JonM

Bring back the Italian football style massive flags from the 80s ARL

Or adding a Japanese team to "super" rugby for however many years it was

Swinton picked up quite a few players from NWC demise, didn't they? Good win, all the same.

They have been trying to find a site for some years now.

Just posting a link for London's livestream tomorrow.

Played York in a pre-season game in 2025. A 2026 return was called off because of Vegas and WCC and they've decided not to do it next year because of the world cup interfering with pre-season.

An odd example to pick, the only 'heartlands' ground that got a crowd a lot higher than a normal club game. They had 6968 for PNG thrashing Wales, which was more than PNG or NZ got at Warrington, any of the 3 games at Leigh, NZ playing at Hul FCl, the Kangaroos at St. Helens, or Ireland v Jamaica at Headingley. Of course, Middlesbrough and Coventry did better than all of those.

I think this is true, but the real change is how far ahead soccer has gone, although that started happening earlier. Liverpool FC & Widnes RL ran a joint "superstars" event and the like for player's testimonials in the 1970s, which is unimaginable now. There are now Liverpool players who earn as much in a week as the entire Widnes squad earns in a year. There's almost nowhere today where SL clubs are competing with RU for fans or sponsors. We're competing with football everywhere.

Presumably they can't put a date on their return until they've actually secured a site and planning permission. 2 years seems optimistic. Dewsbury's ground is no worse from the spectator facilities point of view than Wheldon Road or the Belle Vue of a few years back, and is considerably nicer than Odsal. Presumably any physical changes will be around the TV side of things.

St. Helens has a Warrington postcode. My house has a Darlington postcode, in spite of Darlo being about an hour's drive away.

We're not the NFL, and it's a pointless comparison. They make money on those games, we're probably losing money on playing in Dublin. How many American fans fly into London to watch those games, vs those games catering to local fans? UK fans buy merchandise and watch games on tv as a result, and if they're interested, they can get involved in American football here. If you live in Spain, have never heard of RL before (highly likely), and somehow end up going along to one of these games, there's no possible follow up. You can't watch other games on tv, you can't join your local club. At least if you do something like this in say Athens or Belgrade there's a chance of it actually helping to grow the sport in Europe.

There needs to be some purpose to it other than just a nice holiday destination for players and fans and a different backdrop for the tv audience. If you're playing a game in random mid-sized European city, you need a way of funnelling any interested locals towards a local club they can join.

Hadn't realised that he'd also given a pre-match talk to sponsors at Widnes's business club, after collecting his Widnes heritage number.

Pretty sure they will have seen the contract end date of 2026 when they first signed it. And both Fred Done and the Betfred CEO Joanne Whittaker have been known to attend SL games from time to time, so I imagine they have had plenty of time to discuss possible renewal at the end of this season. In any case, she seemed to suggest that it's not a done (sorry!) deal yet. https://sbcnews.co.uk/sportsbook/2026/08/04/betfred-super-league-deal/

Widnes had a new General Manager, Tim Holmes, at the start of the season, and he put a lot of effort into social media, regular emails, behind the scenes video clips etc. and sorting out the match day experience. He seemed to have really got the generally moaning, negative fanbase behind him too, absolute step change from recent holders of the position. Some of the things (free collectibles for kids that you can get at the game, swap with your mates etc) I really think other clubs should copy. For unknown reasons, he stepped down at the end of June without another job to go to. I suspect the amount of pay did not match the amount of work he was putting in, and perhaps the board wasn't able to spend as much on promoting the club as he wanted. For all that, we got a (genuine) 4000+ crowd for the opener, and then around the 2000-2500 mark since, so it's not actually had any real impact on attendances. Salford is another club that seems to do a good job (by Championship standards) of the matchday experience. While it's great to see world-class players like Gairo Voro in the Championship, and even Campbell-Gillard in his pantomime villain role is quite entertaining, I do think London have got the balance of spending on off-field stuff vs playing squad wrong. Playing at Richmond Athletic ground in front of a few hundred gives a pretty easy excuse to leave the Broncos out of SL if that's what SL club owners want.

Genuine question - how did Ealing Trailfinders build up their crowds? They're (kinda) in a similar position in a way. They won every game last season without any real challenge, can't be promoted into the closed shop above them, playing opposition that is even more no-name than the RL championship (Ampthill, Caldy, Hartpury College, Chinnor?) Although they've been around for 150+ years, they only got into the second tier a bit over a decade ago, so they don't have much of a traditional fanbase. Their announced home crowds are in the 1200-1500 range, but they were more like 400-500 before Covid. Is there anything particular that they're doing, or is just organic growth and the fact that they run loads of kids teams/ can tap into existing awareness of RU?

Given our leaky the sport is, the fact that we haven't heard anything makes me feel reasonably positive and they may even have some kind of NDA in place. I expect we would have had a late night, post drinking session tweet by now if it had all been called off.

Turns out to be the correct answer. 'Procedural irregularity' on the part of the RFL.

I've always admired the Australian view of history. At exactly the same time the dastardly British were slaughtering the indigenous population, enslaving people from nearby islands and destroying ecosystems by importing non-native plants and animals, the fair dinkum Aussies were exploring the continent, building cities, mining gold, setting up irrigation on the Murray River and so on.

Nigel Wood aside, the existing RFL board is largely free of any club ties, although one of them was a director of Sale Sharks RU for many years. https://www.rugby-league.com/governance/about-the-rfl/board

Jason Demetriou seemed to enjoy his pre-game standing ovation. Seems funny to think that his dad used to post on the Widnes messageboard asking how he was going - no social media, full game videos on YouTube etc. back then.

I assume there's a good reason why he was allowed to play - just interested to know what it is. He played against Midlands last week too by the looks of it, so presumably the ban didn't actually happen, or the case hasn't been heard yet.

Incidentally, anyone know why Jack Croft was able to play for London rather than serving the announced 3 match ban? https://www.rugby-league.com/governance/rules-and-regulations/disciplinary/disciplinary-case?case=19838

And that's the full-time score. Bit of a strange game. London looked like they could score at will and could have had 70 or 80 if they had wanted to. Widnes seemed to realise that it didn't really matter whether they turned over the ball on the London line, or in their own half, so all kinds of trick plays and speculative passes. Same in defence, where they went for the interception several times, knowing that it didn't really matter. Incredibly casual from London at times, knowing they had the game easily won, often bombing easy scoring chances, or not putting in much effort in defence, and quite poor discipline with a really one-sided penalty count which you don't expect for a team that was so dominant. 3 tries in 10 minutes from Widnes at the end made for an interesting final few minutes with the Broncos looking like they just wanted to be on the coach home. A cynic might think that winning by 70 wouldn't do much for 1895 Cup Final ticket sales. Obviously, as a Widnes fan, delighted with that, and the team deserved the reception they got from the crowd at the end. I doubt anyone will come that close again this season.

Widnes 36 London 42 with about a minute to go.