gingerjon

Really good to hear

It's 210 miles from London to Llanelli. Doncaster is closer.

Sam Kerr, by herself, earns more than the total salary cap for an NRLW team. Clearly the AFL are pouring money into a big old pit, but that complacency about soccer better not be standard amongst NRL people.

"almost half of all sports participants in Parramatta are choosing soccer over AFL and rugby league" Yeah, great news.

I'm including it because it did get to the point of having players 'signed' up to it but I do completely take your point.

Rugby League has, through its history, had a recurring habit of going for the guillotine option whenever it finds it has some clubs that don't *quite* fit for reasons of not being strong enough, being too far away (etc). I don't think there is an easy or obvious solution to the imbalance in League One but I'd take an unbalanced league that keeps clubs alive over a 'solution' that effectively ends their existence.

I read a really nice interview with some male professional academy players who were talking about how cool it was/is that there have been medal winning sides in women’s sports with partners and spouses playing alongside each other. The kids are alright. Mostly.

If you missed the women's FA Cup final yesterday then you missed an absolute classic. Everything a final should be. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/61458528

Assume that the Redtails is another organisation, how many is that they've had who don't/didn't talk to each other? AMNRL, USARL, NARL, California RL, Redtails ... all inside 20 years?

I suspect it's been made clear - or as clear as things ever are in rugby league - that USA Women can't enter World Cup qualifiers unless they're under the direct control of the sanctioning body recognised by IRL.

This seems less of a further split and more of a gluing things back together?

I didn't know I needed a Kids in the Hall reunion series but it turns out that I did need a Kids in the Hall reunion series.

Ah, that makes a lot more sense.

That's a bit overly fatalistic in my opinion - and I'm not sure you believe it too, unless you think that there is a power beyond our control which means that, for example, Warrington, Wigan and the rest can never again achieve the dizzy heights of crowd averages of a thousand or so more than they are getting now.

They were winning in higher leagues in seasons with lower averages than now.

It's possible. I don't remember that but it sound like the kind of odd thing that does the rounds.

Yes - this would be c.1987. 1988 at a push. I've just checked and their average this season is their highest for 20 years.

Werder win 2-0 and, with that, book their (our) return to the Bundesliga.

It is incredible the increase in support that so many clubs are seeing across the board. I have a memory of going to see Stockport 'back in the day' and there being well under 3,000 there for a Football League match.

Didn't see this coming. Happy to eat a bit of humble pie.

The difficulty for RL - although as a whole it may not care - is that in churn you look to replace and, right now, there are objectively fewer people involved with the game in areas like London and the South East than there were ten years ago. The people who grew up, moved on, discovered handball (etc) have not been replaced. If they had been then the clubs and fans that were here ten years ago would either still be here or their replacements would be visible. The games those fans could go to would be obvious. (etc) That is not the case.

Are they still going? Not sure I'd heard of them doing anything for a while.

West Wales will have travelled the 255 miles to Cornwall RLFC today and, assuming google maps is correct, will have done so without passing through a single town that has a senior rugby league team.

It looks like being a long, long afternoon for Wigan