Jump to content

Superb magazine article about rugby league


Recommended Posts


Fantastic. The bloke Quayle mentioned,  another legendary administrator, without a word of a lie, I wrote a letter to him when he was CEO and he wrote back to me a week later thanking me for my suggestions,  I`ve still got the letter. And even better they actually used what i suggested in their marketing campaigns in the papers for a few weeks . I kid you not. The Peoples` Game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, The Rocket said:

Fantastic. The bloke Quayle mentioned,  another legendary administrator, without a word of a lie, I wrote a letter to him when he was CEO and he wrote back to me a week later thanking me for my suggestions,  I`ve still got the letter. And even better they actually used what i suggested in their marketing campaigns in the papers for a few weeks . I kid you not. The Peoples` Game.

Thats amazing John Quayle wrote back to you and took on board your suggestions. Read the article very in depth article. I had no idea V'landys was from a greek background. From having lived in Melbourne, Australia for 5 years the AFL arrogance is something you really have to experience to believe, it is some next level douchebaggery. Then in Sydney you have people like Peter Fitzsimmons who occasionally is a fair weather friend but it is usually not hard to see his pro union anti league bias.

I certainly hope V'landys is a great leader for the game for a long time. but more than that i care about grassroots rugby league in NZ, which is long overdue for the NRL to reinvest some of its NZ sourced profits back into NZ grassroots game that is struggling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, kiwis 13 6 said:

Thats amazing that he John Quayle wrote back to you and took on board your suggestions

I was a teenager at the time and had just left home for ` the big smoke`, so I suppose I was a bit lonely and spent a fair bit of time buying papers and reading the League news. They used to run a half page add in the paper on fridays promoting match of the round, I wrote to him and suggested they divide the half page into six equal sections ( there was 12 teams in those days) with an anticipated highlight from each game, I figured even the games between weaker teams had something you could promote, for eg.`battle of the centres`, anyway a week later there was a letter in the mailbox with a letter inside written by John Quayle thanking me and saying if I had anymore suggestions send them in. True story. However life moved on and I met people, made friends and became a follower of the game like normal people and not writing letters directly to the CEO.🙂

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey i hear you rocket in the past I have posted on a NZ based forum that NZRL should do something for the West Coast, a few months later NZRL scheduled a game between Kiwis and NZ residents in Greymouth on the West Coast. In 2013 I contacted NZRL by email to ask why they no longer had NZ Residents Sides, i got a reply that they were working on bringing back NZ Residents. Since then they have named an NZ residence side every year since then. Maybe they were going to do those things anyway but i like to think i did something positive.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, kiwis 13 6 said:

Hey i hear you rocket in the past I have posted on a NZ based forum that NZRL should do something for the West Coast, a few months later NZRL scheduled a game between Kiwis and NZ residents in Greymouth on the West Coast. In 2013 I contacted NZRL by email to ask why they no longer had NZ Residents Sides, i got a reply that they were working on bringing back NZ Residents. Since then they have named an NZ residence side every year since then. Maybe they were going to do those things anyway but i like to think i did something positive.  

Probably be different over here now they probably get hundreds of letters all the time. Your experience with NZRL was probably similar to mine back in the day, dealing with a smaller organization just glad to have some feedback and looking for ideas /input. However never underestimate the power of a good idea.

How did the game go in Greymouth, did they get a crowd ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Jill Halfpenny fan said:

Just read it.

What amazed me is the suggestion that the game has plenty of "white collar" followers but they don't like to admit it.

Can the game do what soccer has achieved over here and become a game that crosses all boundaries?

We had it, After John Quayle signed off on that ` Simply The Best ` promo in the late eighties the appeal of League went ballistic. It became fashionable to have a League team. The Eastern suburbs `cocktail set` followed the Roosters, League players in the social pages dating models, If you were a ` bad boy ` read  Russell Crowe the Rabbitohs were your team and we had a lot of self made sons and daughters of immigrants who would follow the Dogs, like Mark Bouris et.al.

The cruel irony was Rupert Murdoch witnessed all of this and thought here is a game  I can take to the world and thus began the Super League wars and 15 lost years and a lot of that crowd drifted away.

I am hoping that V`landy`s with his connections with the fashionable set that attend the Races can some how engineer some sort of cross promotion and start to get these `trend setters` back making League fashionable again.

I don`t think it is quite as bad as your second sentence infers, but League has definitely been `on the nose` a bit for the last few years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, The Rocket said:

Probably be different over here now they probably get hundreds of letters all the time. Your experience with NZRL was probably similar to mine back in the day, dealing with a smaller organization just glad to have some feedback and looking for ideas /input. However never underestimate the power of a good idea.

How did the game go in Greymouth, did they get a crowd ?

NRL probly sees hundreds if not thousands of communications from fans regarding there  ideas but I doubt David Moffat, David Gallop, or Todd Greenberg read any of them, let alone acted on one of them. John Quayle was willing to get a good idea from a fan and act with the games best interests at heart.

 
2006-11-04                       New Zealand national rugby league team New Zealand 34–4 New Zealand New Zealand Residents
     
Wingham Park, Greymouth
Attendance: 4000
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Jill Halfpenny fan said:

Just read it.

What amazed me is the suggestion that the game has plenty of "white collar" followers but they don't like to admit it.

Can the game do what soccer has achieved over here and become a game that crosses all boundaries?

"Nick Pappas says that Sydney has a silent majority of white-collar rugby league diehards, who rarely attend live games and would never wear their tribal colours to the office, due to the long-term stigma of supporting a working-class sport."

Sydney has always been an acutely class conscious city with the elites finding it easy to trash Rugby League's reputation.

The fact that Rugby League is so strong today is a remarkable testament to its resilience.

Having said that, I hope that V'landys will ultimately see the benefit in expanding into Perth, Adelaide and perhaps Christchurch in New Zealand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

Having said that, I hope that V'landys will ultimately see the benefit in expanding into Perth, Adelaide and perhaps Christchurch in New Zealand.

Of course he will and you have to pick `the low hanging fruit first`, another team in  QLD and the Pacific Islands then maybe a team in Wellington.

Perth`s going to take a big outlay, everyone keeps talking about Twiggy Forest but he`s rusted on union, I reckon the League should approach Downer, billion dollar logistics and mining company , sponsored the World Nines and Friday night football for a while. Their CEO Grant Fen was in the year above me at Uni and I had him down as a Union man, played union for western suburbs, came from Tumut , Les Boyd country, in hindsight he may have been playing union for the connections, it certainly worked, but given Downers League sponsorship now and his possible sympathies they might be worth a try if they the League make it worth their while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The way the twit Fitzsimons characterises a try in RL as "he just bursts through and scores" is worth noticing. Of course he`s neglecting to consider "rolling maul" or "pick-and-go after 30 previous pick-and-goes" type of RU tries, but people see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe.

Fitzsimons has a prejudice, but most prejudices stem from ignorance. Why would he think that an RL try was a simple matter of "he bursts through and scores"? Probably because RL TV coverage gives that impression. When a player scores an apparently simple one-out try, there are important bits of play, attacking and defensive, on the previous ruck or throughout the set which lead to the try being scored. Rarely does it occur to TV to go back and look for these. Let alone analyse them. Even when they do, they miss half of the key details.

Just in itself, a short-range try out of dummy-half involves the scorer reading the ruck, how the tackled player, the markers and A-defenders are positioned, employing deception, picking the right side and angle. Little of this is drawn attention to by pundits. It`s just a "simple run out of dummy-half".

Editors and directors don`t bother searching the play for complexity because they assume that simplicity is all that RL has to offer. The players, coaches, commentators and pundits perpetuate this culture. In the UK, the inarticulate numpties on RL TV coverage are hardly likely to prompt a perception of something tactically intelligent taking place. All the watchwords are athleticism, physicality, aggression, effort.

UK RU fans are even more ill-informed than their Australian counterparts. Many think RL stops after every ruck. They think the PTB is like a tap penalty. Thus, they think the ball is in play longer in RU. Why would they think otherwise? What is there in our media coverage that would disabuse them?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, kiwis 13 6 said:

Thats amazing John Quayle wrote back to you and took on board your suggestions. Read the article very in depth article. I had no idea V'landys was from a greek background. From having lived in Melbourne, Australia for 5 years the AFL arrogance is something you really have to experience to believe, it is some next level douchebaggery. Then in Sydney you have people like Peter Fitzsimmons who occasionally is a fair weather friend but it is usually not hard to see his pro union anti league bias.

I certainly hope V'landys is a great leader for the game for a long time. but more than that i care about grassroots rugby league in NZ, which is long overdue for the NRL to reinvest some of its NZ sourced profits back into NZ grassroots game that is struggling.

It`s baffling why AFL fans are so arrogant given their product is something more suited to a comedy channel than a sports channel.

3 hours ago, Jill Halfpenny fan said:

Just read it.

What amazed me is the suggestion that the game has plenty of "white collar" followers but they don't like to admit it.

Can the game do what soccer has achieved over here and become a game that crosses all boundaries?

This article confirms that the significant differentiating factor between AFL and NRL is that Aussie rules is played in elite schools in States where it dominates and thus enjoys all the concomitant advantages, whereas the equivalent NSW and QLD schools remain Union-only. Against this backdrop it is amazing, and a tribute to the inherent quality of RL, that the NRL manages to compete so well with AFL, particularly in its far superior Pay TV ratings.

In the UK Soccer has always been played in elite schools and so is in a similar position here to AFL in Vic, SA,WA. Imagine if instead there had been an elite version of Soccer, sufficiently different from popular Soccer, and a rival to it. That these two codes were culturally at odds. Would Soccer in the UK have transformed from a predominantly working-class game to achieve its current level of strength and popularity?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have a mixed opinion of Fitzsimmons as a journalist one good story he did was highlighting the disparity and lack of any government support faced by Kiwi's living in Australia. I have sometimes read his column over the years i remember he once wrote that he actually had played a couple of games of rugby league. His bias towards union is clear and usually if he is talking about league it is either to bash the sport or because he has to because his audience is interested in the sport. 

2 hours ago, The Rocket said:

Of course he will and you have to pick `the low hanging fruit first`, another team in  QLD and the Pacific Islands then maybe a team in Wellington.

Wellington probably could have had an successful NRL when they bid 25 years ago and again about 15 years ago. These days would need a lot of work to be done before a NRL side could be based here in Wellington. I would say Christchurch or the Waikato would be a better locations for 2nd NZ NRL franchise at the moment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:

The way the twit Fitzsimons characterises a try in RL

Major chip on his shoulder regards League, if you get a chance read my post to `Fighting  Irish` on the `Super League Stats` Thread and you will know where he is coming from.

`Twit` is an interesting choice of insult, I referred to him as a `dullard` in a post to the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of days ago. However as you know Pepe, I would have loved to have been able to use a lot more colourful language than that, being so `uncouth` and all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:

This article confirms that the significant differentiating factor between AFL and NRL is that Aussie rules is played in elite schools in States where it dominates and thus enjoys all the concomitant advantages, whereas the equivalent NSW and QLD schools remain Union-only. Against this backdrop it is amazing, and a tribute to the inherent quality of RL, that the NRL manages to compete so well with AFL, particularly in its far superior Pay TV ratings

Actually Union is played at elite schools in Melbourne as well, its is just that from Working class to the toffs in Melbourne AFL is not just the number one sport it is basically compulsory it is on almost every TV channel and  1/3 of the newspaper is AFL coverage. I lived there in 2005 for a year and notice a slight improvement in support and visibility of the sport when I moved back again in 2009-2013.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, The Rocket said:

Major chip on his shoulder regards League, if you get a chance read my post to `Fighting  Irish` on the `Super League Stats` Thread and you will know where he is coming from.

`Twit` is an interesting choice of insult, I referred to him as a `dullard` in a post to the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of days ago. However as you know Pepe, I would have loved to have been able to use a lot more colourful language than that, being so `uncouth` and all.

I go for "twit" in this sort of context because the phrase "public-school twit" is in common usage in the UK. Also it invites the reader to mentally change the vowel should they wish.

It`s more creative and anti-uncouth to find circumlocutory modes of expression, rather than blurt out dull and predictable curse words, even if the algorithms allowed it.

Small dogs are a fertile source of alternatives. I`ve used "shih-Tzu" with you previously. Chihuahua is another good one. This derives from a Max Miller routine where a woman carrying a small dog goes into a chemists and asks for some ointment to rub on her Chihuahua.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, unapologetic pedant said:

I go for "twit" in this sort of context because the phrase "public-school twit" is in common usage in the UK. Also it invites the reader to mentally change the vowel should they wish.

It`s more creative and anti-uncouth to find circumlocutory modes of expression, rather than blurt out dull and predictable curse words, even if the algorithms allowed it.

Small dogs are a fertile source of alternatives. I`ve used "shih-Tzu" with you previously. Chihuahua is another good one. This derives from a Max Miller routine where a woman carrying a small dog goes into a chemists and asks for some ointment to rub on her Chihuahua.

First paragraph, not much good if you have to explain it.

Second Paragraph, true but jeez it still feels good.

Third paragraph, Mrs Slocombe and her `Pussy` are more my level.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sounds like we need to save that £16m COVID drawdown facility and offer it to V’Landys when his contract with the NRL expires 😊

Slightly off-topic, but I’ve recently got hooked on a show on Amazon Prime called ‘My Greek Odyssey’. It’s basically an Aussie billionaire touring the Greek isles on his giant yacht, but he’s a down to earth Greek-Aussie born in Kythira who’s a die-hard roosters fan. Shame we can’t get him more involved in RL as he’s a real passionate character. His show’s a real gem too, if you like the Med.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 13/08/2020 at 20:51, The Rocket said:

We had it, After John Quayle signed off on that ` Simply The Best ` promo in the late eighties the appeal of League went ballistic. It became fashionable to have a League team. The Eastern suburbs `cocktail set` followed the Roosters, League players in the social pages dating models, If you were a ` bad boy ` read  Russell Crowe the Rabbitohs were your team and we had a lot of self made sons and daughters of immigrants who would follow the Dogs, like Mark Bouris et.al.

The cruel irony was Rupert Murdoch witnessed all of this and thought here is a game  I can take to the world and thus began the Super League wars and 15 lost years and a lot of that crowd drifted away.

I am hoping that V`landy`s with his connections with the fashionable set that attend the Races can some how engineer some sort of cross promotion and start to get these `trend setters` back making League fashionable again.

I don`t think it is quite as bad as your second sentence infers, but League has definitely been `on the nose` a bit for the last few years.

it's going to be tough because the market that left league moved to union and aussie rules, competitors that weren't a threat in the early 90's particularly the Swans and Lions. 20 years of having the games name dragged through the mud has taken it's toll.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 13/08/2020 at 14:50, The Rocket said:

Major chip on his shoulder regards League, if you get a chance read my post to `Fighting  Irish` on the `Super League Stats` Thread and you will know where he is coming from.

`Twit` is an interesting choice of insult, I referred to him as a `dullard` in a post to the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of days ago. However as you know Pepe, I would have loved to have been able to use a lot more colourful language than that, being so `uncouth` and all.

stick it into him. He's so dumb he couldn't play kick the tin, never mind Rugba league. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 16/08/2020 at 19:24, fighting irish said:

stick it into him. He's so dumb he couldn't play kick the tin, never mind Rugba league. 

I subscribe to two papers Irish, The Sydney Morning Herald, a N.S.W. paper and a bit leftie and The Australian, a national paper that is far more conservative, the different take they have on the same topic is often pretty stark but interesting. The Herald has good League coverage but can be a bit iffy ( especially that ejit fsimons and webster) but the OZ for a national paper has an excellent coverage, Brent Reid Is very good and they are always fair.

Anyway what I was getting to was that my posts were banned from both, the Herald for giving it to fsimons and webster and the OZ because I think I agreed a littlie too enthusiastically with an article on Israeli interference in our foreign policy. But that`s another matter. It doesn`t stop me from sending in posts though because I figure that the writers are probably just as interested in the critical posts as well as the ones that tell them how clever they are. Don`t get me wrong Irish I`m not some lunatic trolling these blokes I do try to be constructive and point out the error of their ways. 😜

Good news last night though the Herald accepted a post I made in response to an article on Adam Reynolds, I went to type in `Little Champion` when I saw  the post before me said ` Champion Little player ` I posted anyway because it`s true and deserved repeating. The article said only  two players had kicked their team to victory in the last 5 minutes of a game with either field goals or penalty goals 12 times: Cam Smith and Johnathon Thurston, Reynolds was next on 10 times, including 6 field goals and Cherry-Evans was next on 9. Not a bad list and not a bad stat. The post on The OZ was a sly dig at the afl which snuck past the keeper.

I saw you taking part in the big farewell to Kayakman and didn`t send this post but I noticed he was back today, he wasn`t gone long, he seems like a nice fella.

The above stat was between 1998-2020, still pretty good.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 13/08/2020 at 14:45, kiwis 13 6 said:

Have a mixed opinion of Fitzsimmons as a journalist one good story he did was highlighting the disparity and lack of any government support faced by Kiwi's living in Australia. I have sometimes read his column over the years i remember he once wrote that he actually had played a couple of games of rugby league. His bias towards union is clear and usually if he is talking about league it is either to bash the sport or because he has to because his audience is interested in the sport. 

Wellington probably could have had an successful NRL when they bid 25 years ago and again about 15 years ago. These days would need a lot of work to be done before a NRL side could be based here in Wellington. I would say Christchurch or the Waikato would be a better locations for 2nd NZ NRL franchise at the moment.

Christchurch would certainly be a better option for a second NZ team than Wellington.

A new stadium of around 25,000 capacity is going to be built in Christchurch and it would be an obvious venue for an NRL team.

That would also have the advantage of having a South Island focus. It would be sensible for a team based in Christchurch to play some games in Dunedin and perhaps pre-season games in Greymouth and Invercargill to give the South Island some ownership of the club.

There is no doubt in my mind that such a move would strengthen Rugby League as a whole in New Zealand. It would be great for the NRL to have a New Zealand 'derby'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

There is no doubt in my mind that such a move would strengthen Rugby League as a whole in New Zealand. It would be great for the NRL to have a New Zealand 'derby'.

There is definite regret within the League hierarchy that we never put another team in another team in Brisbane to tighten our grip on that city. Derby`s are now shown to strengthen a code if a region can support it.

Kiwi above whom you quoted reckons that a NZ RL Premiership win would be absolutely massive for the game over there and on the evidence I saw when they made the GF you would have to agree. You could not turn around without bumping into people doing the Haka.

Can`t wait for the day above comes true with a team in Perth and another team in Melbourne.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.