Rugby League’s dwindling profile - Chris Irvine bumped from The Times

[EssexRL]

3 hours ago, Celt said:

a ridiculous comparison to be fair.

Hockey (field) does not have a professional tier and is not really a spectator sport. it is an amateur, participation sport in the most part, followed by friends and family of the players. 

Rugby League is a professional sport trying to exist in a very competitive market.

My post wasn’t saying it’s grest for RL ....it so happens I have a friend whose a hockey fan and during their World Cup (which I was referring too not the field) being played in London and England’s doing well in they are getting zero coverage.

The point is it’s hard for sports that aren’t football. 

[gingerjon]

I'd feel a lot more upset if Chuckles hadn't given the impression of despising everything to do with rugby league for the better part of a decade whilst simultaneously pumping out wide-eyed positive comments about other sports.

Unless you're very lucky there are far fewer journalists covering local or national-non-soccer sports than at any time. If it ain't big name football then there's no market. That's not just a rugby league thing, it's an everyone thing.

(If you want an example: try and find the Guardian's coverage of this year's T20 cricket).

[The Future is League]

13 hours ago, Blind side johnny said:

Does this indicate a lower influence by News International on The Times or a precursor to Sky's reduced interest in 2021?

Good question, but until 2021 we probably wont know, and unless my medical condition improves its unlikely i will be around in 3 years time to find out.

[northernmouse]

I'm a Times reader, until a couple of weeks ago, when he was on Backchat, I didn't know the Times had an RL correspondent because the coverage was so sporadic and methodic (just game descriptions no background or stories and if a game was played later than 6pm no coverage at all) it felt like the reports were filed by someone instructed to write about the game rather than someone who actually liked the game. Came to this site this morning to find out about the Lions tour - which was announced on Radio 2 no less - because the Times didn't run the story.

[High Peak Rhino]

I also "take" the Times when I buy a paper but stopped being a regular subscriber a couple of years ago.

RL content has been low (and declining) for a long time. There was a time when you would get some mention on Friday matches in the Saturday edition but not any more.

I'm also sure that Irvine hasn't been directly employed by the Time for a number of years now. I'm think they ditched RL correspondent a while back, but kept him on in a freelance capacity. If that part has gone then it looks like there will be little or no coverage outside the cup final, grand final, internationals and any drug busts...

 

[gingerjon]

Thinking about what I see (with the caveat that this comes either from my twitter or Facebook feeds, or from looking at the Guardian and BBC Sports pages) there seems to be a lot less direct reporting on sport now anyway, including football. The pieces that are given prominence are comment-type pieces and they need to be about things that can generate either below-the-line debate or shares (or both). Hence why soccer dominates - enough people know enough about it to read, share and comment.

[SaintGeoff]

Very bad news for RL. Question is what can be done about it and ensure other papers don't follow - especially as I think most papers are produced in London these days. Job for Ralph Rimmer and Brian Berwick with his many contacts. Or better still can't someone have a word with Prince Harry? 

[indomitable]

I consider myself an avid rugby league fan, and over the years because I do not live in the north my newspapers all fail to cover any adequate coverage of my favourite game. My biggest concern at the moment is noticing the ever smaller attendances on the sports result pages. 

Why cover rugby league is surely the main question that should concern we fans. We certainly are not going to be a target for advertisers, in fact we should be querying why present attendances are so low, and change our game around so we are attractive to the press and advertisers.

[East of the Moon]

The Times doesn't report pigeon racing results either, the public are brainwashed by football, a simple game for simple people...I should know I played and watched it for decades...and decades...and....

I will get my coat...

[Rupert Prince]

15 hours ago, Futtocks said:

I didn't say they struggled for British content, but sharing articles with the Aussie version does mean that there are more NRL/Origin articles. RL is bigger there, and generates more column inches.

But they do a better job than most London-based newspapers on Rugby League in the NH.

They do or did. I am no t so sure it is much better than most these days. So much so I rarely try to dip back in to it.

To be frank, I do not read the guardian much, but it did stand for something one could relate to in those 'good olden days' when it was the Manchester Guardian. It lost its regional ethos (I think) and RL with it. 

[Tonka]

Incidentally, I don’t buy this line from the Times about focusing on 3 core sports. There is cycling, hockey, horse racing and tennis in today’s Times, as well as the “core” of union, football and cricket. The reality is they don’t see RL fans as their readers so they’re prepared to axe the sport irrespective of the relative importance of the occasion in sporting terms. Pisses me off.

[Chris Irvine]

Hello everyone, it's the moaning miserable old anti-Brexit pedlar of other sports here. I do love to read how others see or perceive me, haha. Old granted, miserable (sometimes), rabid Remainer (guilty as charged), lover of other sports (I love anything really, bar snooker, don't ask me why).

So newspapers are yesterday's media .. up to a point Lord Copper. For many in the London media. marketing and commercial hub, they still set the agenda. What's written is invariably followed up, commented upon and helps set the news shape and tone. Rugby league has been slowly disappearing from that "conversation" for years. In terms of Mail and Telegraph newspapers and now The Times, it has disappeared altogether. When a sport is desperately seeking commercial investment and media profile, as league is, it's really bad news.

I began working for The Times in 1992 with a specific brief to raise league's profile, flesh out the game's personalities and broaden its interest to the "M25 corridor", where the bulk of the paper's sales were. For many years - and I've the double page spreads, banner headlines, pull-outs and magazine profiles to show it - league prospered in The Times, firstly with the Wigan story, then advent of Super League. 

But the 2008 recession began the squeeze on newspapers, my full time contract to report rugby league - and, yep, rugby union - went a couple of years later and I've been a jobbing freelance for The Times, among other jobs, since 2010. The pips have been squeezed again and league, very sadly, is among the casualties. Space for the sport has been dwindling for a long while and this week it dropped off The Times' radar altogether.

The impact of that decision on the game itself? Negligible in isolation. But it is indicative, unfortunately, of the thinking outside rugby league's bubble: the game's parochial, its expansion plans are fanciful and where have they got the sport? It's a sport with no stars, no Tiger, no Thomas, no Farrell, for goodness sake! Step outside the bubble and league hardly figures. The Times has lost interest, so which national media outlet next? And the one after that? Drip, drop, the sport is disappearing from the national conscience, and tick, tick, the clock is running down to the end of Sky's 2021 £40m a year contract ...

In the Brave New World of 1996, league suddenly had untold riches, but 22 years on where has it really got it? Who will take up the broadcast cudgels beyond 2021? And will it pay £40m a year or more? If Sky, you can take it that it will be nowhere near that figure? BT Sport? They're already pulling out of other sports (see their basketball, UFC announcement this week). Live streaming? Possibly. But who pays the wages? And will that sum pay for Super League and further down the food chain? Social media? Do me a favour!

Rugby league, for as long as I've known it, has been a sport outstandingly played on the field and poorly run off it. Things haven't changed in that respect and here we in the middle of yet more civil strife, uncertainty, paralysis even. Who knows, we could have Toronto and Toulouse in Super League in 2019 - the sort of expansion to really kickstart the sport - and the existing clubs are chelping away.

Self-interest is no good when the future of the sport at professional level is at stake. That's the crossroads we're now at. Times are a changin' but not The Times, alas. I will continue to write about the sport for the Sunday Times, for now anyway. 

Live long and prosper,

Chris

 

 

 

 

[Futtocks]

Thanks for contributing, Chris. I hope there's more in the pipeline than just the ST..

Fans see a diminution in coverage and gradually stop buying the paper.

The paper notices choleric rants on social media about how nobody covers RL properly any more. Maybe they give it a push, maybe not, but the readers aren't enticed back in any great numbers because there are free alternatives. 

The paper decides to cut their regular staff a little more. RL now gets even less coverage and more fans desert. This is even more the case with pay-walled content, because giving a former favourite newspaper another chance isn't free.

But when you see, on this forum, the heavy slant towards negativity, plus the eagerness to talk down or dismiss any positive news, you could argue that we are getting the coverage we subconsciously think we deserve.

[Bedford Roughyed]

Always sad to lose a cheerleader for our sport...

[JohnM]

4 hours ago, Chris Irvine said:

Hello everyone, it's the moaning miserable old anti-Brexit pedlar of other sports here. 

Thanks for taking the time and trouble to contribute to the discussion in front of maybe not the most uncritical forum. 

Surely, though, there is a lot to write about asynchronously with the actual matches, for publication away from match days. For example, could write about: in Elstone do we see a return to the game for the power behind the throne in Lindsay, and is how will that wotk out?  What differentiates the  (moribund?) game here compared with Aus? How come the wider sporting public seem unaware of the relative position and strength of league in Aus compared with union in Aus? 

 

[themainbrace]

This story is a sign of decline but it is also a sign of change.  Specialist correspondents are gradually disappearing from the print media as overall print is in decline even though individual titles do sometimes go through periods of growth.

The bigger question is how much success RL is having in the new digital media and the impact it is having.  One of the posts above shows that, even for printed media, the circulation figures don't always tell the full truth.  For the digital world it is a nightmare to make comparisons - what do we count? clicks, impressions, sessions, visits, visitors, subscribers? and how do we track across devices?  The media is more fragmented than ever.  I notice we very rarely talk about the new YouTube channels and vloggers on here only about what we have lost. 

[Big Picture]

7 hours ago, Chris Irvine said:

Rugby league, for as long as I've known it, has been a sport outstandingly played on the field and poorly run off it. Things haven't changed in that respect and here we in the middle of yet more civil strife, uncertainty, paralysis even. Who knows, we could have Toronto and Toulouse in Super League in 2019 - the sort of expansion to really kickstart the sport - and the existing clubs are chelping away.

Self-interest is no good when the future of the sport at professional level is at stake. That's the crossroads we're now at. Times are a changin' but not The Times, alas. I will continue to write about the sport for the Sunday Times, for now anyway.

The game clearly needs something to raise its profile, and even if Toronto and Toulouse both got into SL that wouldn't help much because frankly no one in the British game has shown any sign of being competent even to manage their inclusion let alone use them to spearhead getting a higher profile for the, as Robert Elstone's comment about Toronto being "spurious" demonstrated.  The traditional clubs see Toronto and Toulouse as a threat because in one real way they are: they'd displace two traditional clubs from the top tier because the lack of money means that expanding that top tier isn't viable and won't be for some time to come.

[kev p]

On 6/21/2018 at 11:37 AM, Marauder said:

Division Championship

Championship - Ovenden

Div 2 West        - Hanging Heaton

Div 2 Central    - Woodhouse Warriors

Div 2 East         - Doncaster Toll Bar

 

 Clubman (sponsored by Pennine Trophies)

 

Championship - Lee Bettinson - Sharlston Rovers

Div 2 West        - Andy Boocock - King Cross Park

Div 2 Central    - Shaun Calvert - Woodhouse Warriors

Div 2 East         -  James Welbourn - Moorend Marauders

 

Individual Awards

Sportsman  -  John Brewerton - Sharlston Rovers

 

Player of the Year - Graham Charlesworth - Ovenden

Coach - Richard Wilde - Underbank Rangers

Team  -  Ovenden

Fair Play - Hollinwood

 

[kev p]

On 7/30/2018 at 6:03 PM, The 4 of Us said:

I feel most of you are missing the point of the journalist. You’ve judged his opinion on the paper he writes for, if he wrote for the sun/comic you would have believed him. Rl really does need to get the game on a higher profile with followers not just trying to keep the game in the heartlands. You can’t let Catalans, Toronto, Toulouse etc in then find fault when they take places of heartland teams. We need to keep the game strong in uk from the bottom up. More kids playing from primary school age. It’s only club volunteers that can make it work. All I seem to see on sites is how more tv money is the answer, more players & bums on seats is the way forward. Empty stadiums does not sell a tv deal. Sky will look elsewhere for the time slot.

[Man of Kent]

I’m really not sure what to make of this.

Rod Studd said this week that darts doesn’t get much national newspaper coverage either but nobody would say that is a failing sport.

It did make me smile that even in his valedictory post, Chris Irvine is talking the game down!

Is it a sign of RL’s decline or national newspaper decline?

You couldn’t say there is no market for rugby league in the media. 

There are two weekly trade newspapers and two monthly magazines.

There are weekly highlights on BBC TV, magazine shows on several BBC local radio stations, not to mention blanket live match commentary of Super League (plus several Championship matches and some League 1) via the Beeb, TalkSport2 and indepedent local radio stations.

Then there are the countless podcasts and the likes of Proper Sport with their excellent radio/Facebook shows and streaming of Bradford Bulls.

Apart from football, no other sport comes close to all that coverage.

The lesson is probably that rugby league has retreated to The North in the public eye and the days of Eddie Waring bringing joy to little old ladies in Bexhill with “early baths” and “having a drop” are long, long gone.

But that doesn’t mean the game is dying.

The big picture is that British RL is gradually expanding beyond the M62. 

Catalans are here to say. Toronto are next, then maybe Toulouse.

Eventually the national media will twig that some very interesting things are happening in rugby league and show more interest.

It may take a little while longer, but it will happen.

[Mr Wind Up]

55 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

 

The big picture is that British RL is gradually expanding beyond the M62. 

Catalans are here to say. Toronto are next, then maybe Toulouse.

Eventually the national media will twig that some very interesting things are happening in rugby league and show more interest.

It may take a little while longer, but it will happen.

I don't disagree with your general post, but you're off the mark here. 

There's absolutely no way that the media will pay more attention to the game with the inclusion of Toronto or Toulouse. That shouldn't be the aim though. The aim should be expansion, and rightly so. But don't expect the nationalistic media to care about the sport more because some team over the pond is playing in SL. 

By and large, what sways the national media are London and to a lesser extent Manchester (even Brum doesn't rate). If it's not important there, it's not going to move the needle fullstop.

[Tim Streets tache]

1 hour ago, Man of Kent said:

I’m really not sure what to make of this.

Rod Studd said this week that darts doesn’t get much national newspaper coverage either but nobody would say that is a failing sport.

It did make me smile that even in his valedictory post, Chris Irvine is talking the game down!

Is it a sign of RL’s decline or national newspaper decline?

You couldn’t say there is no market for rugby league in the media. 

There are two weekly trade newspapers and two monthly magazines.

There are weekly highlights on BBC TV, magazine shows on several BBC local radio stations, not to mention blanket live match commentary of Super League (plus several Championship matches and some League 1) via the Beeb, TalkSport2 and indepedent local radio stations.

Then there are the countless podcasts and the likes of Proper Sport with their excellent radio/Facebook shows and streaming of Bradford Bulls.

Apart from football, no other sport comes close to all that coverage.

The lesson is probably that rugby league has retreated to The North in the public eye and the days of Eddie Waring bringing joy to little old ladies in Bexhill with “early baths” and “having a drop” are long, long gone.

But that doesn’t mean the game is dying.

The big picture is that British RL is gradually expanding beyond the M62. 

Catalans are here to say. Toronto are next, then maybe Toulouse.

Eventually the national media will twig that some very interesting things are happening in rugby league and show more interest.

It may take a little while longer, but it will happen.

Best post I've seen in ages mate! 

[Big Picture]

2 hours ago, Mr Wind Up said:

I don't disagree with your general post, but you're off the mark here. 

There's absolutely no way that the media will pay more attention to the game with the inclusion of Toronto or Toulouse. That shouldn't be the aim though. The aim should be expansion, and rightly so. But don't expect the nationalistic media to care about the sport more because some team over the pond is playing in SL. 

By and large, what sways the national media are London and to a lesser extent Manchester (even Brum doesn't rate). If it's not important there, it's not going to move the needle fullstop.

Which raises the question, how can RL sway London and Manchester and break down the perception that it's a small-time regional sport with limited appeal?

[Just Browny]

16 hours ago, Chris Irvine said:

I began working for The Times in 1992 with a specific brief to raise league's profile, flesh out the game's personalities and broaden its interest to the "M25 corridor", where the bulk of the paper's sales were.

You were there to be a cheerleader, then?

Thanks for the post, interesting stuff.

[RP London]

7 hours ago, Mr Wind Up said:

I don't disagree with your general post, but you're off the mark here. 

There's absolutely no way that the media will pay more attention to the game with the inclusion of Toronto or Toulouse. That shouldn't be the aim though. The aim should be expansion, and rightly so. But don't expect the nationalistic media to care about the sport more because some team over the pond is playing in SL. 

By and large, what sways the national media are London and to a lesser extent Manchester (even Brum doesn't rate). If it's not important there, it's not going to move the needle fullstop.

but as far as I can tell they have.. there has been more coverage with Toronto coming in than I have seen from a lot of places in my time watching RL. Toronto and the story of toronto has been on the BBC and in papers simply becuase it is a novelty.. yes it may not last but if they go up I expect to see more coverage in the build up to the next season, if they start to win games and start to look good then I can see it increasing and increasing. 

Something like Toronto being a success (and that is what it needs, as painful as that would be for heartland fans) or frankly Catalns being a success would be such a novelty that it can galvanise the media.. first French team to win Super League/Challenge cup.. first canadian team to top super league etc.. like it or not that sort of thing will capture interest.

how long that last for is then really down to Super League and how they can build off it.