The Parksider

Sory Snapski, this is the one "on the button"

1. Davey, Lenigan, Hughes, Moss, O'connor, Caddick, Moran, Hudgell, wilkinson etc do not take risks, they waste money on a favourite toy. Cumbria will be in SL when they can find someone to waste money on it. 2. I cannot get mi head round that mate. Workington have never been so low for so long, how can that be fun? Haven look to be going the same way. A lower division merger would be so revolutionary, so positive. It's not SL or nothing is it? there is life outside SL and I have been to NL matches and NL finals and it's a fact. There's still life and joy. If Cumbria is such a hotbed of the game why not a cumbria RL annually clearing up on the NL trophies????? you never know that may in time be a stepping stone to SL........

I have had a look at the table and you stand a point off the play off places. I recall Wigan being second bottom well into the season a couple of years back. No moans, no groans, and big crowds turning up to back the side, and back the side they did. Losing a match, or 3 matches or 23 matches is not proof that players are not interested. I suggest you and your fellow supporters back the club and team, and respect the opposition or we are looking at 1964 all over again. And that will be the fans fault not the club's.

God given right to win eh Mick. Come on, give some respect to the opposition. Do you see Quins as some sort of "if we cant beat these" merchants. This is Superleague and all the clubs can beat each other. You've had a winning streak, have the good grace to accept a losing one. The idea the Bradford players did not care/bother is also disrespectful. You'll be a great RL media man once you pack in the nonsense......

Mick - you need therapy and the best therapy is a refereeing course, and a few games under your belt facing people who think like you mate no offence intended ever

That is so so true. When clubs get down to the last 6 fans will they still reject radical changes in case they upset the six?? What sane business would pay any heed to a dwindlling customer base? They would seek to remodel and attract a new bigger one wether the old customers liked it or not. I suppose the answer to that may be the usual "it's not a business it's a sport". Well if fans want their clubs to run as a "sport" then join the amateurs and sport away..... I have always noted how county games in Cumbria over the years seem to have attracted really good crowds and I think the thousands beyond the "refuseniks" would create a potential, but it will all come back to the money to provide the stadium at least - and even then more will be needed. HKR's break even crowd is 10,000. Now I'm not sure that's achievable by Cumbria especially if they languish in an SL bottom four. I like the idea of a merged club in NL1 - they'd probably win that annually by a mile. (Hides from Derwent - just a bit of fantasy mate, your clubs are nowt to do with me)

Human beings inconsistent - never? Again your mind stretches the point beyond belief. You have NO evidence for "highly inconsistent" and no evidence that Mr. Cummins does not do everrything he can to try to acieve that consistency". Your mind is creating nonsenses Mick, why not drop this silly obsession??

There you go Mick. Your brain took in the article title and applied your own twisted thinking to it and out it popped as something else. I hope AA has shown you the way Mate. It does you no good at all to go on thinking the way you do on Refs.....

No he doesn't have a point, it's ###### to get the likes of you reading the articles Mick. If you are going to get into RL media and commentating, and I think you will be brilliant, you have got to stop this rubbish. All the TRL fans on here who watch games as neutrals never have much of a problem over refs and decisions and none believe any refs have any bias. It's all in your heads. The bias comes from you and is directed at the referees.

When we had P & R a few years ago Dewsbury were battling for promotion to SL and IIRC managed an average gate of about 1300 around that time. Last year according to the Gillette yearbook they posted an average of 1263 playing in NL1. Back at the turn of the millenium Batley returned an average attendance for the season of 837, now after Franchising they return an average attendance of 856. With the deepest of respect Superleague or Franchising a.k.a. is simply not responsible for the supposed "falling off of attendances" and the "giving up" of spectators in the NL's to the extent often portrayed here. People get fed up with RL and don't bother going for a whole myriad of reasons, it's just so easy to pin things on SL or no P & R. I recall Dewsbury in 1972-4. I was there at their Yorks Cup Final, famous championship win and their epic semi finals and at that time their Chairman Mick Lumb had a go at the town for not turning up in numbers to watch one of the best Dewsbury teams ever. If there are low attendances in NL and NL1 your first stop is the creation of a divide between the clubs in NL and NL1. The likes of Keighley, Dewsbury and Batley do not belong in any shape or form next to the Skolars, Gatesheads and blackpools. When the NL clubs were split many chairman of the clubs losing out in the split warned that that would decimate their clubs, and they were right. NL1 is a graveyard. If the attendances are poor in the NL's then look to the size of the towns that are there to provide spectators. Many are small towns in the very first place, and wouldn't provide much more support for soccer than they do for RL and in places like Workington you can P & R your way all the way up to play Manchester United. But P & R doesn't make for good attendances either at Town (who have it) or at the Workington version of the reds. Clubs like York, Oldham and Swinton have been on hard times for years, but it wasn't SL who ran them down and sold their wonderful grounds. If the attendances are low then try looking at the competition. I happen to believe that NL is a marvellous place to have a vibrant competition, but the darn thing doesn't start till well into the season because there's a silly manufactured cup to fill out the too short league season. It's a division in which Batley and Dewsbury should meet every year as should Workington and Whitehaven or keighley and Halifax. But they don't. If franchising is responsible for anything in the NL's it's using NL as a holding competition for Widnes who should have gone in SL last time, and Toulouse who the RFL bottled out putting in, so as you say, they are dumped on you. But removing Franchising isn't the key to making the best of the NL and taking it forward, it's creating a 14 club NL and bringing back the Workingtons, Rochdales, York's and Oldhams from death valley, dumping out the Superleague wannabees into SL, and getting on with doing the best for our traditional second tier of small clubs. Yes many of these small clubs can look back on the success Saints and Leeds have now and conclude that they can do it again. My own club won every trophy in 1908 but that was 1908. The conditions then were low mobility for fans and speccies, high levels of local players such you could get a winning sides from your juniors like Hunslet did in 1908 and like Castleford and Featherstone did in the 1980's in living memory. That has gone and it went before SL ever came along, conditions are different nowadays. Today we have to set up our game according to the way things are now. The best young players will travel to the bigger clubs and have no loyalty anymore - just a career to develop to pay their bills. The fans will gravitate to the bigger clubs with the best players on show. You no longer support Hunslet because you can't afford the bus fare to Headingley........... As much as we'd like to, we can't recreate the past. But I do think we should be honest and not take the view that Superleague or Franchising for that matter is what has taken the past away from us.............

You always advocate something then try to logically analyse how it will work which is good stuff. The idea RL is such a great game that if presented to a population at top level they will automatically flood to it has as you say been disproven. many places already have their soccer to watch primarily and secondly they have their beloved Union which is clearly preferred to league in non league areas. It's too easy to offer this idea that all it takes for a big crowd is marketing. That costs money and the return is limited, even if you gave away unlimited free tickets there would be still the barrier of who wants to watch RL - their time is money and they won't waste that?? We watch RL in the northern towns bacuse its ingrained in the culture. That to me is the answer. If we can build good crowds over several generations by having the game extensively played in an area people will to a point gravitate to it. In short there's no short term fix. If we want crowds to grow in big population areas we have to grow an RL cluture there. Looking at generations here. As for lowering the salry cap to bring in more clubs to max cap that is great in theory using a calculator and numbers to get to a proposal. Any such proposal means dragging the big six clubs who manage maximum cap right down. Even if they would wear it would it really be as simple as that?? All the fans are in the big clubs - Hull, Leeds, Wigan, Saints, Wire, Fartown can draw 70,000 plus fans because they are who they are. Will dragging them down be such a good idea. I am not sure.......

Being strong enough to re-instate P & R needs the elite to be "strong" and clubs outside it to also be "strong". The current definition of "strong" may be decent attandances in a decent ground to generate revenue, and a decent side being kept rejuvinated by a player development policy to generate competetiveness. I can only really see half a dozen strong clubs so far. If you drop the revenue required by dropping the cap say to

QUOTE (Jimmy B @ Jul 5 2010, 01:03 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My original question, what has the professional game got to show for an injection of

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QUOTE (Jimmy B @ Jul 4 2010, 01:34 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Just what has the Professional game got to show for the money they have received from Sky over the last 15 years ? You simply answer your own question. Senior RL was largely semi professional in 1995, the money from SKY has created a fully professional Rugby League, saved our best players from going to union and underpinned enough interest in the game at junior and amateur level to keep it alive enough to have a future of sorts. It's a decent enough return given the state the game was in in 1995 and given that the free gangway gave RU the opportunity to clean up on "rugby" per se. Now what's your problem?

Well we've managed to get to 14 clubs in SL and I hold out hopes of stadia for Wakey and Cas. With Widnes and Toulouse that could be 16 clubs capable of getting to or near full cap. Better than the GP. If we lose clubs from that and nobody is big enough to step up then there's options to drop the numbers in the SL. I'm not advocating excluding any club, the question is how will an NL club compete with such a big gap, OR how would closing the gap by reducing the cap and spreading the money say across 20 clubs (add Leigh, Fax, Fev and sheffield to SL) impact on the game. Those are questions regarding the choice between exclusion and inclusion. "Your not including us" is the cry, if radical changes were made to address that the cry would be "you are holding us back" from the top end of SL....... As for fans capabilities of "allegiance transfer" it's probably low with died in the wool fans and high with future fans yet to choose where to watch the RL.

The abrasive attitude and bad manners I agree about Terry. I agree the game now belongs to everyone. Young and old and ladies can play, you can play anywhere in the country, you can watch at all levels. I'm not sure the slogan applies to the professional game. That belongs to the businesses that make it up, and the moneymen who patronise it, and at the end of the day they vote to decide how things are organised.

Having witnessed "one division" of pre 1973 days and spent 45 years watching the game many many games are fairly meaningless. P & R was a help I believe, but those were the days when you could go up, and come down and no damage done go up again. We were yo-yo-s at Hunslet!!! Today as we know the game has made decisions that have altered things and there's no real prospect of P & R working unless the SKY money was split say 20 ways. Even if it did work it could do the game financial damage. That's another debate. I think we all have periods where we get fed up of the game, find other thing stimulating and change our habits. Maybe a lack of interest in games is down to many different things and easy to pin on a lack P & R at the moment. But the bigger factor than P & R for me is a Superleague that after 14 years has not built up what it intended to build up, an Australian style comp where you can be bottom one year and top another. If SKY won't dilute the money to clubs, which I doubt, then it's ever onwards towards a truly competetive competition, at the snails pace we are going. Fans at smaller clubs have already or will over time decide wether they want to watch RL in the NL's without any prospect of getting into SL. Uncle Mo would probably have no sympathy and tell them "there's an SL club near you mate" and I know that's not good enough for some individuals. But as long as SL is good enough for the vast bulk of paying fans on TV and at grounds, how can individuals ever win the day on a "principle" of all inclusiveness in the face of economic reality.

Yes of course, all it can take is a rich backer to pull out and several SL clubs could be stuffed in an instance. If you look at Superleague it's either well off clubs with good turnovers from high attendances or not so well off clubs backed by rich businessmen. Except for er, Cas and Wakefield, and guess who are most tipped to be out! To be fair these two clubs manage to stay away from the bottom of the league, which is a good effort, but if say they went to make way for Toulouse - who promise rich backing in SL and Widnes who have a rich backer, then we will finally end up with 14 SL clubs all with money and 22 small NL clubs all with no money. The gulf between the divisions will then be enormous. There'll be no practical prospect of P & R and the only way to be promoted will be by default i.e. a rich backer pulling out of an SL club. Then we may see a small NL club get in- but what chance will they have?

Hull.K.R did not "manage it" without

You can be promoted for me, I'm just pointing out thet the RFL do not want the Catalans, Crusaders or Quins relegating. Likely to cause their demise and take the game in France and new areas backwards. The closed shop of SL seems to me to be a method of ensuring these expansion clubs can build and develop the game elesewhere other than the M62 mate. If you believe expansion at SL level is a nonsense then I will understand. The RFL won't. But the cost of any set up we go for has two sides to it P & R may bring more spectators one way, it may lose spectators another. However spectators is not by any sense of the imagination the biggest or the only income our game has. For instance if SL ends up being an all M62 league with a lot of small clubs SKY could cut the contract - who knows. If a club goes up and they can't compete will they take any away fans once the going gerts tough? Will they draw any occasional fans at the big clubs??? Maybe Fev should not be denied a right to be promoted in a purist sense, but if they were promoted would they be able to compete??

I think you need to explain what I'm whistling now as opposed to before. Mind reading isn't my strong point amongst other major weaknesses.

What about the other side of the coin. Les Catalans relegated Fev promoted - any nett loss in spectators there? Any loss of a major international??

I say suppose, you say seems........ I say toma.toe you sat tomay toe.... Let's call the whole thing off......

Awwww P & H I wanted Tro to answer that Anyway I appreciate your answer but cannot agree with it. The free gangway enables "Rugby" players to cross codes and back. It enables RL players to go to RU for more money. Maybe you should consider that reduced wages may see established players more likely to go to the NRL or go to Union, and the best young RL players to switch codes if they feel they can/want to make a living out of Rugby.