Denver NZ v England test is "certain" to go ahead

[JonM]

3 hours ago, Bob8 said:

Field hockey is a big sport in India, which has over a billion people.

Dying on its ###### in much of India, surprisingly, lots of political infighting that makes RL look well run. The main professional national competition was cancelled for 2018, restarting next year. Of course, they can still get 40k+ to an international game, which doesn't happen in ice hockey.

And back on topic, I see the Sydney Morning Herald is still proclaiming this game "unlikely to go ahead."

[Copa]

 

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/players-could-be-banned-from-nrl-if-they-ditch-denver-test-20180412-p4z99z.html

”The NRL is weighing up whether to impose one-match bans on any England or New Zealand players who are picked for the mid-season Denver Test but choose not to play.

While the NRL has its concerns about the June 23 international, especially with how players will cope with the high altitude and the tight turnaround between rounds 15 and 16, it is obliged to sanction players who refuse to take part in representative matches.”

[Scubby]

6 minutes ago, Copa said:

 

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/nrl/players-could-be-banned-from-nrl-if-they-ditch-denver-test-20180412-p4z99z.html

”The NRL is weighing up whether to impose one-match bans on any England or New Zealand players who are picked for the mid-season Denver Test but choose not to play.

While the NRL has its concerns about the June 23 international, especially with how players will cope with the high altitude and the tight turnaround between rounds 15 and 16, it is obliged to sanction players who refuse to take part in representative matches.”

Why the hell are they overthinking this? You have protocols in place for all players playing representative games that weekend (Pacific Tests, Origin). Has any single player declared they don't want to play?

They are acting like spoiled children.

[mickhornet]

Only £4,000 playing fee? is this what a player gets  for each international.

[JonM]

5 minutes ago, Scubby said:

Why the hell are they overthinking this? You have protocols in place for all players playing representative games that weekend (Pacific Tests, Origin). Has any single player declared they don't want to play?

Perhaps to encourage any NRL clubs who might be thinking of pressurising players into not going?

[JonM]

The quote from Paul McGregor at St. George in that SMH article is fairly supportive.

[Just Browny]

1 hour ago, mickhornet said:

Only £4,000 playing fee? is this what a player gets  for each international.

I am not sure what people are saying about this $4,000 amount. Does it seem like a lot or not?

To me it sounds like a decent amount for a week or so of work, without being in any way extortionate given it is top-quality, international-level sport with a fairly high risk of injury.

[ghost crayfish]

1 hour ago, JonM said:

Perhaps to encourage any NRL clubs who might be thinking of pressurising players into not going?

Encourage or discourage? Suspending any player who declined selection would be a way to stop the clubs from pressuring players into standing down... The clubs are whingers who killed City v Country with the same rubbish, but it sounds to me like maybe the NRL are actually putting in some work now to protect the test. Positive steps...

[lucky 7]

Here's a reality check here for the NRL and its clubs.

Last Sunday in Sydney on a fine afternoon a Sydney derby between Parramatta Eels and South Sydney Rabbiohs drew a crowd of 10,050. now to me that doesn't look like that Sydney is the Rugby League capital of the world as claimed by some or even they know how to market the game, and these same people don't want Rugby League to have internationals outside of Sydney or Brisbane. I would call that small minded and insular.

[Scubby]

10 minutes ago, ghost crayfish said:

Encourage or discourage? Suspending any player who declined selection would be a way to stop the clubs from pressuring players into standing down... The clubs are whingers who killed City v Country with the same rubbish, but it sounds to me like maybe the NRL are actually putting in some work now to protect the test. Positive steps...

Maybe. Who knows perhaps they could put out a statement supporting International RL and this breakthrough international into new markets ahead of the 2025 RLWC?

I heard in an interview yesterday someone mention the test as if it was a rumour this was taking place. FFS.

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, Just Browny said:

I am not sure what people are saying about this $4,000 amount. Does it seem like a lot or not?

To me it sounds like a decent amount for a week or so of work, without being in any way extortionate given it is top-quality, international-level sport with a fairly high risk of injury.

We should remember that this is in effect a match-fee - they  already get their salary as well. 

[Yakkers]

Big Picture could have made his points rather more tactfully and respectfully but I think he is right on both counts.

I think there are probably still more people in the world, and certainly more countries, to whom the term hockey would be understood to mean field hockey unless accompanied by the prefix of ice. I think it's only really USA, Canada, Scandinavia and the former Soviet nations where the reverse would be true. That's something of a digression though for this forum.

Of more relevance is his point that the inability of national ice hockey teams to put out their strongest teams is massively devaluing the international game, which with the number of nations playing the sport to a decent standard, has the potential to be something a whole lot more attractive. I don't follow the sport closely enough to know whether the blame lies with the NHL, its clubs, lack of co-operation with the international governing body over a coherent schedule, the players themselves, or a bit of all the above. But either way, it's a situation I am desperate to avoid in RL and further emphasises one of a variety of reasons why this fixture in Denver simply must go ahead.

[Kayakman]

14 minutes ago, Yakkers said:

Big Picture could have made his points rather more tactfully and respectfully but I think he is right on both counts.

I think there are probably still more people in the world, and certainly more countries, to whom the term hockey would be understood to mean field hockey unless accompanied by the prefix of ice. I think it's only really USA, Canada, Scandinavia and the former Soviet nations where the reverse would be true. That's something of a digression though for this forum.

Of more relevance is his point that the inability of national ice hockey teams to put out their strongest teams is massively devaluing the international game, which with the number of nations playing the sport to a decent standard, has the potential to be something a whole lot more attractive. I don't follow the sport closely enough to know whether the blame lies with the NHL, its clubs, lack of co-operation with the international governing body over a coherent schedule, the players themselves, or a bit of all the above. But either way, it's a situation I am desperate to avoid in RL and further emphasises one of a variety of reasons why this fixture in Denver simply must go ahead.

I disagree...when you say 'hockey' most people think ice hockey, not field hockey.  Thats pretty clear.   Quick!, name a professional hockey team....point proven.

Also the international game of hockey has not been devalued at all...show me one instance of it ever being devalued?....simply not true.

[JonM]

20 minutes ago, Kayakman said:

I disagree...when you say 'hockey' most people think ice hockey, not field hockey.  Thats pretty clear.   Quick!, name a professional hockey team....point proven.

Not in Britain they don't. If you say 'hockey' to most people, they think of a game for posh schoolgirls... There's a lot more people in India than N.America, as has already been pointed out.

[Dave T]

50 minutes ago, Kayakman said:

I disagree...when you say 'hockey' most people think ice hockey, not field hockey.  Thats pretty clear.   Quick!, name a professional hockey team....point proven.

Also the international game of hockey has not been devalued at all...show me one instance of it ever being devalued?....simply not true.

In America they will say football and mean Gridiron, that isn't the case here.

Hockey here just wouldnd't mean Ice Hockey, and I suspect it wouldn't in many many places.

[Yakkers]

17 minutes ago, Kayakman said:

I disagree...when you say 'hockey' most people think ice hockey, not field hockey.  Thats pretty clear.   Quick!, name a professional hockey team....point proven.

Also the international game of hockey has not been devalued at all...show me one instance of it ever being devalued?....simply not true.

Most people in Canada, USA, Scandinavia and the former Soviet Union yes, but very few if any other countries in the world.

Whether or not anyone can name a team proves nothing. I'm sure there are lots of people in America that don't follow the NFL and couldn't name a soccer team but they still know what both sports are and they still refer to them by their common name in their country, namely football and soccer, they don't start referring to them as football and American football just because that's what people call it in places where soccer is more popular. Billions of people throughout the world don't follow field hockey, but they know what it is and they refer to it by it's common name in their country, which if they live in South America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and most of Europe, is simply hockey (or the equivalent in their language) without the prefix of field.

It is entirely possible that ice hockey has more active followers than field hockey, I wouldn't argue with anyone who says ice hockey is the bigger of the two sports, and I can understand how living in a country in which the popularity of ice hockey completely dwarfs field hockey one would get so used to ice hockey being hockey that it feels almost implausible for that not to be the norm. But I just cannot see a plausible argument that hockey is understood to mean ice hockey by most of the world.

As for your request for an instance of international ice hockey being devalued, I'm astonished you need to ask. We've literally just had a Winter Olympics in which NHL players did not compete and the World Championship is frequently shorn of its best players partly due to clashing with the NHL play offs, and partly because even some players from clubs already eliminated often don't take part.

If that's not devaluing the international game then what is?

[TheReaper]

On ‎11‎/‎04‎/‎2018 at 6:44 AM, Big Picture said:

Only Mickey-Mouse ones like ice hockey let top clubs off the hook.

Established it was ice hockey...

On ‎11‎/‎04‎/‎2018 at 7:38 AM, TheReaper said:

Hockey has more of an international game than RL, don't know who you're calling mickey mouse. 

Replied with comment, clearly referencing the same from context, using standard short-hand of dropping the "ice", which should be barely even thought about between two Canadians.

23 hours ago, Big Picture said:

Hockey does indeed, but I was talking about ice hockey....

Pointless, pedantic, argumentative correction

23 hours ago, Bob8 said:

Ice hockey (or hockey as it is known in most of the world) surely has a better developed international game than rugby league.

Further comment, even specifying which kind, which was only needed because of the needless correction above. If not for that, then it would still have been clear we're talking about ice hockey.

21 hours ago, Big Picture said:

Corrected for accuracy.  The fact that hockey administrators never tried to suppress the spinoff sport of ice hockey probably helped with that.

Further pointless, pedantic corrections.

 

The original point was completely overtaken by uselessness. That point being that it seems odd to call ICE hockey "mickey mouse" when they have regular, competitive international tournaments, at senior and age levels, Olympic inclusion, and multiple professional leagues throughout the world, coming from rugby LEAGUE point of view it's hard to describe that as "mickey mouse"

(Yes, I'm aware that I'm adding to the uselessness).

[Big Picture]

1 hour ago, Kayakman said:

I disagree...when you say 'hockey' most people think ice hockey, not field hockey.  Thats pretty clear.   Quick!, name a professional hockey team....point proven.

Also the international game of hockey has not been devalued at all...show me one instance of it ever being devalued?....simply not true.

In the first place, that's only most North Americans.  When Brits, Aussies, and others say "hockey" they mean — and correctly too — the original form of hockey, which existed for a few hundred years before anyone ever thought about playing hockey on ice and therefore it owns the name hockey.  We Canadians never had any right to arrogate that name for the sport invented here.

As for the international game of ice hockey being devalued, that's an easy case to make.  The NHL has for years displayed exceptional arrogance in asserting that the IIHF player release rules don't apply to them even though all of their franchises are located in two IIHF member countries.  As members of the IIHF, Hockey (sic) Canada and USA Hockey (sic) have the responsibility to enforce those player release rules on the NHL and its franchises in exactly the same way as the RFL, ARL and NZRL do on clubs under their jurisdiction in RL.  The NHL needs to be slapped down for its arrogance, slapped down good and hard too.

[John Drake]

Time to put this thread out of its misery, I think.

No one's mentioned the Denver Test for several pages.