DI Keith Fowler

Ralph Rimmer holds all the votes. Welcome to the Rimmersphere.

Batley have a great little ground. Although I must say the slope would be an interesting addition to SL.

There don't seem to have been any leaks with what the proposals are which I would have expected. I'm guessing the clubs are in the dark until Wednesday and IMG/RFL have a degree of certainty the measures will be backed by clubs otherwise the media event that follows in the afternoon might be a bit of a farce.

That's 10pm yesterday for any time zone fans out there.

Ahh I see now! It's effectively toeying the ball rather than striking through and around it.

Sorry I'm just not following. That's literally how everyone kicks nowadays. You lean the ball forward and kick the point of the ball as below.

That's how pretty much everyone kicks it now? Did you mean leaning it backwards?

I wouldn't necessarily see it as that, can't rule it out but I went back and re-listened to that part because it piqued my interest. I think it's more to do with the next point he made which was providing a structure where clubs can become capital assets rather than liabilities.

Popped up on Twitter that the IMG President Adam Kelly was being interviewed on a sports business podcast. Main takeaways: Speaking of other sports doing behind the scenes series (speaking of drive to survive and the new Arsenal documentary rather than in an RL context) he likes them and thinks they have a role to play but they're not a magic bullet. Mentions that he feels the strength in those shows is that they focus on a sport or athlete who is well recognised and gives a view behind the curtain and it might not be suitable for a sport where the athletes are not well known (mentions triathlon as an example and says other things for them are higher priority). Feels the partnership with RL is part of the new era of IMG, part of repositioning the company with a view to longer term projects using a broader set of capabilities (i.e. all key services a sport needs for growth) Focus with RL is maximising long term growth which involves, building better/deeper relationships with fans, attracting new audiences Ground up approach involving re-structuring competitions Re-imagining how content is produced Mentions a "light-bulb" moment for IMG recently when looking at how sports outsource content production (i.e. live matches) and give that broadcaster responsibility which can lead to misaligned objectives and incentives (for me this hints at in-house production or at least having greater say in what Sky & C4 produce) Mentions digital transformation projects & audience data Maximise streaming and data driven content development Seems RL is the test base for a new IMG strategy that offers this holistic package where they can use their business units (such as 7League/160over90/Endeavour streaming who they've acquired) to do everything and not have to outsource anything to anyone else (although RFL are not necessarily tied into using these he thinks they make a compelling case as a package) Builds on the same approach with was used with Euro league Basketball & Table Tennis The only investment is in use of IMG's resources, feels RL was right to turn down private equity as cash wouldn't solve the sports issues (mentions expertise, network support & guidance as what was needed). Doesn't seem a fan of private equity Mentions sports trying to do too much in house and not being able to attract the required expertise to make it work. That's where IMG step in Had received a brief on the morning of the podcast recording and says he feels their team have put together plans that will fire improvement in the sport Not specifically RL related, but was asked about RU and mentioned that he'd met with the Six Nations leaders and found that they individually believed their competition was another Union or another part of Rugby rather than a broader battle for attention versus Netflix/video games/live entertainment etc. Points to Boxing and misalignment and disagreement over competition within a historically massive sport and how that contrasts with UFC which has seen huge recent growth Feels RL has a passionate following that has been underserved and underutilised Mentioned a couple of times getting fundamentals correct and "introducing a framework that will allow investment at the team level" Seems to be about giving owners confidence that if they invest in their clubs they can build the clubs as capital assets rather than a black hole for cash Dodged a question over the geography of the sport, the presenter asked him whether he himself was a target audience as someone in the south of England who only knew RL from Grandstand, swerved that one Not planning on a slow start, they're committing to a lot of up front resource and want to set the foundations for growth now to unfold over 12 years Mentions they doubled the revenues of Euro League basketball in 18 months by doing the "right things simultaneously" Unofficial Partner Podcast

Would the ball be judged in touch on the side nearest? My understanding of the rule has always been that if the ball touches an object that is not part of the field of play (touch judge, ball boy, TV cameraman) it's out. The roof extends across and down to the stand which is by definition outside of the pitch.

Good luck to them, even a scaled down version would be a great boost. However I need to point out if you "levelled up" Odsal you'd lose the bowl.

Bateman gets three.

No let's go there. It's shocking how little joined up thinking there is. These designs will be signed off by the WC team who work for the same organisation who signed off the blue shirt. Does anyone speak to each other? Or was this Oxen doing something off the cuff and the RFL being bounced into it?

Quite a lot of speculation in this thread based on the mistaken idea that Sky only give us a deal because they're feeling charitable. As was noted above, we are great value for Sky and we deliver solid viewing figures and a fair few subscriptions for an investment that for Sky equates to pocket money. Not every sport on Sky needs to be pulling in Premier League football levels of viewers and interest, they need content and we give them that at minimal cost. The last TV deal was a reduction because Sky, off the back of a big investment in the previous deal, didn't notice any material change in the product they received. They're not going to keep paying that amount when it doesn't give them a better product. We've now had two years to come up with an idea to get back to a higher level of funding, we'll see how that goes. But the notion that Sky are about to pull the plug is just pessimism.

Are the digital tickets immediately available? I've had to buy some tickets through a reseller, so I'd like to know if they've been released so I can chase them.

He's an absolute nightmare to defend against. You sort of know what he's going to do but you can't stop him. I agree he's top end of SL quality in attack it's just everything else about his game.

It's a perception people have but I've never seen any evidence produced in support of it. I've read previously the origin might be the number of Irish Catholic players Everton had in the 1950's. However it still can be true people were drawn to Everton because they perceived them to be the Catholic club.

Whether you like him or loathe him the one thing you can say for certain is he's reading this thread.

It's really weird, it's nominally to hold the top of your shirt together but since buttons had already been invented it was redundant even at the time of it's invention. I don't actually enjoy feeling like I'm being slowly strangled but everyone's different I suppose. It has absolutely no function and I'm sympathetic to the Iranian view of the tie as a symbol of the West's decadence. The only saving grace of the tie is that point in a wedding where people take them off (which they've been dying to do for hours) and put them round their head which is funny for both people who think that's genuinely hilarious and also people doing it ironically because that's the sort of thing you do at a wedding. I also didn't like having to wear one at work.

I can't remember when C4 started doing it, might have been from the start. But yes now Sky have caught on. I don't mind it especially TBH.

There's so much positivity in the C4 coverage, it's something Premier have got as well. Sky has been stale for a while now, they need a bit of a reboot which may be on the cards if everyone opted for C4 when they've gone head to head.

That's some agenda.

As in an aggregate score? I'm not sure that works in RL.

It's definitely that, they've been doing countdowns for a year now (actually longer since it was cancelled first time round!). They can't break ranks with other brands/events and do too much until after the funeral.

It was highly, highly speculative. I didn't get the sense they knew any more than we do here. It was quite telling when it went from "it'll be two full time leagues" to "oh yeah there's not enough money so the second division must be part-time" in the space of 15 seconds.