Dave T

Its what we can't forget. 2013 did around £4.3m, 2022 did a touch more than that (plus a far bigger footprint and legacy investment). And that was a very disappointing tournament with unprecedented challenges. We dont need 40k at each game. We dont need every game to be competitive.

You can manage that. You have to be creative, you have to use the right grounds at the right price, with the right presentation. Things like 2013 when we had USA v Cook Islands in Bristol were a really good example. We also need to not expect every single match to be awesome and get huge TV figures. They dont in any sport. Even the major sports are shunted to red buttons, ITV4, and the like for lesser games. We've got more stronger teams at the top.end than ever which means we can stage some tasty games, and then just behind them the games can be epic. In 2013, the likes of Scotland, Tonga, Italy etc were playing brilliant games with strong crowds.

This, absolutely. I have no issues with the other three years playing teams at similar levels, in fact it is what they should be doing so all teams win and lose games, but the World Cup is an international festival.aboutvfar more than the 80 minute matches. Something I think organisers often forget.

I think you explained it fine, it just started to morph into the theme of a team playing better on the day and losing. I dont like that too much, the odd freak match is fine. But when the underdog wins, I expect them to be better on the day.

Conscious that there appears to be a secondary point about a surprise within the actual match I.e. somebody playing better but still losing. Personally Im happy that in the vastmajproty of cases the team who performs better wins. Thats as it should be imo.

Its a really interesting discussion. One of the challenges around using betting favourites is that it becomes a self-fulfilling really in that of course you'd expect a team playing well and therefore being backed that week is likely to win. And so they should really. I found it interesting to look at an article from 2024 on the odds for 2025: Wigan Warriors: 6/4 St Helens: 9/2 Warrington Wolves: 5/1 Hull KR: 11/2 Leeds Rhinos: 10/1 Catalans Dragons: 12/1 Leigh Leopards: 20/1 Salford Red Devils: 33/1 Huddersfield Giants: 40/1 Hull FC: 40/1 Castleford Tigers: 66/1 Wakefield Trinity: 66/1 So depending on when you set the benchmark, there must have been plenty fo unexpected results for Hull KR to win everything, Wire to miss out on the playoffs, Wakefield to make 6th, Cats miss out etc. Another measure is to look at the finals, particularly the cup - we have had a range of winners and even the GF which has limited winners has had Wire, Catalans and Cas losing when they were LLS winners, so could reasonably have been deemed favourites to win those finals. I think we do OK tbh, although that ain't backed up with stats or evidence other than that above.

Interestingly on the social media post about the new Union international tournament, union fans soon got into moaning about TNT coverage. Complaining about it and saying they much preferred sky coverage. Football fans moan about their coverage too. I suspect people will be unhappy with whatever coverage you get. The familiarity of presenters and pundits very quickly grates.

Nobody is championing a London at all costs, which I think is a far better place than a few years ago. People are championing a successful, well backed London. That ain't easy, but its surely very easy to see the potential benefits that come with a strong London presence?

Nobody is deriding Leigh for doing well though.

To be honest, I thought the first post was Nigel Wood's season launch.

No, they were our highlights, unfortunately.

There was a financial pillar at play. Whether it was the right one is a different question. It suggests not based on changes.

The problem is here that things go South very quickly. That's not to say we shouldn't have any kind of checks in place, but as soon as any club goes bust, we kneejerk and blame the system - ignoring the fact that in reality, clubs are going to go bust under any system. All we can do is try and mitigate that risk as much as possible.

We are all the TikTok generation!

Yes, it went on a bit didn't it?

This was the weirdest part. I remember the good day when he came out and have a press release full of optimism!

I think its fine as a base shirt, they've gone down this route and are sticking with it, its OK. But the sponsor logos look even more out of place than usual because its so fussy. But I can see it doing well with Leigh fans. Im a much bigger fan of shirts like my clubs, but based on what they are doing with their brand, its fine.

It is interesting when you read about V'landys career, and the politics involved and some of the allegations against him, his approach to suing people, claims of conflicts of interest do hang around him a fair bit. But, hey, defo no politics at play at all here.

I think this is right. And I'm not being blase about £0.4m, I'm sure that would be very helpful at the IRL, but my understanding is that if this tournament tipped up £4.5m into the IRL coffers, it is the biggest money maker the organisation has ever seen. Sometimes, we can be disappointed, learn from it, move on. Nothing that is happening here is a good outcome for anyone. The real focus here should be on why we achieved a shortfall. I'm also interested in whether this was the only shortfall that the WC delivered. That is getting lost in this squabble.

What a bizarre episode all round. Hope to see a phoenix club rising.

Again, the point is around the fact that the organising company is RLWC2021 and not the RFL. I think there are plenty of questions to.be aimed at them on competence, with record levels of investment its poor that they couldn't pay all the bills. But if the tournament lost money and literally doesn't have it to pay, then there is a version where the IRL receiving 90% of their funding in a loss-making WC is something that has to be absorbed. Because if we keep moving up the pyramid, this is ultimately an IRL asset and tournament - so if we are going to push it up above RLWC2021 to the RFL, then can we push it above the RFL to the IRL as liable too?

Im not sure the media approach is going to have any success though. Why would it?

People like to keep making this simple. Well for me, and I've made this point before - we have to look at what happened after 2000 to see why we are where we are. 2000 almost bankrupted the RFL. The international game took a huge hit, and a series of international tournaments were staged here, in small grounds to recover the financial position. No WC for 8 years. If we learnt one thing from 2000 it was that RLWCs come with a high risk and you can't put a whole governing body at risk over that. Creating a commercial company to ringfence liability is the solution to that. Let's be honest, this £400k debt could easily be much larger. It is very likely that this is exactly how it was setup to prevent a 2000, but the IRL are still demanding 2000 terms.

This is the part I dont like.about it from either side. Irrespective of rights and wrongs, legal technicalities and moral viewpoints, or whether one bloke likes another bloke, it isnt good for the RFL and the IRL to be at loggerheads like this. We only have two nations that are able to host major tournaments like this and the recent shift in power isnt a good situation at all for the World game. Legal, contractual battles absolutely can take place behind closed doors and relations remain cordial, but I do have real issues with the threats and attacks from the IRL here. I think it makes Grant's position untenable and serious questions about PV, but I can't see anyone challenging him.

Words like takeover are never gonna be mentioned publicly at this stage, the chat is about investment. Partnerships etc. But he's been clear about needing governance reform. And in between his speeches about just wanting to help England, he does drop in his real aims: He said: "Ideally in the long term, you'd have the club in Australia having a brother or sister club in England, and they share the resources, they share the players and so on." But pressed on whether that meant Super League teams acting as feeder clubs, he added: "No. I wouldn't be saying that one's more powerful than the other. We'll be feeding them, and they'll be feeding us. It's a two-way street. "So some of our young up-and-coming players could be playing in Super League to develop, and some of the Super League players could be playing in the NRL to develop. So it's not a feeder club as such. It's sharing the resources."