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Well?

I don't think it matters much what his intentions were, whatever they were - He failed horribly as coach as GB, and that was interlinked with him being England coach. Many people said he just used GB as his England squad, so you can just assume if it was an England tour rather than a GB one, it wouldn't have been much different. If Bennett did use a GB tour as a "free hit" then he deserved not continuing as England coach. I honestly don't see Wane as that much of a downgrade to Bennett, if at all. A national coach is not the same as a club coach, Bennett wasn't spending 9 months of the year with England players, looking at how to develop them further, etc. At least Wane can watch most England potentials every week with being based in the UK. Should Wane have continued or been let go after the WC? I was very 50/50 on that decision, in the end he has delivered a 3-0 series win against Tonga 12 months following, so the decision to keep him on board in hindsight seems to have been a good one.

No, I wasn't confusing the 2 Jarrad/Jarrod's. I have no knowledge of Jarrad Stack whatsoever. I am sure it was one of the reasons he moved up to Cumbria after his Wigan stint. I have now had a google and it was spoken about prominently in this thread: If he did have that job or not, I have no idea.

I think there was an article on here not long ago about him looking for a club. No real idea about how he has gone for the last couple of years, but I wouldn't say no to him coming on board for next year. I believe he had a second job at sellafields, not sure if I am remembering that right or not. But would probably hinder him looking to play in London at the same time.

Didn't he lose to PNG and Tonga that year? Not sure that shows that they wouldn't have choked against Samoa.

I don't think any TV station is interested in showing more than 1 game a week, pretty much no TV station has been interested in even showing 1 game a week to be fair. At the end of the day, we're in 2023, no sports club should be scared of being on TV anymore, they should know how to try and make it more of an event because it is on TV. Didn't French RL fall from the heights it once was because they didn't want to be on TV all those years ago? If no one can see you, you can't grow.

Unless Premier Sports show it FTA rather than on their subscription service, I can't see how it would affect Championship attendances that much. How many championship fans actually subscribed to viaplay last season?

The RFL have already said that SRD are in special measures.

If IMG stated that then they would have said that, they didn't. They said it's up to individual clubs to share if they want to, some have and some haven't. IMG set the criteria, it's the clubs own information/data that gets the points, why would IMG be allowed to disclose 3rd party information publicly?

Didn't the clubs own statement say they were looking to get a short term deal in early 2024? Doesn't sound like anything is agreed for next year.

Aren't Salford technically homeless right now? Seems pretty bad.

It was/is a decent game - Think it was 10 - 4 to Jamaica when the stream went down just before HT. Jamaica ontop of the scoreboard only, with the USA team looking quite dominant through the middle.

Don't think Featherstone & Leeds have had a formal partnership for a few seasons now.

We've had quite a few different teams from overseas that have competed in the challenge cup. I believe we had one of the Moscow teams 20 years ago, we had a Serbian? team only 5 or so years ago as well.

I still have no idea why red flags are being raised at this news.. IMO it gives IMG even more incentive to grow the profile and income of the sport, as if that grows then the betting rights grow as well.

So was Denver If this only just beats Denvers attendance then it's pretty poor.

I'm afraid I am not sure what you mean

Just because they haven't got a top flight team, it's still probably pretty wrong to assume it wasn't already a football area, just like every other area in the country.

I'm picturing you hearing this on commentary for Handball while they are bemoaning a player for not taking a shot. "I can't believe he didn't take that shot, I bet he indicates in car parks!"

I mean.. it isn't a "new" channel, it will be 1 channel rebranding as another (again). So it will be the same amount of channels as before. If it wasn't for these smaller time sports broadcasters then no Championship rugby would have been seen on TV since the 8s, barring the odd final and summer bash.

If it was such an atrocious system as you make out then Championship clubs wouldn't go for it either. They have to be getting benefits from it, or they wouldn't do it. In the Championship LB had one with Wigan which mainly involved returning London youngsters coming back to us for a time, and I believe we also had Harvie Hill for short period. When we were originally in SL we had DR with Skolars and it certainly helped both clubs at that level anyway.

The obvious ones for London would be Canberra & Brisbane, I also have memories of us playing Manly before they played their WCC and also Cronulla back in the old WCC competition

Guess that guess of it not being good due to competition wasn't quite right.

The RFL have never sold the betting rights before, most of us don't even know what it really means. But yeah, I'm sure we had lots of interested parties bidding for the rights. It's funny reading the replies of people being negative about it just because IMG is involved.

Without knowing how much the RFL make from their own betting rights each year, it is hard to know if it is a good deal or not. I guess having IMG 'own' a part of the business they are trying to improve gives them even more incentive to increase popularity through betting, etc.