M j M
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Posts posted by M j M
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13 minutes ago, JohnM said:
"You want me so sign up to THAT? Not without seeing what I'm signing up to. Now, let's have a look at the contract."
But it's well-publicised - I've shown you the link to the press release - that the " surprise" payment was nothing to do with that. It was an RL Commercial deal.
Hres the board of RL Commercial. Ooh look! https://www.rugby-league.com/governance/about-the-rfl/rl-commercial-board
For clarity, Larkin and McManus have only just been appointed to the board of RL Commercial.
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10 minutes ago, phiggins said:
Summary of press coverage on the idea that Catalans are in danger of being kicked out / have funding cut:
Martyn Sadler - I don't know where that has come from
Gary Carter - It's not on the table, yet.
Allout RL / We love RL - That would be a stupide thing to do
Mascord / Davidson - THEY'RE KILLING THE FRENCH! GET ANGRY! VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
It's just BS. Unfortunately we all need to stop reading the social media feeds of some of our leading journalists as they are just whipping up fears about stuff that is simply never going to happen.
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23 minutes ago, gingerjon said:
It is a problem when you’re making it up.
Saying “won’t it be great when rugby league finally expands beyond the contained working class communities it is currently based in” is not the same as “oh it is awful that contained rugby league communities play rugby league”.
It's not though is it. There are literally people on this thread asking why L1 and Champ clubs are meeting "in places like Batley", as if they should stop rotating around each others grounds and hire a meeting space in central Manchester instead, just in case anyone from outside the game notices.
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11 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:
Have a laugh at the Champo and L1 clubs meeting to talk Champo and L1 stuff in Batley. Not fine.
The cultural cringe some have around Rugby League is very revealing. And they'll try and pretend it's anyone who points it out who has a problem.
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3 minutes ago, Adelaide Tiger said:
But your comment is also extremely relevant to the current Strategic Review that might jettison Catalans and Toulouse which some one here clearly support.
This has been debunked.
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5 hours ago, Dave T said:
But it really is embarrassing that we are having key meetings of the future of English RL in places like Batley.
It was a meeting of Championship and League One clubs, I think they always hold these at one of the club's grounds. Mount Pleasant is one of the better ones with appropriate facilities to hold such a meeting.
Have we got to the stage where some fans of the game are so ashamed of Rugby League coming from working class towns in the north of England that we have to stop going to or even mentioning their existence?
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23 hours ago, The Future is League said:
It could be IF Blease reverts to his ways he had at the Red Devils.
Blease's role at Leeds involves spending the money allocated to the football budget by the Leeds board. I have no idea what it is you think he can do from there to endanger the club's future.
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3 minutes ago, Prestigious Doubt said:
Until extremely recently, like the last 20-30 years, almost all top Kiwi rugby league players were guys that couldn't make it in Union, grew up in Australia, or were pinched by Australian clubs.
There was no true professional rugby league pathway in NZ until the Warriors were established, and young blokes coming through NZ exclusively as leaguies is pretty unusual even to this day frankly.
The Auckland Rugby League was the biggest league in NZ prior to the modern era, but in real terms it was just the local governing body and league. From a commercial perspective it wasn't comparable to the NSWRL or BRL, there wouldn't have been many blokes who made decent money playing first grade over there for example.
Some Kiwi's will dispute all of that out of pride, but it's true, and we all know it. It's actually pretty crazy that you're unaware of this rugby league fans.
You're just making stuff up now so I won't FTT.
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42 minutes ago, Prestigious Doubt said:
Until the 90s, maybe arguably the 80s, rugby league's existence in NZ was comparable to it's current presences in places like Wales for example.
This is crazy. British Rugby League was stuffed full of New Zealand players in the 1980s and 1990s, all born 20+ years earlier. My team alone had more players just from Auckland than there probably are Welsh-born players in all of Super League.
Those Kiwis didn't spring from nowhere, they came from a local production line which reflected local interest in the sport.
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22 minutes ago, Prestigious Doubt said:
Not only are you moving the goalposts, but that's just ignorance talking.
The difficulties with each are unique, but what's actually absurd is to play down the successes brand new clubs have had in Auckland and Canberra because it doesn't suit your position in the moment.
There was significantly more institutional resistance to RL and the Warriors in Auckland, and NZ in general, than there was in Melbourne, and especially Perth at the moment. At worst Melbourne was apathetic to the Storm, the Rugby institutions in NZ have been pretty hostile to the Warriors at times for example.
Cashflow and investment have been a much bigger issue for the Warriors traditionally than the Storm as well.
Canberra is a much more competitive market than any of the above. It's probably the most competitive sports market in Australia, whilst also being small and highly transient, meaning there's little room for error.
In Canberra you need to build a fanbase quick and not only hold on to it for dear life, but also be capable of turning over new fans regularly. Otherwise a couple bad seasons is all it can take for you to lose a significant portion of those fans to competitors offering a better experience, while you watch as the club's bank balance goes from healthy to deep in the red. This is something the Raiders have frankly excelled at, only having missed the finals twice in a row a few times in their existence for example.
Canberra has traditionally had no support from broadcasters either. If anything Nine in particular has been pretty hostile to them, treating them like a waste of airspace.
Not to downplay the Storm's achievements, because they're significant, but if anything I'd argue that Auckland and Canberra have been more impressive successes in their own ways. You shouldn't be in the business if you aren't perennial contenders and can't find 15-20k people to support a club in a market with a population of 5 million with the sort of resources they've had at their disposal.
Fundamental to setting up new clubs is establishing a fan base. In both Auckland and Canberra there were people who followed the sport - and played the sport - in decent numbers. The sport was not virtually unknown.
That simply isn't/wasn't the case in places like Perth and Melbourne.
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32 minutes ago, Prestigious Doubt said:
You're simply wrong.
Canberra wasn't a Rugby League heartland before the Raiders popped off in the early 90s, and still isn't truly a RL town if you know anything about the place. Canberra is a weird place with a weird culture and history, it's actually pretty unique and interesting in it's own way.
Auckland wasn't and isn't a league town either, and despite having a decent foothold in the south of the city for years, the Warriors have only really started to put real pressure RU in the last few years since covid. It's been a 30 year project that still hasn't met it's true potential, and probably won't until further expansion in NZ is sustainable.
So that's at least three including Melbourne, and, like it or not, that's three more than British RL has managed in over 100 years.
At times all three have required significant amounts of support and intervention from the governing body and other clubs to keep them strong, and that attitude of sacrificing to help new entities to survive and succeed is why expansion has been much more successful in Australia than in England. That's before we talk about all the other clubs that the NRL, and it's predecessors, have assisted or propped up for the betterment of the sport over the years as well. I mean the Knights, Titans, Cronulla, and so on, are all from dyed in the wool Rugby League heartlands, and all of them have required bailouts to keep them going, and have arguably been more unstable than at least the Raiders and Storm.
The NRL isn't incapable of launching a Perth team without government support either. They could launch a Perth side tomorrow, and Adelaide for that matter, but rightly or wrongly, they're angling to get as much government support to subsidise the costs as possible because they think it's available. That'll either end up being genius negotiating or it'll blow up the V'landy's face, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ too soon to tell.
Pretending Auckland and Canberra are in any way similar market propositions for brand new pro Rugby League clubs as London, Melbourne or Perth is absolutely absurd.
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8 minutes ago, Treizistance said:
Do you think losing say Leigh, Castleford and Huddersfield and gaining London and Toulouse would reduce the TV deal?
Obviously it would, yes.
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23 minutes ago, Toby Chopra said:
You're thinking in the way the UK expands. The NRL (and predecessors) have successfully added numerous teams, some from a standing start.
For all the wealth the NRL has their record on expansion is utterly abysmal. They have one team located in a place where Rugby League wasn't already very popular. To be fair to them (or more precisely to News) that team was given tens of millions of dollars in support over its early years to keep it going.
Since then they have added more teams in RL heartlands or heartland adjacent. They seem unable to even commit to launching the Perth team without substantial government support.
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6 minutes ago, Eddie said:
Is anyone else in despair about the future of English pro and semi-pro rugby league? The two options seems to be;
1. Stay controlled by the big SL clubs who’ll contract further by kicking Catalan out
I think we've at least established that this is a load of rubbish and was never likely to happen. It might be the excitable thoughts of one or two of our more flamboyant owners but the serious people, including Nigel Wood, were never for it.
Apart from that I share your despair. The NRL plan of selecting a handful of lucky clubs who happened to be sitting when the music stopped and sod the rest of the game seems a particularly dystopian future.
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7 minutes ago, whatmichaelsays said:
The statement is awful. We're led to believe that this is was a high-level meeting of minds to discuss the future direction of a multi-million pound sport, and the statement mentions nothing of that and goes on to thank Tracey for her lovely pies.
I don't know what you think this was but it was a meeting of almost exclusively part-time clubs.
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1 minute ago, Toby Chopra said:
Your own post says: "It'll be the same as 1995, a small number of teams go ahead and the rest of the sport is allowed to wither."
Your post was "if only we hadn't done that [Super League] the game would be thriving."
That's nothing like the same thing.
Super League was great for the big clubs, mine included. But the way it was brought in and implemented was immensely harmful in lots of ways to the clubs and communities beneath them. The sport basically ended up surrendering what were strong Rugby League areas whilst the big clubs, sort of, flourished.
Was it a good trade off? Maybe. Would the game have been in robust health without it? Unlikely.
But it's no use pretending there wasn't long lasting damage alongside the positives that SL brought.
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1 minute ago, Toby Chopra said:
But I'll always push back at a narrative that starts with saying the creation of Superleague was some sort of harmful event and if only we hadn't done that the game would be thriving.
I don't think anybody is saying that.
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1 minute ago, gingerjon said:
No disdain at all.
That’s projection.
Maybe not from you. But looking through the posts and it's easy to see plenty of the usual self-loathing of clubs and towns that form the bedrock of our sport.
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1 hour ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:
I can't see a league not comprising if at least 2 West Yorkshire clubs. There will certainly be one more in addition to Leeds. It just depends on who that is.
It's hard to believe 24 years ago we had 6 West Yorkshire SL clubs and now we're talking about possibly just 1. It's up to them now to really put up their case. Only Wakefield appear to have a little momentum right now. Bradford would have been a shoe-in but her never recovered from the sharp cliff edge they fell off. Castleford are the same as they were 30 years ago. Halifax aren't even considered. And I think Huddersfield looking for a new smaller ground screams of survival mode as they have had every chance to kick on and never have.
At the risk of repeating myself it just shows how foolish it would be to lock in any of the clubs permanently based on where they are now. Hull KR are suddenly an indispensable club. I don't disagree with that assessment but 5 years ago nobody would have said it.
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I don't think Batley have ever hidden what their ambitions as club are and what they want to be.
Their post was inartful. But the underlying disdain some people have for Rugby League clubs like that, who do everything right in the way they're run and in their communities, tells us quite a bit.
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12 hours ago, Cheadle Leyther said:
Apparently they want a 10 team Superleague containing both French clubs plus Leeds, Saints, Wire, Hull, Hull KR and Wigan, leaving only 2 more spaces available.
It'll be the same as 1995, a small number of teams go ahead and the rest of the sport is allowed to wither.
Killing off pro Rugby League in the Wakefield district will destroy one of the sport's largest remaining ultra-loyal, player-generating heartlands, with a population more than Wigan and St Helens combined. It would be wilfully stupid. But then I strongly suspect these guys don't really know what they're doing.
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31 minutes ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:
In terms of which clubs you add, I'm a big advocate of clubs working in pairs. We're in the business of selling events that capture the imagination outside of just those 2 teams. That's why I'd lean towards bringing Bradford back, and possibly Leigh who have shown they can create a big event with Wigan and others.
Bradford offer a lot less to the league right now than Cas or Wakey. And I'm not sure they have much scope to grow much any time soon to even the levels of those two clubs.
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2 hours ago, Roy Haggerty said:
I think I’d agree if this was a bat**** story. But bat**** stories don’t get covered in unison by nearly all RL journos all saying pretty much the same thing. RL journalism - because it’s such a very small world -
I think you've answered the point there - these journos are all sticking this stuff out there because one of the others did and they don't want to be seen to be missing a story. Even if it's not true and was never likely to be true.
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Slightly devil's advocate here but why should people have to respond to every bat**** story? It didn't pass the smell test when it first appeared and has now been privately denied. A statement that there is no intention to kick Catalans out would be a little weird.
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NRL demands for investment
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
Warrington at its widest extent population of 212,000, Wakefield 325,000?
If we were to walk away from the Wakefield area it would be one of the biggest acts of self-harm in the sport's history.