Dave T

I dont have an issue with the view. Again, i assumed you knew what I was saying, but again, I gave you too much credit. It is universally accepted that the game here needs huge change. Were you as supportive of Derek Beaumont and his critical views?

This is no more than trolling.

PVL's language is important here. Because this is who you are looking to go into partnership with here. Now there is an argument that if we form a partnership that he is our aggressive bully, rather than being someone who will trash us publicly and threaten us with his independent IRL hat on. Of course I understand why people would want to jump into bed with him even with things like this, when the alternative is a leader who aspires to breakeven.

No,its irrelevant because my post stated that this is poor language for somebody looking to invest/takeover/partner. Mentioning McManus is literally irrelevant.

McManus isnt looking to move in on the game here, therefore your point is irrelevant and not related to my point. But, you know that.

Its far more aggressive and not something a quality partner would say. Abdo didnt, IMG didnt - PVL is an aggressive bully.

Its really odd language to use during an investment/takeover formation of a partnership call it whatever you like.

"Our objective, put simply, is to restore the sport to the breakeven position it has enjoyed previously, ostensibly prior to the Covid crisis." I'm not one who bags Wood really. But this is one of the worst objectives I've ever heard from a sport's leader.

I assume Saints haven't been paying their player pensions? What a result!

That isny what this is in any form. A CEO can be sacked at any time.

Let's be clear when we talk about independence, it is from the clubs, not the ARLC. And a big difference between the NRL and SL is that decisions/support has always come with a bag of money. SL clubs have a fairly long history of voting in favour of things that cost them money.

Wasn't one of the recommendations to have a strategy for expansion areas, particularly London and France? It feels like that could have been the way to get over any challenges that grading brings for expansion clubs.

Well, thats exactly my point, rather than a straight up comparison. I think personally people are massively overselling the Ashes factor. A huge impact was the Everton stadium imo, supported by the biggest Magic ever on the back of it. Wembley was strong on the back of the buzz of a sellout at Everton. Stadium selection and scheduling are always hugely factors for RL internationals. And we arent always very good at those things.

I do find it interesting that a lot of people's idea around what we should do just repeat a lot of the things that have been controversial in the past. Many of us think we should have a London team, but what happens when they come in and trundle along at the bottom with small crowds as they have for many years? Some are suggesting reduced funding, which is something that many complain about almost daily. Some are suggesting increasing the comp on a bit of a whim rather than any kind of strategic decision or because the game is setup for this. Many want a different system, when others complain we keep changing the system. Its as much of a mess as it ever has been.

Analysing international crowds is always challenging. For example, we got 44k in London versus the Kiwis, but 12m later we got 36k versus the Aussies at the same ground.

The reason we have gone soft is because of the mentality that everything is an accident or its too harsh to ban players, so we cant have it both ways. The reason I dont think we can ban players based on injuries is because it doesnt offer any kind of consistency or rational thinking really. An innocuous tackle can lead to an injury or a serious tackle can see no hurt caused. A serious tackle should be judged based on the actual tackle, irrespective of the outcome. Particularly as the ban was issued before the severity came out. But, people have downplayed and complained about punishments, so here we are.

Thats too basic a solution, but it is ridiculous that such a serious tackle is only given three matches. We've just given up pretending we care about player safety tbh. But then plenty moan when we send players off or ban them, including you. People often point to years gone by. Well, this kind of tackle wouldn't have even been a foul in years gone by.

Probably semantics. If you run the company, you are in control, that's a takeover in my book. We know he is not taking over the clubs.

I suppose this is my point. It's all vague claims of 'investment, independent, control, partnership' etc - which mean relatively little based on what we know. It is surprising how little is in the public domain. It is never clarified as to whether we are just talking about SLE, RLC, RFL, European RL in totality... This is an interesting quote though from PVL: "If we put the investment in, then we need to control it independently. They'll certainly be consulted but the model will never work if it's a self-interest model and some of those clubs will have to relinquish control. "It's like shareholders in a company. If you're a shareholder, you don't operate the company - you trust a board of directors to run a company, to maximise the revenues and then maximise the dividends back to you. "That's the model we want - we want to be able to run the company and maximise their returns."

Yes, we really should have seen growth by now, so I would expect much bigger crowds than what we saw back then. More games should pretty much be selling themselves by now.

I think this is one of the challenges when discussing this deal as an outsider - it is a little vague on what exactly the scope of any 'takeover' would be. We have sometimes heard they want everything, we have heard them refer to SL, but then NRL is also used when we are talking about the ARLC, so it is all pretty fluid. Simplifying the model would be a good outcome of this, however it's only recent years that they complicated it somewhat!

I can live with the odd burst of pricing offers, but it does look like a very affordable event. The Triple Header, including Tonga v Samoa which should be a huge game, has tickets starting at less than £10 and a family of 4 for £25 or so. There is a hell of a range, so hopefully the expensive seats being sold mean that we get a good return on the tournament.

Yeah, i think these are nice ideas. It does seem a bit odd that we dont appear to do much to sell our clubs at this event. I always think it's a bit of a fine line though with a fanzone, do we want so much going on outside that fans stay outside. I dont think we are a million miles off. Tgere is probably enough to spend 30-60mins in tgere and that maybe about right.

35k for the final is decent if true at this stage. Think the last one there only got 40k

My experience is that it was somewhere between these two views. I thought it was a better one, but I do think it could have benefited from some seating areas, or a beer tent, or maybe even a fake pitch for kids to play rugby on etc. But I thought it was solid, rather than spectacular.