Big Picture

It clearly says "Second Test Match". When did Australia ever play a series of such matches in Britain (or at home against a team from Britain) except when they were for the Ashes??????????

You won't see any of those until RL has a much higher profile and a lot more money to get and keep them interested in it.

No it wouldn't be England competing in their first Ashes series. As you can clearly see, before the 1946 tour down under the Ashes was England vs Australia and Great Britain didn't exist.

Indeed, it's a much more professional look than the UK-only practice for shorter than normal fields which @Dave Tsomehow thinks is a precedent. The Mickey Mouse field markings seen in Britain aren't only lazy, they reflect British RL's small time cap-in-hand, know-their-place mindset of not insisting on correct field markings as part of their contracts with stadiums there. It's no wonder that the big time NRL doesn't follow that "precedent".

Sigh..... If the amount of money they're talking about is only 23 million US$ and their franchise fee is a pitiful 1.5 million US$ (just 1/50 of what I calculate would be the value of the most valuable minor league franchise in the US now), then money most certainly is an object. Those figures are just a drop in the bucket compared to what's needed for a serious, credible pro RL venture in North America. If you listen to the interview it's evident that Steve Scanlan is an outsider with no understanding of how much backing is needed for such a venture "over there" as he put it to succeed. He cluelessly admits that someone he approached about the proposed New York club in the British RL structure laughed at him because he underpriced the jersey sponsorship at 2 million US$ and the person he approached won't look at anything under 10 million US$. His pitiful 1.5 million US$ is just as ridiculous, 10 franchise sales at that sum would net only 15 million US$ which is nowhere near enough to capitalize the proposed league. They'd fold before completing their first season just as the AAF did. On the subject of players, none of the guys you have in mind would ever get a pro athlete's visa in the US. Those are only given to players who are "internationally recognized", which is why MLR franchises have struggled to get visas for some of the foreign RU players they wanted to bring over.

The night when the Tomahawks nearly beat Australia.

20,000 $ an incentive for for NFL franchises? ROFLMAO

By what strange standard can a school like Rugby School (where the upper class sent their sons to be educated) ever be considered "middle class"??? That's bizarre to say the least.

There seems to be a common misunderstanding here of the role of professional sports leagues. Their role is run their league and ensure that it's profitable and sustainable, not to develop their particular sport at lower levels. The latter is the responsibility of national governing bodies, the USARL in this case. Thus the NRL focusing on other goals is perfectly understandable. That said, they seem not to understand how small and insignificant RU is in North America; if they did, they'd know that getting US RU players to switch won't help them acquire an audience there.

As @BristolDevonCharlie explained above, you're mistaken. Outsiders do notice because it sticks out like a sore thumb compared to every other sport they've seen before. And when some fields are full length with all solid lines, others full length with a mix of solid and broken lines and still others not full length, then SL certainly does not have consistency.

I get that the lack of consistency isn't an issue for you and others who grew up with the game, it's what you've always known and accepted as a result. @BristolDevonCharlieand I aren't talking about how you guys see that though, but about how outsiders to the game will see it. And in our experience they see it as poor and second-rate, so it's an obstacle to getting them interested. You're getting hung up on the subject of numbers on the field which is only part of the issue. The lack of consistency is a bigger issue. It's something unique to RL and its small time, make do, don't rock the boat way of doing things which testifies to the fact that consciously or not administrators don't think the game deserves equal treatment to what other sports get when booking venues. It's simply not good enough.

What you're missing is that in other sports (major and minor sports alike), within a competition the fields/courts/rinks are always marked the same way. The few variations which exist in those sports are in different competitions, e.g. the hash marks being further apart in NCAA gridiron than in the NFL, but always the same within the respective competition and always exactly as specified in their respective rule books. RL's lack of consistency sticks out like a sore thumb as a sign of the game's small time way of doing things and therefore gives outsiders a bad impression of it. Re the numbers, ever since the change to equidistant, solid lines 25-30 years ago, numbers are indispensable to help TV viewers know where on the field the play is because there aren't any other visual clues. They also differentiate the game visibly from RU. Hopefully this makes the issue clear for you.

I think you misunderstood my question, I was asking whether you've asked your grandchildren why they're not interested. I think you gave me the answer in your observations about social change in Britain though. Back then RL was well accepted despite its small time ways because heartland residents had nothing to compare it with. And even if they'd been able to make comparisons, back then the differences between the RL's offering and those of other British sports weren't overly great. As you pointed out that's not how things are now though. Technology has brought other options to the attention of heartlanders, and the offerings of competing sports are much better (and more cosmopolitan) now than they were back then; Man U vs Preston or Bolton has been replaced by Man U vs Barcelona or Bayern Munich, in a stadium much improved compared to what it offered then. RL hasn't kept up with that change, its offering remains essentially the same as it was back in the day and unfortunately that doesn't measure up too well against the competition. Unless I'm mistaken that's why so many of the children and grandchildren of the RL players and fans of yesteryear aren't interested in the game.

So much for @The Rocket's claim that newbies who've seen RU and/or encounter it after seeing these matches will obviously know they're two different sports and therefore RU won't be able to benefit from this. It would be interesting to know just how common the sort or reaction you describe there is.

The only reason you think that is because you're used to the small time, half-assed way British RL habitually does things. Every International rule book I can find online includes a plan of the field and states clearly that "the Plan forms part of these Laws". And that Plan shows solid, equidistant lines with numbers. None of the three matches had that, and one didn't even have all solid lines, four of the lines were broken lines instead. The latter is because despite being played in a stadium which can accommodate a full 100 metre field of play it was less than that, and the organizers were too lazy/incompetent/afraid to ask the stadium management to meet the game's requirements. That kind of inconsistency is something which viewers and spectators will never see in any other sport and it looks terrible. To the outsiders @BristolDevonCharliewas talking about, it just confirms their negative view of the game. Quite simply, making do the way the British game has always done isn't good enough.

The heartland RL fans just don't get how small time the game's normal practice looks to outsiders and how it conforms to the negative stereotypes about the game, because it's what they've always known and accepted. The fact that every other team sport always has uniform field/court/rink markings within the same competition so that's what the public will naturally expect doesn't seem to register with them. Back in the first few years of SL there was a big effort to ensure correct field markings, at least to the extent possible within the limitations of existing English venues. That can be seen in match videos from back then, but it didn't last and they went back to the same old, same old. Likely the game's administrators decided after Sky cut the rights payments back due to low ratings it was a frill they didn't really need.

@Cerulean have you asked your grandchildren why they're not interested in the game? If the same is true across the heartland the reason why the younger generation isn't interested is key to working out how to broaden the game's appeal.

I agree with you there, it's ridiculously complicated and with their defenses up close teams struggle to advance the ball too. That could bore newbies silly.

RU does too, now that their rucks have morphed into a different type of offensive play because they're uncontested. And they're slower too, so they'll be easier for North Americans who grew up with gridiron to follow. That combined with RU being a bigger and richer sport will give it the advantage.

Yeah I was disappointed that Woods or Graham didn`t pick the interviewer up on that, would have been so easy to politely correct her. No it wouldn't have been. The problem with the name Rugby League is that all it really means is rugby with leagues, because 100 or so years ago when the name came into use Union was the rugby without leagues. Thus there's never been anything in the name to convey the idea of it being a different sport clearly. In a way they did try to correct her, referring to "a Rugby League 'scrum'" in reply to her question about that gridiron push play and rugby scrums. The distinction went right over her head, because when she hears Rugby League all that means to her is a league of rugby. So if these matches do anything to boost interest in the US, RU is more likely to benefit from that than RL.

You don't need to worry about that, none of the clubs play in a league with the profile and reach needed for such moves to work so they're all stuck where they are. None of course, there's a two hour time difference between Minneapolis and Los Angeles. It's not only less important, it's completely unimportant because Los Angeles is a much bigger city so they needed much less market penetration to sell out their arena there than in Minneapolis. And becoming known globally gave them even greater reach for things like selling their licensed merchandise.

Some will travel from Australia, some will be expat RL fans who live in North America, the rest I'm not sure about though some could be North Americans who are into rugby. I suppose we'll see in time.

To see teams from places they never heard of playing a sport they never heard of? Rather doubtful.

Wrong, Argonauts is for Toronto's Argonaut Rowing club of which the rugby football club was a part when it began.