Dave T

I'm ok with the World Cup opener being at a higher level than a standard England game, but I agree, it should be a showpiece event, that was my point. The WC opener was at a level that I hadn't ever seen for RL though, which is why the rest of the tournament was so naff in this space.

For me, and I know some roll their eyes when we talk about entertainment and fanzones, but these are crucial at the moment. We don't have a huge fan bases for these games, so you have to absolutely delight those who do go. I'm not talking about them nipping to a match and having a perfectly pleasant 2hrs out of the house. They need to be blown away by the event, everything should be best in class, the presentation, the event feel,the food, drink, atmosphere, entertainment merch etc - people should leave buzzing irrespective of the match. They should be so buzzing that the majority of them are pretty much guaranteed to attend again. Marketing the next England game started with this series (and in reality, the series before and so on).

We agree that London should be used. But I think your logic is flawed. Other sports generally play their internationals where they have presence all year round - the word saturated is your interpretation to make the point. It would be a horrible strategy to have all internationals outside of the North of England. The substandard bit is important. There is probably less effort in the England game at the DW than there is a big Wigan game.

I'd add the Newcastle opener for the WC was superb. Great fanzone, entertainment and a theatre piece. Obviously it can't be that level every time, but an England game should absolutely be an event.

I've been banging the drum about your last word for years John.

Sort of. Playing sport where it isn't played the rest of the year is a brave strategy that others don't do. So I actually disagree with your point in the way it's articulated. But obviously we are talking about London, the better way to make the point is that London generally delivers good crowds for England games but was ignored. Because taking your point to its naturaly conclusion may suggest Middlesborough's stadiumw was a good idea.

I do think the crowd at Leeds really showed the challenge we have with selling these games. We know how poor the RFL have been. But that first test was advertising and awareness gold. We had a peak of c800k on BBC and the war dance videos went viral. The first test was a very good full on test match with a great England performance. Once the rugby kicked off, everything became positive, as it often does, but in reality, it was a disappointing crowd in Leeds, let's not sugar coat it. I think there is a huge issue with RFL events in that they aren't really good events. The sport is great, we know that, but they often lack atmosphere, catering is average, facilities not always world class (Headingly is great but is it world class?), no entertainment etc. I think we make a mistake far too often in feeling that the rugby can just do everything, the results tell us otherwise. The World Cup put me off international rl. I was bored to tears around most of it, with only the opener at Newcastle feeling like a real event that was fun and enjoyable, and even that was a car crash as the opening ceremony failed. This series has delivered very very modest growth (average crowd), which is disappointing, this England team deserves more.

Really like the launch video by Wire

Agreed on all counts. Superb stuff, very entertaining. Agreed on penalising Tonga at the end. Particularly the lad who delayed it and then missed the ball with his foot.

I'd just started to enjoy spoilers

Lovely stuff. Unlike the absolutely horrendous kit he's wearing!

You act your age

It's an interesting number. I wonder if that's a blended viewing figures across the piece, which would seem more realistic. It would suggest though that we've increased eyeballs on the sports by 6 to 8 million over the season.

It gives the max score for each metrics on the summary page and then it gives the full banding with scores on each detail page. It's presented accurately. So the max score on viewership is 1 out of a total of 20. There is zero indication that a novice just accidentally awarded points for nothing in five metrics and nobody ever noticed apart from us lot here.

People don't accidentally award points in the bottom tier, of course that has been done intentionally! Does it claim in the handbook that tv viewership is worth 5% of available points?

It's all speculative, but there is little other reason to round up the scores as they have. To maintain the same weighting you'd have to have scores that aren't user friendly. They have clearly tried to have simple numbers. On the attendance point, it's not quite true, as you get points for your attendance under utilisation too. But I've thought a fair bit about the crowds piece and ai simply don't agree it's not fit for purpose. When setting your threshold, you want a decent distribution across the bands, and out of the 35 clubs that are assessed, it's only c25% that get the max score. I don't think that suggests the score is too low at this stage. That's not to say that we couldn't have had a 10k tier for example, but again, there is nothing definitive that says 10k is the right decision and 7.5k is the wrong decision. It is all just preference/opinions on detail like that. But I do go back to the fact that despite Wigan, Leeds, Saints not getting rewards for 10k+, they are sitting in the top 3 places. It suggests the outcomes are correct.

I've been looking at google earth and your garden isn't the full 100m (not including in-goals), so you're safe Eddie...

I'm not a massive fan of some of the way they have presented that, however it is just a presentation element really. Points that are given as a minimum are 2.61 across 5 categories, meaning that in reality the final score is out of 17.39 rather than 20. However, I expect they have done this to try and make it easier for people to understand the final rankings - the maximum score is 20, and 15 is foe Grade A. But across the 5 categories, where clubs get a minimum of 2.61 - the maximum is 10.5 - meaning there are almost 8 points available for these, so measurement will absolutely differentiate.

I don't think it's been answered, but it has been quoted a couple of times, what is it that all 35 clubs get? And I don't mean things that are in error that can be fixed like the website visits, or TV viewers. Everything has variances I thought?

I mean, I did answer the OP within 2 minutes, yet here you are still all banging on about it.

That does ignore a couple of things. Firstly, P&R saw London in SL and could easily see Fev or Bradford promoted who would not be selected via grading at the moment. That's fine if people like that method, i get that, but they are delivering very different outcomes. It also.ignores the outcomes where clubs have actually driven change i.e. facilities, financial strengthening and digital work. They are also outcomes that can be ignored under p&r.

I don't wanna be the negative head in the room, but I do think people are getting a little over excited and OTT in terms of records being smashed. Reasons to be pessimistic: 1. If the record in the UK is 140k, the last schedule couldn't break that. (63k, 37k and 28k capacities). We announced those grounds in 2019, and I see little that has changed that would make us suddenly go more ambitious. 2. Our last few games versus the Aussies over here have seen 35k, 45k, 34k - well away from some of the numbers we talk about here. I dont think the Kangaroos brand is anywhere near as strong even in RL circles as we think. 3. We can talk about the Ashes brand giving a boost, but there isn't a load of evidence that supports that. We've only broken the 40k average crowd mark twice, and that was 1990 and 1994. 4. The last World Cup showed that while we have a decent level of interest in England, unless the planning and pricing is spot on, our crowds are extremely volatile and can be disappointing. Reasons for optimism 1. Some real genuine green shoots over the last 15 years or so for the England team. 67k at Wembley for a game versus the Kiwis was genuinely brilliant. 45k versus the Kiwis at Olympic St was also very good. 43k in Newcastle too. 2. 67k and 73k at Old Trafford for well organised neutral world cup finals (plus almost 30k for the neutral semi final) shows that we do have tens of thousands of people who are happy to spend money on international RL and fill stadiums. I think we should be excited, and I'd love to see us aim to beat that 57k record crowd, but in reality, getting 40k averages would be superb.

That does feel like a number that should be triggering the 'limited availability, heading for sellout' type promotion. It always makes me worry that there are maybe another 3k unused from partners etc.

When we do anything like this, rather than over analysing things at a granular level, it's really important to look at the outcomes. Has this driven the right outcomes? I don't think there is much controversy about the 12 teams selected. We could argue it's a touch generous to Cas and Wakey, but where they rank versus other clubs is probably fair. So what would changing individual scoring metrics to some of those suggested do? Would it change the outcome? It looks to me.that the outputs are pretty much exactly as you'd expect. Where I think there could be a little focus is on how the rankings are used. At lower levels I think there is a challenge around benefit of this, maybe a light touch minimum standards and leave the full submissions to those with SL ambition is the way forward. That's how it worked under licensing I believe. But if a system is delivering the right outcomes, maybe it isn't as wrong as people are making out.