Damien

It's galling how the NRL has the NZRL acting like a subservient child that it throws scraps to. That is even more so when it is the NRL that restricts the games that NZ can play and starves it of its number 1 revenue generating tool. The NRL gets far more out of NZ through the TV deal and players than it ever puts back in. The NZRL shouldn't be short of money for things like the junior Kiwis and a NZ 'A' team.

This is the obvious solution that I have always wanted. The Pacific Championship can be mid season, same with some sort of European competition then we alternate matches, tours, 4 nations type events between the northern and southern hemispheres at the end of the season. Again it's just the obvious solution and would grow the international game hugely.

International RL is really enough to make you cry. I remember arguing on here time and again what a bad move scrapping mid season internationals was. You can't just have no international game for 11 months and expect it to grow or maintain any kind or interest. It's so bleedingly obvious. How RL can continually shoot itself in the foot is beyond me.

Absolutely, let's not forget before the Dolphins maiden season they were completely written off with many having them as certainties for the wooden spoon because they struggled to sign players and had to bolster their squad with what were seen as average players. They over achieved massively compared to predictions and have improved on that this year.

The point is obviously very valid and borne out by the stats. The competition just feels different to me. On a weekly basis teams, on the whole, are more competitive and the standard is higher. Teams all spend up to the cap and the difference between the haves and have nots is much less. Many teams have star players too. All this make me feel like teams are much more capable of building and improving. I completely understand that is subjective.

Some really interesting changes that are bound to cause controversy so late in the day. Obviously to thwart legal challenges though:

Lights the touchpaper:

For what?

Playing barely any games and getting rid of mid season games does tend to reduce players switching.

This has always been the case with Sky though.

The Emirates crowd has just been used as a distraction anyway and to move the goalposts after he was called out for his original point and claims about heartland crowds.

Packed wasn't it. As was the England v Fiji game at Hull

Well if there are so many posters saying this it should be easy for you to quote them.

What have other posters who went to these games got to gain by saying he is wrong? I mean you can either believe them, and the organisers, or choose to believe someone that constantly plucks 'facts; out of thin air to back up negative posts.

You are just making this up.

You can stand by it but you were wrong, hence moving the goalposts. Now you are doing so again. I was at the England v France game and the crowd was absolutely 20k+ plus and in the region of what was announced. If you don't believe it then that's on you.

Your point was fans will only turn out for matches against Australia and NZ. You can't just say a World Cup is different when that statement is shown to be incorrect. World Cups are different for all different reasons, the promotion, marketing and lead in time are completely different for starters compared to cobbled together fixtures a few months in advance. Let's try that for a test match and see how we get on before making blanket statements.

It isn't. They plainly need to be offered something much better to relinquish control and future revenue. They need to be offered something much better than the private equity they've already turned down and the path they've set out on with IMG. All of those involved various elements, money in the case of private equity and a path to a better competition and more professional approach with IMG with the aim of driving revenue. If the NRL offer a compelling case beyond those then I'm all ears and I'm sure the clubs will be.

I suppose you can say that if you ignore 20k+ crowds v France, PNG, Ireland and Fiji.

It also removes the main thing, there would need to be something huge in it for clubs. Clubs like Wigan, Leeds, Saints, Warrington, Catalans are big rich clubs in their own right with assets and millionaire/billionaire owners. They don't need to just hand over control and future revenue to the NRL without something big in return. The main difference between these clubs and their NRL counterparts, and why the NRL has pulled so far ahead since 2015 when the TV deal practically doubled, is the money caused by those TV deals. The salary caps were broadly similar previous to this. It is those deals that has made clubs profitable, fully funded increases in player wages, salary caps and then some and is giving each NRL club a grant around $20 million. Unless that kind of money floods into SL, and the RL market in the UK is as different as you can get, I'm not sure what is in it for the big SL clubs. Anything else is something we should be doing through IMG anyway.

So much can change in that time and with new NRL clubs on the horizon I'm not sure you can really plan like that. Even if you did there is little guarantee its not going to fall through.

English heritage players. Rather than addressing criticism of this they've simply stopped showing the clubs lads play for this year.

RU were that troubled they changed their eligibility rules and copied RL to allow players to swap, introduced new Super RU teams and introduced their own Pacific Cup. They were on the rack and scared of this RL juggernaut taking over. All the while RL couldnt have done a better job of trying to kill it by doing the bare minimum, scrapping mid season matches and playing at some strange venues.

I know Saints have had injuries but they were hardly firing even before this. Giving Wellens another year seems stranger by the minute. I'm loathe to write off Saints but they do seem to be going through that changing of the guard phase with no one else really coming through. It happens to all clubs, and Saints have certainly rode the storm better than most, but a poor coach doesn't help and only makes it worse. Roby gone, the likes of Lomax, Percival, Walmsley and Makinson (who's leaving anyway) looking like the better days are behind them, the next bright hope in Lewis Dodd not doing it and leaving. Then you have a number of very average players who just aren't doing it. In great teams these players always get pulled up but when that changes they begin to look like the average players that they are.

They didn't do much to try and be competitive the previous time they were promoted either.