Dave T

Yeah, we should have persevered with playing the injured Hayes.

Yes, this bit made me chuckle. The lack of self-awareness is genuinely staggering.

I mean, im perfectly happy with my involvement in RL coaching over the years. I just have no idea what it has to do with anything here. As you say, its a childish attempt to discredit views when it does nothing of the sort.

What are you.banging on about?

We've had tonnes of great RL players from outside the Heartlands. Some of them have become genuine legends of our sport. You are ignoring facts. Pretty much all of our money throughout history has been spent in the heartlands and we admitted last week we can't develop.enough players for.

Havent a clue what's going on there tbh mate. And that's a pretty good example. A far bigger club, in a far bigger sport, and most people dont have a clue what's happening.

A competent board would know who experts are.

Meh. I suppose the skill is knowing who are the real experts. If youre hanging round with the 5% it suggests they arent the experts.

100% this. Add to the fact that Salford are (at the moment) still just playing games, and have even managed to win a couple. RL fans are often too self-loathing - sports fans in all team sports have seen clubs in financial difficulties. None of this is new.

It shows how dangerous these people can be. Focus on the heartlands as we have for the last 130 years whilst accepting that the heartlands can't provide the number of players the sport needs as we increase the overseas quota to ten. If people can't see the direct link to these two things,,,

Yeah, we've done really well to hire two identikit 'leaders'.

Rhodri Jones as MD should be the mouthpiece of RL Com tbh. He is silent.

We shouldn't forget, that there is a huge list of terrible owners, who just so happen to have made money elsewhere. Would you want Koukash running RL for example? Many clubs will be run terribly by rich people over the years - and that isn't just in our sport. We can't ignore that.

This country has shown time and again that we don't value 'experts'.

I've always been a big fan of Bennett, but we can't overlook his actions on that tour.

Let's hope for Bennett and see if he experiments with Blake Austin in the wing for the Aussies, dragging their jersey into disrepute!

This para: "The clubs have told us they want sensible, coherent strategies that puts their needs at the heart of what the centre does, with a regulatory environment that actually makes life easier for the clubs that do so much to provide wonderful entertainment for all of us." Well, yeah, of course that's what the clubs want. But actually, this really shouldn't be all about the clubs needs. They come and go. And which clubs needs get met? The strategies should be all about what is best for the sport of RL in the UK. This is no more than a club-led coup. They wanted a club led review. They want club led strategies. The clubs want to lead the game. Even though they've shown time and again that they arent capable of leading the sport. The regulatory bit basically means they dont want to be held to any standards. We're back to 14 years ago when Wood's RFL scrapped licensing because the admin was hard. Grading is going.

I agree. Decisions like this really can only be justified if it had a plan attached to it. If a pathways strategy was announced alongside it to show we had a plan to go the other way in say a decade, then it'd be easier to live with.

Everyone here loves it. Nothing else to say really...

This is what I touch on with regards to further problems, but in reality, our pathways as they are are very unlikely to deliver scores of.world class athletes. Wire signed Russell this year who is probably an example of the kind of player we are talking about here. He has been deemed not good enough for Wire and the British lads have overtaken him. I dont like the decision, but there is an argument that suggests this will make the on field game better right now. Whether that is worth it for the longer term impacts is the big issue, id argue no.

I think this is right. It doesn't necessarily follow that these players will be worse than the alternatives. In fact there is argument that this will increase quality of players for less money that can be used on marquees etc. Of.course there are all.psrts of other reasons as to why this is a bad idea, but not necessarily a standards thing.

I think this is right. Where my worry comes in (and it may be unfounded) is that the first two Tests had unique elements that led to them selling out. Headingley is too small a ground and naturally sold out, and Everton had that new stadium element plus scarcity created by the Leeds venue. This became a bit of a phenomenon in the RL world and was unprecedented. Wembley doesn't have any of the above elements - huge venue, not always viewed favourably by fans - and while I think the initial batch of sales was the benefit from the above - this does now mean that the rest of the sales will come from traditional sales and marketing by the RFL, rather than a viral thing. That doesn't fill me with confidence too much tbh. Hopefully the 30k is so far ahead of where we would normally be that if we do sell a standard 30k or so using traditional methods, then it equates to a good crowd.

Yeah, I share some of these concerns, but this could just be a reflection on how positive the initial sales were for the Ashes. I suppose it shouldn't be out of the question to sell 30k from now, and if we are genuinely over that 30k mark then mid-60k would be a record breaking crowd for this.

Still looks pretty sluggish tbh (with the caveat that we are still 3m away). There are huge blocks in the lower tier with barely a ticket sold. And some of those marked as sold out in the lower tier are sitting with companies like SportsBreaks etc. It's noticeable that they used the 30k figure (which I expect to be PR guff) and have never released another number above that, despite apparently hitting that mark over 2 months ago and sales being so strong that they had to release more tickets (at cheaper prices).

I do fear we are looking at this the wrong way if we believe the solution is to focus on getting in schools in Runcorn and the likes. Of course we should be doing more and more where we currently are and broadening our activity there, but I worry that we are just playing round the edges with this. The amount of players we get from many smallish towns across the North of England is pretty staggering as it is, but we can't just keep bleeding this dry. I think the reality of the situation is that to fix and widen our talent pool in the UK, we are going to need to invest in growth/expansion and it's gonna be hard and expensive. And RL as a sport just doesn't do very well when things are hard and expensive.