M j M

Edit, not worth it.

Better than what? Repeating something that is common knowledge? Have I fallen into some bizarre parallel universe?

Pretending a claim on the internet is "fact" despite it going counter to what multiple people say who were actually involved in Rugby League management at the time and who literally were spoken to by Lewis about it.

Oh come on, everyone in the sport knows it was Lewis who went club by club to get them to vote against the proposed sponsorship from Betfair in favour of the Stobart deal. Wood obviously isn't going to trash the deal when it was being announced but it was Lewis who was vociferous against gambling sponsorship, something Wood rightly or wrongly dropped once he took full control. Lewis's role in the Stobart deal really hasn't been disputed by anyone.

Come on, can we ditch this meaningless AI rubbish?

Wood was largely running the RFL from 2008 onwards when Lewis went part time. Before that they were essentially a double act anyway, although they had differences (e.g. Lewis's desire for the Stobart deal which Wood was very much against).

He's an ###### with a transparent agenda. Several of the things in there are misleading, a couple are downright untrue. People simply have to realise that Davidson has little more credibility than Gledhill. We urgently need to rely on the handful of decent RL journalists.

Reality check for Leeds. A soft fixture list has given them a nice run but playing like that against even a weakened St Helens side will result in defeat. A one off bad day or a sign that some of the old failings are still there, we'll soon see.

Abysmal and impatient for almost all this half by Leeds. Saints have offered very little despite territorial domination but deservedly up.

Citing a players agent as someone both trustworthy and neutral really made me laugh.

* citation needed. You keep spouting the same ###### but their performance was demonstrably appalling in holding the executive to account.

From what I've been told (sorry anonymous source) some of the dissatisfaction with Johnson's board was that they would continually suggest everything was going well, congratulating themselves on hitting spurious metrics. And it wasn't just BS, they actually believed it. All the time the game was, in reality, floundering. There was a fundamental disconnect from reality and no understanding or will to understand or address the actual issues. The NEDs are there to hold the exec to account but there was little of that actually happening. It was like they were living in a parallel universe, all the time the game was burning and they thought it was a roaring success. How the clubs went about changing that is open to debate. I'm very sympathetic to Wood's track record but it probably was unwise to go back to him. However not liking that aspect shouldn't immediately mean you are on the side of the old board. They were, as a collective, a failure. I'm sure there were good people involved with integrity, and you want outside expertise, but as a group they seemed just too disconnected from the reality of the sport.

Anyone got anything on this not written by Davidson? I just find his stuff utterly unreadable and often unreliable.

Imagine turning comments off on a post of your front page, they never normally do this https://x.com/westaustralian/status/1935328554574848056

Context for those figures. Plus the number of people actually at the ground itself.

A tiny amount compared to what it would cost the sport if there was even a hint that the governing body didn't take this seriously.

The way people defending Aston have tried to belittle and shift responsibility onto this lady is the most repulsive aspect of this whole case. Despite him losing his case you, his other defenders and Aston's ignorant/incompetent friends in the media are still at it.

The client press, not least the lamentable Davidson, continue to defend him. This has been a particularly shameful period for the Rugby League media.

For a business which has years of wildly varying income and which has quite peculiar responsibilities the profit or loss of one year in isolation is not indicative of anything.

There isn't enough information in that piece of blurb to make any informed comment, positive or negative TBH.

Let's hope things are different this time.

That's not what that usually means

We need to live in the world as it is rather than a fantasy one. Even at their very peak years for crowds Huddersfield haven't been too close to getting a 10k average. It's suggested they are going for an 8k capacity stadium which I do think is too small and should be more like 10k. But it's obvious that this would be an improvement for them in a whole host of ways. What I really don't approve of is the idea of moving out of Huddersfield whilst it is built, that's much more dangerous for the club than people seem to realise.

Looks like it to me! And I want Wakefield to win.

Joke of a penalty to Wakey there, Smith is giving them everything.