iffleyox

when you gonna realise, it was just that the time was wrong?

agree, though I could just about live with ERL

Agree - it would actually make (northern Hemisphere) RL sound more small time than it is (which sometimes might look like an achievement) - try turning the tables, Super League (Australasia) doesn't work very well either. Fundamentally if you're the bolt on to the main brand then you're basically screaming 'we're the afterthought' Some people might think that was true, but we really don't need to be branding accordingly.

women's cricket is also Super League - there was a window where it looked like Super League was going to become a general women's sport thing, but that seems to have closed as leagues have become more aligned to their male counterparts by sport,

The Guardian on Wednesday 24th March had a team by team preview article but it didn’t get much beyond bland 90-words-per-team

I read it the week before and don’t remember one...

Good luck with the Observer - seems to me though, and I like it/usually read it, that you’re jumping from one paper that doesn’t really cover it to another...

The thing is, Brian Redhead literally says this in The Game That Got Away. In 1969. That (damaging) perception has been cited for (at least, because he can’t have been the first) 51 years, and I can’t say I hold out much hope that anything can or is going to be done now.

My path and his crossed quite a lot almost a decade ago in RU. I have never seen such a gap between (potentially what was then) the public perception and the reality. A lovely, decent, down to earth bloke who was very easily led astray but absolutely wracked with self doubt and a desire to be liked. Strangely, for all his (then) playboy image, he was the one who was always staying behind to meet the kids after matches and training sessions, and the fans who wanted to talk. I've wanted him to do well ever since really.

Absolutely true, but it goes deeper than that. I've told this story before on here I think but a few years back I was involved in trying to get a multi-multimillion pound household name sponsor to invest in rugby league - and crucially a sponsor that's right for the demographic. Clearly given what follows below I won't name them... They weren't buying it at all - we tried all the arguments about fit with business - knocked back because apparently lower socio economic group males and families are in the bag already Really good grounds - showed them Wembley, Headingley, Wigan, Saints -

Indeed, but for the top you apparently want BUCS Super Rugby, which is the top 10.

Exeter 20 years ago, I'm not sure we had an RL side. I played a bit of intra-mural RU for the drama department (on loan from history who tended to have more and better players to choose from to start with). They've got one now - I follow them on twitter. They're quite good. Funnily enough the strong links with Chiefs are attracting enough decent players who don't make the grade that the RL team is benefitting massively. That's not a sly comment on RL (I've been here long enough) it seems to be what is genuinely happening. As repeated BUSA (or whatever they're called this week) champions,

Bottom line - none of that was intended as a criticism of the Bears.

which was always the flaw - except that the RFL (AIUI) made them think that the conditions of league 1 had been set up to help that sort of pop up work. Which, for all of the first 12 months of a five year licence, they did.

money, continuity and luck they've got some money, which means they're not hand to mouth they share with a rugby club that has got money, which gives them continuity and hasn't (yet) led to the problems Oxford had* because Cov RU's owner can pay for nice things like hybrid pitches and not need to have the begging bowls out for the RL side too much. they had the luck to enter league 1 later than the above clubs, so from the start were shaped for the league 1 they're in. GAG, Hemel and Oxford were development clubs scaled for a development league, which is what they were told the