Worzel

Literally zero point in that club. If it was an animal, we’d have put it down by now. This is just cruelty.

Can anybody explain the point of Huddersfield being in SuperLeague to me? Serious question. Will the sport be any worse off for losing 39 fans in another town in West Yorkshire? This in a sport where senior decision-makers, including Ken Davy, seriously say that Catalans and their lack of away fans are some sort of burden on the game Someone please make it make sense

Hope you’re right. It was still 36 degrees here yesterday at 10pm so the weather may be a factor though.

Yes, your campaign against the IMG era is constant and unyielding, and yet you’re resolutely uncritical of all of the more recent pro-Wood coup shenanigans. Was that the one you meant?

Maybe. I still prefer to fish where the fish are, you get faster results without needing to improve your skill levels or your equipment. The other analogy I like is Pooh Sticks. Winning that game isn't about having the best stick, it's about identifying the fastest flowing water to throw your stick into. Most commercial success doesn't come from best-fit product or optimised process (although some does), most comes from being able to find the best marketplace for what you have. The success you get from that pays for your later ability to improve product and process.

They were, as were Hull KR, but those days are gone and only lasted a couple of years so are not a factor in the relative production of youth players. When you're fishing and there aren't many fish in the water, the solution isn't to put more rods in, or even to develop better rods, it is to move to somewhere where there are likely to be far more fish.

Is anybody making that argument? Not me Harry said that so-called expansion clubs hadn’t created many players. I simply pointed out they created more than Leigh. Nobody’s trying to protect an elite. A bunch of clubs with privileged access to the political levers of power in the UK are however trying to drag the sport back to the dark ages, to protect their own, small, local interests at the expense of the game.

This entirely misses the point. The fact those two clubs don’t have competition for miles and miles is the entire point! Rugby league doesn’t need more clubs in the same confined spaces to build participation, anyone in Leigh interested in rugby league has choices and don’t need the Leopards. Anyone in Keighley has access to other elite pathways. Same in Hunslet, and many other places. But the sport has the ability to get more people playing in London and South West France. For minority sports, getting more people playing is key to the mission. The fact you see those clubs strength in that aspect and the strategic advantage it brings us as some sort of “cheating” is precisely the mindset that’s held our sport back for years. It’s not about what makes life better or worse for Leigh relatively, it’s not about any one club… it’s about what’s going to be best for the sport overall.

It's mad this isn't it? I mean, this has all been explained a thousand times. RL Commercial was set-up to lead the commercial growth of the game. The fact we then appointed an incompetent RFL placeholder to lead it, a man who had failed in every single one of his previous roles at the RFL, is not IMG's fault. Nor is the fact that the games stakeholders couldn't manage to get 18 months into a 12 year strategy without blowing it all up. If our sport had put as much effort into working hard to execute a plan as it does into internecine squabbling and every-3-years "reimagining" focused on petty structural issues, that always result in the same average people in the same roles with new job titles, we'd have overtaken the Premier League by now. It's like that Monty Python sketch about the Judean People's Liberation Front.

This concept that the game has failed to develop the heartlands because it has been distracted by expansion is absolutely hilarious. I mean, geniunely hilarious. This is rugby league we're talking about, right?

Catalans pathways provide more Super League players than Leigh London pathways provide more Super League players than Leigh Will that do you?

Somebody needs to remind nincompoops like Beaumont that Catalans have bigger crowds than Leigh, and develop more Super League players than Leigh. As for that dipstick Mazey, if Rochdale was every going to be a hotbed for the elite game it would have happened by now. They've had 154 years to pull it off. None of what they say makes sense, even on their own terms. Just a bunch of petty nationalist Little Englanders with no care for anything beyond the end of their nose.

I was very clear that Leigh deserved to win. Following Rovers between 1989 and 2005 in particular I became very used to losing to better teams and I’m fine with it, it’s part of sport. I always saw the Leeds and Leigh games as banana skins and have said so on both match threads ahead of time. Hull KR losing doesn’t mean I can’t call out your one-note obsession though. You’ve basically got Hull KR Tourette’s. If Ben Flower had punched a Rovers player you’d have thought they were faking the injury. If I was a betting man I’d say you probably bumped into the back of someone with your car once and Hudgell sued you behalf of the other party on a no-win, no-fee basis. But who knows maybe it’s something else?

Yes, I agree. But it amazes me that everyone is prepared to gloss over the root cause. Sky didn’t even bother to look at it.

Nigel confirms that all of the plans are regressive and purely short-term tactical moves. Quelle surprise! The sport finally had a long-term strategy, with metrics moving in the right direction and the abiity to enter TV rights negotiations (the only meaningful way to increase revenue quickly) on the back of them, and what does it do? Blow it all up for 14 teams with an extra derby, and the pretence that away fans are the solution. The vaguely sensible clubs should approach the NRL now, if 5 or 6 of them did that then ultimatey another 4 or 5 would join in later when they saw the opportunity. The NRL won't come without being asked, but they might come if the right clubs did ask. We could then leave the luddites with their own comp, and they could then go back to winter rugby and a new middle eights structure, east and west conferences to save travel costs, or any other backward-looking idea they might come up with in the board room at Batley over pie and peas.