Methven Hornet

Desperately tragic news. RIP

WA Reds. Living in Perth, Scotland, Perth WA is kind of a 'sister' city. Also my brother and his family live there.

Borough Park?

Damn! I've just realised that I have missed the Camanachd Cup final between Fort William and Kingussie. I'm not a great fan of shinty but it is usually a great experience to watch the annual showpiece. A more competitive and passionate sporting occasion you'll struggle to find in these islands, and the game holds such a treasured place in the heartland communities that play the game (mostly small highland towns and villages but they do have the odd outpost club in the south - Tayforth in Perth and Glasgow MA, for example). You'll not find that much in the Sunday or Monday morning papers, however, although there will probably be a 'colour-piece' in the Scotsman and the Herald tomorrow - you'll know the type of thing. The thing is the sport has been happy enough to stick with its own 'ethnic' group and has never really made that big a thing about expanding southwards into the big industrial towns and cities. Therefore it remains a regional novelty and doesn't really get the national coverage its regional passion perhaps deserves.

I am in the 'pick one team and stick with it' camp but perhaps that is too idealistic at this stage of the games international development. In that case your idea could be the basis of a compromise - one that is based upon the reality of the sport. Forget the idea of a PI team for the moment and just have the big three at the top. Allowing dual qualified players to switch would benefit the other nations while not depriving the game's professional players from playing at the highest possible level. A Fiji/Australia qualified player could start representative life at a young age with Fiji, bringing great benefit to both himself and the team. When he is good enough to be considered for Origin, and Australian selection, then he formally switches allegiance. When he is no longer good enough for the Kangaroos, although he will almost certainly be good enough, he can play for Fiji again. I'm sure that used to happen in union many years ago - didn't some Aussie internationals go on to play for Argentina and Italy? It just has to be presented as a necessary aid to international development, as you point out cricket gets away with it. Make a virtue out of a necessity! The downside is that you could reinforce the gap between the big three and the rest, but that gap is likely to stay for a long time yet. And we are only talking about dual-qualified players.

Has anyone done any serious investigation as to why we don't get more coverage? Or, more seriously, why our coverage seems to be declining. We could ask, I suppose, but I fear we would get a 'stock' answer such as 'sold our soul to Murdoch', 'you're just a professional version of rugby for which there is no reason anymore' or, the classic 'you are just a regional game, read about your game in the Yorkshire Post'. But would it be interesting to see what attitudes of sports editors are? There's a post on the Community Game forum that describes St Alban's coverage (I think) in their local press. What was excellent coverage declined when a new editor was appointed. It turned out that the new guy had no experience of RL at all but soon came around after a bit of effort from the club. I fear that sort of effort has been made by the RFL at national level, however. The fear I have is that the game is paying the price of its history. It has not expanded anywhere near enough to have buried itself into the national consciousness - and that failure is not just one of growing outside of the northern counties. The overwhelming strength of the game is still limited largely to the northern industrial towns that gave birth to the Northern Union. Go just a few miles from one of the heartland towns and you will find a rugby league wasteland equal to anywhere else in the UK. The work carried out in recent years has been excellent, especially given scarce resources, but this is something that should have happened and been persevered with at the beginning of the 20th century, not the 21st. Another thing that occurs to me, however, is that the game is still anchored in the same northern industrial working class that has always been its base. Unfortunately the world has moved on and that base has declined over the years in terms of size and, arguably, in status, influence and economic well-being. While, as a bloc, the games followers may once have interested sponsors, advertisers and national newspaper editors (and political parties, as it happens!) I don't think that is the case today. Bluntly, and this does sound superficial (but then isn't the UK national press?), the game and it's followers are not fashionable. Union and cricket have the middle classes and the establishment enthusing after them, with soccer mopping up most other people (and notice how some of soccer's more working class supporters complain about being priced out of Premiership football). Playing devil's advocate, what does rugby league offer that makes it attractive to the national press (and remember its nature at present, not how it may have been in the past), given the make-up and backgrounds of its players and supporters?

I often enjoy his posts, and he contributes a lot of information, but he does have a tendency to 'go off on one' and present his opinions as absolute fact (don't know where the hell he gets that from).

To be honest, I thought the monthly mistake was in the 'Grounds for Development' article. Leeds Rhinos are to build a new 10,000 capacity South Stand (modelled on the popular covered terrace at Warrington's HJ) but first they have "to raise some

You must be getting old! The JohnM of the past would have swatted an extreme reaction like that like swatting away a dying autumn wasp! If there is personal abuse do what CKN is advises us to do till he is blue in the face - report it and get on with providing your entertaining but cutting posts. Bowes - there is a difference between an extreme opinion and an 'extreme' lie (I'd like to know the measurement scale). Calm down, make your usually valued contribution in a civil manner and enjoy the debate. Right, the Solomon job over I'm off to put some Sunday morning miles in - hope I don't get lost!

Does it matter?

I would suggest that he be made to watch the match video of Scotland v Lichtenstein a couple of dozen times. Then we'll see where his loyalty really lies.

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten that bit. Get a Super League side in there first, excite people's interest and then take it away from them. The interest has been sparked, though, and the people still want their rugby league! Seriously, a 'model' needs to be found for creating sustainable clubs at all professional levels, particularly at semi-pro level. If sustainable they can be reproduced. That approach could work (although we have not got too good a track record) but it still not the answer to London and the south east - the area that, arguably, is most important to the national papers.

Just as the professional game is overwhelmingly northern, so it is overwhelmingly M62 at its top level as your list highlights. So what should the game do? It has to expand its geographical spread at all levels of the game. I think, finally, that the governing body realises this and is trying to implement expansion, with quite meagre resources and against a lot of internal opposition. As you hint at, waiting for the game at amateur level in expansion areas to 'mature' into a professional level is not going to work. Even our strongest community clubs in the south have failed to make the transition to even the most basic professional level. What is the South Wales method? Using the expertise, enthusiasm and playing resources of an identifiable region, with the necessary financial backing from local business people (with, of course a lot of input from the RFL)? We really have to hope that something like this can work and be reproduced in other areas.

He could at least have ascertained the chances of obtaining an England cap before announcing to the whole RL world that he had changed sides.

HMRC seem to be handing out winding-up orders to rugby/soccer clubs with increasing frequency these days. As JohnM says, brinkmanship.

Right, just had a quick look at those links. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry A wikipedia entry on freemasonry, as potentially accurate/inaccurate as anything on there. Discriminatory? They seem to admit anyone who believes in a 'supreme being', including those from the major world religions, and there are women's lodges. Secret? Is that a problem? To be honest, I haven't a clue which organisations my next door neighbour is a member of - do I need to know? Do I have the right to know? Masonic lodges are allowed to conceal their membership? Aren't other organisations? I don't know who is in, for example, Hull KR Supporters Club and I can't think how I would find out. Is this any different? As for its 'behind doors' activities, why shouldn't it hide them from public scrutiny (if they are illegal then the authorities can investigate). http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/ You'll forgive me if I don't read all those links, won't you, but could you please give me the gist of what the site is watching the Freemasons for? It seems to have a lot of references to Obama - is he a mason? Also, and this seems strange on a site that is for watching Freemasonry, there seems to be quite a few references to Roman Catholicism on this site, including a strange video near the bottom ('Our Lady of Guadalupe') - is OLoG a masonic icon? - and a photo of Notre Dame, Montreal(?). Is this some Dan Brown conspiracy site? If so you should take your views to AOB where a good conspiracy 'discussion' is always welcome. Monty Python, as always, do the business. "Hilarious Monty Python sendup of the Freemasons, their ridiculous secrecy and less than savory business and career preferment practices." says the youtube entry, together with a link to your freemasonry watch site. What the video poster doesn't say is that the sketch also rips the p*** out of those who overly fret about the organisation. RL is not a 'radical' sport, in fact one of its faults is that it has been too conservative and too traditional in its history. It is a sport, a very good one, but not one that needs to be protected from wider society. RL, as I once said in a discussion about gays and RL, needs to be in every corner of society. A frightening thought for some but necessary for the health of the sport. Now could you be a bit more specific about why you don't want masons or freemasonry associated with rugby league? And, in the interests of openness, could you possibly reveal whether you are a member of any organisations (secular or religious) or hold any views that may cause you to be hostile to this group of society?

Given that the sport also has a history of tolerance (doesn't it?), why shouldn't Freemasonry/Freemasons be associated with the sport? I haven't read your links (may do tonight) but don't always believe or take as gospel what an organisation's detractors say. You could make a case against many non-mainstream sections of society based upon that approach. The problem about being a small sport anchored in a relatively small section of society is that we haven't been used to diversity (and, yes, Masons are part of that diversity).

Well, David Hughes' statement certainly puts the 'uncertainty' to bed.

If he was talking about adults or older teenagers then the problem is that the game isn't just about physique or athletic ability. We're talking about competing with the best that Australia and New Zealand can throw at us - players that have been handling and controlling a rugby league ball from almost as soon as they could put one foot in front of another. To be competing with the best, probably in any sport, you need to start when very young to be able to pick up and develop the skills. If he is talking about the very young then how do we get access to them? How do we persuade their parents? What development path and career progression can we show them in, say, Bristol or Norwich to sell them RL over soccer, union or athletics? To my mind the only real way we are going to attract the future quality players from outside the northern heartlands is to continue developing the game at grassroots in tandem with providing quality playing opportunities. Quick fixes won't work.

A few things to bear in mind about those days:- Test matches were shown on terrestrial TV on a Saturday afternoon - while you could argue that this would reduce the match attendance, it was also had a massive marketing effect. GB games were national events, in the public eye and looked attractive enough to want to attend. These days that just isn't the case - the games are played at a strange times on a satellite station. In the early/mid 90s it was just about possible to believe that 1982 had been a temporary low for GB, and that we were improving and catching the Aussies up. Surely it was just a matter of time before we had that historic test series victory. 15/20 years later who really thinks that there is a realistic chance of England (or even GB) getting the better of the Kangaroos? Those Wembley attendances didn't just happen, they were built up over a number of years, using soccer stadiums such as Elland Road and Old Trafford at first. Sure we can moan about the recent marketing of internationals but we are where we are, and we are now used to tests being smaller affairs. It will take years to change this perception. I think there is just about a case for making Wembley the venue for the final, and given a marketing effort that has not been seen in recent years, and the game's fans rallying round, then it could just about be played in front of a decent crowd. Not a semi as well, though.

Fair enough - we'll reconsider the concept when nano-technology has developed to the extent that construction/demolition of a stadium can occur in seconds.

One idea I think Lobby came up with a while ago was to find a patch of land and erect temporary stands. One thing that brought that idea to mind is the current construction of such a stand at Blackpool FC. Reading this thread (especially post #33) shows what can be achieved given just a few weeks construction time (a few weeks more and they could have had a cantilever roof). To adapt Lobby's concept, would it not be possible to buy into, or get a secure lease, at a small non-league soccer, RU or other stadium, one that has a reasonable infrastructure, and then build something similar to Blackpool? It would probably mean a bit of flexibility regarding capacity but, given the special circumstances in London, that could be justified. Even a small stadium + the large temp stand (Blackpool's is 5000 seats I believe) would give a sufficient capacity for London Super League. Plus, as Worcester RU have shown, these constructions are modular and can be incorporated into more permanent structures as and when necessary. I don't know how portable these things are but you could almost imagine packing up the grandstand and moving on should the site not work out. How about London Travellers?

The ground that Fulham/Crusaders used to play at - the Polytechnic ground?

It would have to be an arms-length type of arrangement rather than the governing body itself running the club. A bit like a government/quango set-up. Or would that be a quingo? Sorry...