Dave T

I suppose it was old world relegation, as you say without clauses. And you won't get me disagreeing on the farce that was Paris.

Was it relegation that did that or was it that Workington were poor at that time? Their season in SL was disastrous, as much as I personally enjoyed visiting there and had a soft spot for the club because of the likes of Rowland Phillips and Kevin Ellis playing there, and more recently hosting Scotland.

Those clubs are horrendous examples. Only Oldham were relegated normally and they were a weak club. The others were evicted or resigned from SL as failures - without going into the nonsense of the 'mergers'. But they certainly weren't victims of P&R. Hull, Salford, Hull KR, Wakefield, Cas all suffered relegation. I'm not saying I support P&R, but I find the claims made about it over the top. It really is a case of clubs finding their level. If Oldham were a strong club surely they'd be battling with Fev and Leigh, if they weren't in already.

Of course there will always be circumstances, call it luck or whatever, but I'm just not sure history supports your last line. All but Wire, Leeds, Toulouse and Catalans have been relegated from the top flight in their history. Sometimes clubs just find their level. Which clubs have suffered catastrophically and not recovered? Because Oldham, Bradford, Widnes etc are not good examples of that.

Multiple audiences isn't the issue. The issue is those that we under-index in are those that are attractive to broadcasters, sponsors and pack out your corporate boxes etc,

apologies, i pressed submit too early, have edited and address the dour point. On your last line, I was optimistic about that before last week, but the problem is that the other teams will be picking up the odd win too. Whilst the quality of the squad is subjective, any squad that has Ashton, Ratchford, King, Widdop, Williams, Cooper, Clark, Currie in it should not be lying in 10th over halfway through the season.

I think these two posts are right. We need to be very clear about what question we are answering. Thinking we can add a new format of the game like Cricket did is an odd concept to me, I see zero benefit in that. T20 solved a genuine problem - it provided a shorter format of the game with a more family friendly and fun atmosphere against the stuffiness of County Cricket. Your point about different audiences is key for me - and this is the problem we should be solving. Diversifying our audience is key - we already have bigger numbers than some of the sports who get praise - but we do struggle for sponsors, investors, hospitality sales etc. when we have been one-dimensional in our aims - cheap and cheerful. That leads to the situation we find ourselves in where we cant increase our salary cap. The packaging/presentation of the regular game is key on a week by week basis - our offering needs improving and to appeal to wider groups of people, and I don't mean on the field which imho is nowhere near saturation point. We then need to supersize that for our events to maximise them and make them showpieces for the game. We need to focus on internationals. More of them, in better grounds, as bigger events. And we need the infrastructure behind the scenes to be right - first class digital offerings, content and broadcasting packages. I think most of that can be done without changes to the game of Rugby, and probably within the existing competition structure. I'm not against new formats, comps etc. (expanded WCC would be the thing to fight for, but think its not happening), but I don't think a new format would fix the problems we have.

I don't think this is true and is part of the rewriting of history that seems to be going on at Warrington when people try and equate this to when Smith took over a basket case of a team who had won zero for almost two decades, or Huddersfield who had finished 10th and 7th when they brought Watson in. Wire were a strong team who lost only 6 regular season games last year. They beat Catalans in France, Saints in St Helens, Wigan at the DW and Leeds at Headingly. They were 1 point behind St Helens in the table. Wire's problem wasn't that they were a poor team, it was that they played the kind of RL that made you consider going watching Rugby Union. To tear up everything good about that team has been reckless self-harm by Powell and team imo. They should have been building on that platform.

Jeez

This is going to sound harsh, but was it relegation that put these clubs in difficulties, or were they on their ###### well before that? The likes of Oldham, Workington, add London, Halifax etc. to that list were not shattered because of relegation imho, they were shattered because they weren't working well as clubs in advance of being demoted. Bradford famously blew themselves up in advance of relegation. Where clubs have been strong enough, they have found it possible job to get back into SL and do a good job. There is a reason Oldham are where they are and Castleford are where they are for example. Cas were a stronger club.

There can't be too many examples of taking a team from 3rd in the table to 10th so quickly (hopefully temporarily). Most do tend to build on what they have, not trash it. Hudds finished 10th and 7th before Watson took over and they ended 9th. If we dropped off a touch and were say, 5th or 6th, these comparisons would be valid. Again, none of this us to apply pressure, I just don't think we need to sugar coat that he has failed so far. But hopefully we stay patient and its early days.

Haha fair point. Like you, I'm still behind Powell, even if he has ballsed some things up, I'm still bought into his philosophy and he should be given the chance to deliver it.

I agree with the point of your post, people make all sorts of outlandish claims and then make excuses when they don't happen. But on Toulouse particularly, we have a decent history of good crowds in Toulouse. Over 12k for France v NZ 13 years ago, when Cayalans took a game there v Hull KR they got 12k apparently, and Catalans have also delivered huge crowds in Barcelona and Montpellier so there is no reason to believe that a big Derby between Toulouse and Catalans wouldn't deliver a very big crowd. But Toulouse have been rubbish and lost all momentum, which is a far bigger issue than Thursday night.

I broadly feel the same as yiu mate, but not sure the Tony Smith comparison is right. Smith took over in an emergency as Lowes had tanked us. We'd finished 6th the previous year, but finished terribly and then started the next year in the same vein. Smith took over a sinking ship. Powell hasn't had to do that, he took over a team finishing 3rd in the ladder, we were solid (but depressingly boring), it's worrying how far many of the same players have dropped off. If we look at the last regular game of last year where we won at Cas we have only lost Mamo and Hill from the starting 13 and Austin from the bench. Powell has the rest of that team at his disposal.

I'm supportive of Powell, but as per my previous post, I'm still not seeing the need for things to 'finally be got right' at Warrington. I think there is a weird crisis built up at Wire as though their are real fundamental issues - when the evidence on the field does not support that. Over the last 10 years, when it is fair to say that trophy haul has not been where you would want it, we have finished in the top 4 7 times, and average 4th overall. We have played in 4 of the last 10 Grand Finals and whilst we have lost them all, the reality of it has been that we have played our part in magnificent Grand Finals, losing good games of RL. Surely if there were fundamental issues we wouldn't even be walking out at Old Trafford? We have also played in 3 of the last 10 Cup Finals - losing two classics and winning one brilliantly upsetting Saints. Again, would a club which such fundamental issues even be in these games? We also won the LLS in 2017. It seems that we have talked ourselves into a bit of a crisis here, that we needed somebody to come in and tear up the squad and rebuild. I think the rebuild we needed was to move replace players due to age limits, but we are talking replacements for Hill, Ratchford, Cooper etc - we appear to have gone a little bit over the top and given everyone a kicking. As things stand, Powell's results are delivering the worst table position we have seen since 2002 when we finished 10th under David Plange and co. I always think it's really important to make sure we understand the problems that you are trying to fix, and I think Powell has gone over the top and at the moment, he is making an almighty balls up of it to be brutally honest. People got a bit hysterical about our limping out of the playoffs for the last 3 years, but ignore the rest of the season. As per my first line though, I remain supportive of him, I believe he is a god coach and has good tactical philosophies, but his performance at Wire has been nothing short of disastrous if we are going to judge him after 15 or so games (which is too early obviously).

What did Caplan say in this? I'll completely dismiss anything MG says, but I like Caplan. Was he just playing fantasy RL like us here or was it a serious rumour?

I understand the aim of working on getting population centres interested, but a proposal of starting clubs in these cities now is putting the cart before the horse and is basically what we did with PSG in year 1. My belief is that we have to arrange ourselves to be as attractive as possible for external investors to want to buy in. And not to buy in in 2023, but maybe in 5 years, or 10, or 15 and so on. It's where I supported licensing, create the best league you can within current team make-up, scrap auto P&R and basically invite buy-in, show that you have a competition that eliminates the need for working through the pyramid, or risks it all being undone with relegation. I expect this will be their answer, but to get it voted through they'll water it down by pandering to too many existing clubs that overlap. Create a vibrant comp by hand picking the strongest set of teams, and invite applicants (existing or new) with a very clear process, maybe including buy-in fee. Maybe even source investors as part of the process. Just saying we should expand to Dublin or Edinburgh is the same as 1994's conversations.

That just doesn't sound like a sound idea at all. It's sounds like the usual stuff we try. The only way things like this could even be on the table would be if IMG could pull together a pile of investors who are happy to throw millions into franchising.

Thanks, that is certainly a more positive approach to some of the matches played.

Id be stunned if IMG came up with a proposal of Dublin and Edinburgh.

The quotes in that are from Mick Gledhill.

I'm interested in details of the claim tbh. Are Brazil touring?

I'm supportive of heritage players being used, but I think we need to be playing tests in home nations as part of growing the game there. We are taking too many shortcuts by just playing some random games in Sydney. I can't really find details of the test anywhere, so are this Brazil squad touring from there to Oz? And the SA team, are they touring too? We appear to have two tier teams, often run as ex-pat groups rather than being driven by the national governing bodies. How did the South Africa Test team come together for this?

There is a serious point though here. As long as we just keep getting a few Aussies to play in Sydney we avoid the real development of international fixtures, but pat ourselves on the back that these nations are real RL nations. We risk doing the same here with Jamaica.

Indeed, or positioning and numbering up has been all over the place all year, and that's been a worry as surely this is a coaching piece. My point about the aggression was more a general one, when the opposition get the ball they are generally going to make their yardage, with little interference from us. They are marching up field and ending in good position, we have little dominance at the ruck, probably only Daryl Clarke will ever stop any kind of flow. It's the same in attack. We can't step up the pace at all in the forwards, sure we can trundle along, but we make it relatively easy for the opposition defence to handle. Every team has one or two players who are capable of a power play here and there, ours is probably Matty Ashton while the forwards are benign.