Dave T

Well he has some credit in the bank as he improved us last year taking us to a 3rd place finish and a Wembley final, but this is proving a difficult second season. Question marks definitely, but we'll have to judge at the end of the season I think.

I was travelling so only saw a few minutes of today's game (thankfully), but I must admit to thinking that Burgess is a little out of his depth at the moment. I find his selections all over the place and I don't think it's always easy to see what he's doing with the team. Admittedly there are a lot of enforced changes each week at the moment, but I think he's struggling right now.

The main thing for me over the years has been the poor governance, and they haven't learnt anything from it. There is little wrong with having the RFL as the leaders in this country - people can then get into their own arguments about who should be in the hot seats, but in reality that's less important than good governance. When the RFL were in charge things broadly worked (under-performed yes) but decisions were made and whilst there would be some challenge with clubs, I'm OK with that as they hold the board accountable and voting rights can keep that in check. The weakness with that model was under-investment in right people and strategy imo. Where things have always gone belly up has been when the clubs have believed they can do better than the RFL. The couple of SLE and NFP breakaways have never done anything well and they've always come crawling back to bed with the RFL. All it has done is weaken the RFL and confuse the lines of accountability and ownership to leave things falling through the gaps. As part of the last restructure they seem to have done their best to confuse it even more. I dont think anyone knows anymore who is the leader of the game, is it RL Com and Rhodri Jones or RFL and Tony Sutton. At the moment it seems to be neither. And then we have the farce over the Chair which tbh in its current form isn't the most important role. The clubs keep wrestling control amd power, but don't really know what they want to do with it. Let's be honest, nothing bold has ever come from these breakaways, it's always just been broadly more of the same. Simplify things, pull together, invest in the commercial arm of the RFL (still call it RLcom if you like) and stop fannying about. A good example of the lack of leadership.and ownership is around grading. On the RFL site it's called IMG Grading Handbook, yet the document is branded with RFL and RLCom. I don't know whether it's intentional passing the buck or what, but it's weird when we don't know who is doing what, who leads what. Nobody has a voice of authority at the moment. And now the noisy idiots have shut up shop too.

We've easily done that before. Major London internationals always get a good local following, it really is noticeable how many different faces and voices we get at these events. When we got 67k in for that WC semi final, we easily had 20-30k Southerners I'd suggest conservatively. Probably more.

Bundles are nice and all that, but in reality, the thing they offer are discounts, and I just don't think that pricing is a challenge here. The bigger piece is that you have a comms strategy that speaks to customers about both of these events (and others) appropriately. And the even bigger piece is that you go big, make the Challenge Cup Final such a great event that people want to rush back to Wembley - and for once they have the opportunity to do that for RL just a few months later. A challenge I find is that the actual RL events often underwhelm (apart from the sport usually) and the actual events should be one of the biggest marketing tools we have.

I'd like to think that's still achievable. There will still be some who haven't been paid yet for example and there should still be efforts to sell tickets, but it obviously slows down a lot. I think there are 70k on sale so it doesn't have to be 'sold out' to get 65k, so fingers crossed. I'd go for 61k

It's quite shocking how this publication was a mouthpiece for DB and any kind of anti-RFL/IMG article you could find, and now there is just nothing.

Yeah, very slow now. The upper tier around halfway for example have plenty left. I suppose 7 finals in 17 years means Wembley just isn't the must attend event for Wire fans. I've made this point before, in those first couple of years from 2009 I went and had a group of 15 to 20 or so going. This year not a single one will attend.

You're not really following it are you?

I found Child really interesting on this, however had to turn it off halfway through as I found Caplan and Shaw-Wright unbearable. Shaw-Wright's insistence with fannying about on his phone and chirping in with random comments was irritating, and Caplan kept stopping Child when he was in full flow and making weird points. It was really interesting when Child was talking about the board makeup and the virtual meeting etc. and Caplan just stopped it going anywhere by looking on his phone for the board members on the website (which had already been discussed). His point about announcements for next year (Vegas etc) being worthless was nonsense. We do still have RLCom and co keeping the show on the road. Child was excellent, informative and balanced i thought.

When we get a release like that on the website, who exactly is it? Who is SRD?

It is frustrating though. I do wish they'd think of us geeks who like to watch the ticketing site pressing refresh every five minutes

There are only so many times you can use the standard colours and traditional designs really, I quite like the training approach that sports clubs use of more garish designs and different colours. The England RL site has some standard red, white and blue tees, and while they are perfectly fine, they are a bit meh and a bit old fashioned imo. The new range is more in line with what I'd expect to see nowadays, and other sports do have quite similar designs, suggesting it's a trend thing. Whilst I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to kits in always preferring the home colours, if we think about football for example, there are so many iconic away shirts at England level and at clubs. I'm OK with them being a bit out there, particularly as they also cater for those who believe the England tees should be red, blue or white.

I suppose they have tickets out with groups and partners, plus the women's teams and 1895 cup teams. It isn't just split three ways.

Aye, see my response to Chris, only had one item which was very good, haven't had tees, so fair enough on the quality of them, I can't really comment.

Tbh, the only thing I've ever had was a hoodie which was pretty nice quality, certqinly up there with previous ones ive had from Wire like O'Neills, Canterbury and Puma. So I can't comment on the training gear, so fair comment if it's pants.

Yeah, they are, great value those

I'm just not seeing too much wrong with it tbh. I've had a quick look at Union and Football training ranges and none of it offers any more. I find the range a touch flat personally, I like the more garish stuff for training tees. The Kangaroos effort is lacking massively, indicative of their international efforts I'd say.

The slow-motion clips are actually pretty impressive on a technical level, if you were going to do a video about the dangers of head contact in RL though, the double impact is probably as good a demonstration as anything you can find.

Yeah i set it up in 2 mins earlier as a way of sharing pics on here without using a personal account since the site has gone to pot with uploads. You seem to have an issue with anyin3 disagreeing with you, as I said earlier, I'll leave you to it.

To be fair on pricing, the RFL have flipped it substantially for the Cup Final. I found an old seating plan for the 2009 Final and the cheapest tickets were behind the sticks upper tier then lower tier were the 2nd cheapest. It was 2nd most expensive on halfway top tier. By flipping the lower tier to higher pricing, they have been smarter in knowing that the hard-core will happily pay a fair bit more and rush for those seats. The upper tier isn't great and they are the cheaper seats. So i think they've been smarter in pricing points, what they haven't done is grow the actual demand.

Moving on to higher quality video! Clear head contact on both angles imo.

Yup, the 2nd choice put in a superb performance!

Tbh, the slow motion replay in HD clearly shows head contact with shoulder. I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge two areas of mitigation - reduction in height, and secondary contact. But neither of those things cancel out something being a penalty, they just move it down from being a card really.

Interesting to compare to the NRL Kangaroos shop: Australian Kangaroos Merchandise – NRL Shop