They showed what looked a like a reasonable section of Wigan fans during the women’s final. I didn’t watch the 1895 final to have anything to compare it against.

I got up very early this morning! Time for another coffee.

I don’t think that’s remotely true.

Oh god, the zombie idea of believing that salvation lies in itinerant Aussies is back. There's some chinks of light in a lot of the rest but this needs properly killing off.

No issue with that argument. I'm sure the players love it. The issue is with the structure around it.

Technicality in that Bulmer - who I'd never heard of so have just looked up - was knighted for his public services whereas (let's assume) Boston is being knighted for services to rugby league?

The RFL have a self inflicted problem in that they have two games out of three that can easily be said to not "deserve" to be at Wembley. And a further self inflicted problem that triple headers are a monumentally stupid idea and that any reduction to double header (itself a stupid idea but marginally less so and at least you can make it coherent as an event) immediately devalues the excluded game in the eyes of most people. It should either be a men's day out - 1895 Cup followed by Challenge Cup. Or it should be Challenge Cup Finals day. Ideally it should be neither and all three games would stand alone. But, having gone down this bargain basement route, the RFL should absolutely stick with it.

De Bruyne makes it 4-3. Blimey.

Belgium led 3-0 Wales tie it at 3-3 Belgium go back ahead 4-3 But then ... VAR It's now 3-3 again ... Absolute scenes.

How about, for a change, we keep things as they are. And I write as someone who thinks the set up is ridiculous but who think you only make it worse with constant tinkering.

I’m not sure there’s anything more rugby league than reacting to something not going perfectly by suggesting everything about it needs to change.

It seems to be a particularly RL problem

That wasn’t the experience with the Bash though.

Volleyball and beach volleyball, and futsal, football and beach soccer are each, respectively, administered by the same IOC member governing body. It’s not that there’s a taboo, it’s that we’re not even members.

Which leagues are/were playing this weekend? I only really half know the fixtures for London and they aren't playing this weekend.

BBC Ad is at 1:56 ish: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002ddbw/rugby-league-challenge-cup-2025-final-warrington-wolves-v-hull-kr

The women's final, on the other hand, is down to 8,810 from 9,600 last year. A higher crowd for the men is not guaranteeing more eyeballs for the midday kick off curtain raiser.

63,278 is decent.

The Ashes ad was great.

That’s just nonsense.

The June international window is full of this kind of rubbish.