paul hicks

haha avoid games in jolly. . i was there in may and the place was at a standstill for some parade or other. avoid the period between Easter and September more like

the problem with Belfast is you have to half the potential audience dependant on were you situate the club . having recently returned from a family wedding over there its still a patchwork of divided areas . I was in an hotel just off the sandy row and could net even get over a bridge to Grosvenor road owning to police road blocks that are put in place for the full day every time one side or the other decides to have a parade as they quaintly call them. was even informed by relative's it would not be safe to go into the city centre on the day of the parade not that it stopped me from going shopping in the fewer than normally open shops. Belfast for all its bluster is run down and socially deprived and in comparison there's far more money floating around in Dublin.

i would imagine it would not be its first action . i would think that a bit further down the road when they had the game running smoothly they could add new teams so really as the have a 12 year contact . so perhaps year 4 a new team in Dublin . year 7 a new team in Scotland. year 10 a new team who knows maybe Barcelona or Rome depending were the finds are coming from. not everything has to be done in year one unless your panicking . perhaps we will see the first long term strategy in rugby league expansion .

well that's buggered Featherstone and Castleford for starters

no they play in different regions . it would be like merging Sheffield with Newcastle . now there's another idea clubs born out of the effects of mergers merging .. is there no end to this . maybe we could make it only one team in any traditional county

not forgetting leeds and hunslet. bradford and keighley. oldham and rochdale. and those big mates workington and whitehaven . salford and swinton ?. and there we have it merged many clubs and reduced congestion along the M62 a win win

most fans never seem happy so its not really a big change

indeed i suppose both title challengers in the championship this season would score more on ground facilities than some super league clubs

even with giving away hundreds of free tickets

imagine if one of the criteria for super league was crowd averages over say a 5 year period

why not merge saints and Warrington seeing they already share WA postcode . seems no worse than the reasoning for merging the hull clubs . on a similar theme we could merge Wigan and leigh and of course the triangle of Castleford, Featherstone and Wakefield for no other reason than it could be amusing watching the debate on where they play. also if you did those mergers than there's no reason to relegate Toulouse .

yawn

indeed and Handley had good D in the game as well. god the spelling police are out in force today

I hear people with free tickets for the Warrington v leeds game were asking for there evening back . even those that paid didnt seem to want to be there

thought the Hanley try from the scrum was a perfect example of a training ground move with myler putting the ball in and then stepping back to make the extra man from Leeming's pass .

yes he did

maybe better off Salford building there own ground. . Castleford have some plans going spare they no longer need

ok so they wont fill the ground but how many who would have gone and paid on the gate will now just get free tickets instead . more than likely a few hundred which converts to a few thousand quid lost

i recon the sight of a stadium that's 1/3 or more empty for a major game could put viewers off especially with the seats been red as that shows more than black or dark blue when you look at a screen.

my part of the world is leeds but was over in Belfast for 10 days so took advantage of the customer is always right with the barman and asked him to put it on the big screen. place soon filled up with tourists from quite a number of places from what i could make out . how many will even get the BBC i don't know but i told them there would be a lot of games on in November for the world cup so who knows china and other parts of the far east and over in Scandinavia may have a few people tuning in . also said to get on youtube and type in rugby league or indeed just the look on the internet .

negative is that they cant manage to sell the tickets after all its only a 15 thousand capacity stadium

if your marketing was better perhaps those tickets could have been sold for oh i don't know real money ?.

I can understand giving away free tickets in a development area but surprised it still needs to be done in the so called heartlands.

rating really depend on the perception of the audience. i would have given it about 7 out of 10 but I was watching it from a hotel bar in Belfast after getting the bar manager to put it on the big screen . after about 15 mins there was quite a crowd watching the game from differing parts of the world and they all seemed to really think it was brilliant and were going ouch when tackles came in and roaring in the tries for both sides. so i give it a 7 and I'm quite sure many of those watching in the same bar would have been up at 9 or 10 by the reaction's they gave . perceptions from rugby league people are not always the same as those who see the game with fresh eyes and we need to attract those people to the event .

seem to remember a press release saying they had been offering £2 tickets to NHS staff that was been abused by people. I'm opposed to discount tickets to fill a stadium anyway as it devalues the event . sell a ticket for £10 and the event is only worth a tenner which hardly makes it look like a must attend event . with look this new company that's coming in will find ways to maximise income from such events . I must admit i did not go this year and only watched it from a hotel in Belfast after asking the bar manager to show it on the big screen .