koli

A much better watch than soccer which imo relies much more on a big noisy crowd to add to the specatcle.

That came out garbled! Brian Lockwood having watched the 78 Bradford Test .

Having just watched the 78 Brafrom an even earlier dford Ashes Brian Lockwood has to be in there and of course from an even earlier period Brian Bevan on the wing.

Forgot what a good game it was.Close at Wigan,won this and then got battered at Leeds...setting the pattern for the next 40 years! Suppose the warning signs were there in the last 10 mins and they definitely were at Saints a week later. Biggest crowd in maybe 10 years watched in stunned silence as they ran us ragged. The game was definitely on an upswing after the nadir of the early 70s.Lots of good rugby,top class players coming back from Aus (Phil Lowe,Mal Reilly,Gary Stevens,Steve Naughton etc) and a real feeling of optimisim. The 1982 Invincibles ,recession and miners strike took care of that! Watching these older matches Im warming to the idea of bringing back a 5m offside line, no messing at the ruck and fewer interchanges.Probably too late for contested scrums but messy as they were they provided some uncertainty and a a greater willingness to try moves in possession.

A bit off topic but if Oldham found a Ken Davey or similar and built a reasonably successful SL side playing in Oldham would it be able to rebuild crowds to its old potential in the 7 to 10k region ? Or have time and demographics made that unlikely?

Why...Queens Park Rangers,Glasgow Rangers?

The registered offivial name of the club at Company House is and always has been St Helens RFC .

Contested scrums were certainly messy but unlike Union scrums were packed down and fed quickly.They certainly added an element of unpredictability with a relatively high percentage going against the head.

Seamus McCallion .

1972 Saints v Leeds was a fair match.

In 62/63 A massive fixture backlog following the big freeze had to be cleared. Game less "intense" then but players part time and no subs. Maybe a bit of emergency rule tinkering to allow today -5 yard defensive line and 2 subs only to be used in case of injury.

At the outbreak of WW2 the clubs agreed to cut pay by 50pct and agreed to blackball any player who refused.In practice it proved unenforceable as clubs broke ranks . Today it would be illegal and I can't imagine that any club or SL as an organisation would seriously consider going down that route. Sounds to me more like a wish from an individual at a hard pressed club rather that a real proposition.

If you read the reports out of Aus the NRL are not covering themselves in glory with either the Government or broadcasters. May 28th is very much an aspiration not a done deal.

Swinton had struggled from the late 60s onwards and loss of the ground compounded the decline. Going bust in the early days of SL vlearly hurt both Oldham n Fax.In Oldhams case loss of the ground led to the downward nomad spiral. Halifax retain enough of a core to maybe rebuild if money came in but it's been a long time out of the top league and longer still since the sucess of the late 80s . As Huddersfield have shown it's a big struggle to rebuild after younger spectator generations lost.

I would say Oldham,Swinton and Halifax are former "big clubs" that have fallen away .As many have postulated a club can survive say 10 years in the wilderness but much longer and you start to lose generations of supporters.The former older ones passing away and younger generations never coming in.