Cowardly Fan

It also isn't a player. It's fair to question what qualities we are looking for in the role. Is it an administrator, an ambassador or something else?

You're not familiar with sarcasm and irony are you?

They have a responsibility, but we do too. Why do they have little pride in the national team? I'd argue part of it is what it is associated with - play second grade teams and/or in smaller stadiums. I don't think it's any coincidence their worse results have come in Leigh, and they have a negative impact. Imagine if their best players turned up and they had a close defeat or even a win, what would be the outcome? I doubt it would be a game against the full Australia team or England in a big stadium.

I agree it's damaging, but part of the reason for the dropouts is surely due to playing the junior kangaroos. If we treat them as second class we shouldn't be surprised if they don't treat it seriously either. That said there are clearly problems with the federation as well.

We have the advantage in events, but can learn from other sports in different areas it doesn't mean they are aspirational as a whole. I'd argue it's beneficial to look at less well resourced sports too and how they approach their challenges. What works for football may not be feasible for RL. We seem to have pockets of success on participation, but there's no sign of a clear plan across the country or insight being shared. Netball may be a step ahead in this area.

Leeds, Dresden, Essen are some of the biggest without a top flight football team. Believe NFL is pretty popular in Germany too. Novosibirsk in Siberia though is the obvious candidate - at 1.5m it's twice the size of the others!

Agree with the first part but it's not unique to UK, pretty common throughout Europe and the best atmospheres I've experienced have been abroad.

I'd expect quite significantly - I'm sure they had to overpay slightly to get players to drop down a level, plus whatever cap room they have left.

Problem is do Barcelona actually want it? Catalans' game was more about identity and local pride than money as far as I could tell.

I don't think anyone is suggesting name alone will attract fans.

I used to work in research for sport. Supporting a team is most often family / friend driven, but outside of that local pride is key at the start. I don't believe people in Manchester feel an attachment to Rochdale or Oldham as places. Plus as has been said Manchester Rangers were getting 300 in the lower amateur leagues. What do you think that would grow to in the first year as a league 1 club?

Which is in part because there is no Manchester club.

I'd be careful with some ofthose comparisons - MU require a membership to purchase for almost all games. City have a strategy of pricing an extremely small amount of tickets low, to give them a good PR number. SL for what I've seen has a more basic pricing structure.

We can't afford to be snobbish about people's understanding or interest in the sport. Look at racing - many people are mainly there for a nice day out, with just a slight interest in gambling and the actual races, but it brings revenue to the sport. Some of those fans who come for the beer garden will become more committed fans of the sport and others won't, we should welcome both.

Possibly. From my experience getting the details of ticket purchases for games at external venues was very difficult, even when the venue agreed to it in the contract we never got it all. I used to think The RFL could help e.g. Coventry to target an occasional game for. There must be 5-10k in the area who have attended a game, but never been to the Bears, and they could help with promotion and planning. However, based on that total figure they don't have the reach.