Selling The Drama

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, Johnoco said:

But if any club gets to the cup final....it's still full.

They don't rely on the 75000 Man Utd fans to fill Wembley if Brighton got to the final. 

Or the Euros. Or Olympics or whatever.

Theses events get people fighting for tickets from all over the country. Surely you can see the difference? 

Yes I can , you've gone ' International ' again , can you spot the difference ?

[Dave T]

2 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

But if any club gets to the cup final....it's still full.

They don't rely on the 75000 Man Utd fans to fill Wembley if Brighton got to the final. 

Or the Euros. Or Olympics or whatever.

Theses events get people fighting for tickets from all over the country. Surely you can see the difference? 

The better comparison is the European Rugby final or Pro 14 or similar. These don't automatically just sell out, I'm not sure why we believe RL events should always be sellout. 

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

But if any club gets to the cup final....it's still full.

They don't rely on the 75000 Man Utd fans to fill Wembley if Brighton got to the final. 

Or the Euros. Or Olympics or whatever.

Theses events get people fighting for tickets from all over the country. Surely you can see the difference? 

Yes , because it's a cup final , THE biggest and oldest domestic Cup Final of the biggest sport in the world 

Complete nonsense 

[GUBRATS]

Cup Finals or Grand Finals , and indeed ' SUPER ' Bowls are events , people want to attend them , or indeed as in the US , go somewhere special to enjoy them 

More people go to Vegas to watch the SB than go to the SB 

Still doesnt prove anything at all 

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

It doesn't matter and you know it. RL relies on mostly the same people time after  time, *regardless* of whether it's international or domestic.

And I've given you 2 examples of people who don't , I'm sure there are thousands of ' us ' who know people who are the same 

[GUBRATS]

3 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

Then tell them to attend games much more often because the attendance figures don't support your argument.

 

I do , my Wigan friends don't even contribute to the TV deal , but do watch all the games 

I take the ###### 

Bottom line is some people watch live games , some don't 

[Dave T]

Just now, Johnoco said:

Always Dave? Occasionally might better.

And look at some of the crowds club RU gets for Xmas matches at Twickenham. That's a very similar situation to our big club games that never match those figures.

You only have to look at the crowds that RU clubs get in Wales and Scotland when they try and replicate these London events (they are decent, but nothing like the London ones). The Twickenham events are unique and not really one's to be replicated. Sale RU also flunked when they tried to do it in the North. Newcastle have been successful with it, but we are also targeting St James. 

We return very good crowds for our Grand Final and Cup final, although it can't be denied that the decline at Wembley is disappointing. 

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, Dave T said:

You only have to look at the crowds that RU clubs get in Wales and Scotland when they try and replicate these London events (they are decent, but nothing like the London ones). The Twickenham events are unique and not really one's to be replicated. Sale RU also flunked when they tried to do it in the North. Newcastle have been successful with it, but we are also targeting St James. 

We return very good crowds for our Grand Final and Cup final, although it can't be denied that the decline at Wembley is disappointing. 

But as we know , it was ' OUR ' day , now it isn't , if I have a choice it would be Leigh at the ' Bash ' rather than Wigan,Leeds or Saints again at Wembley 

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, Johnoco said:

Not enough - and that's the bottom line.

Yes but nobody it seems has the answer 

[Dave T]

3 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

The Twickenham events are still just club games though, we can't just side step them and pretend they don't count.

Sale might get pretty average/low crowds but they aren't the only RU show in the area. There are lots of RU clubs/fans that either play or would attend a big RU game. 

No, but we can look at the full picture and see that non-London RU clubs can't replicate what they do at Twickenham. That would be very odd to ignore that.

Edinburgh and Glasgow RU stage a huge event at Murray field once a year. It got lower than Catalans in Barcelona. 

 

[GUBRATS]

4 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

The Twickenham events are still just club games though, we can't just side step them and pretend they don't count.

Sale might get pretty average/low crowds but they aren't the only RU show in the area. There are lots of RU clubs/fans that either play or would attend a big RU game. 

No shortage of idiots in the world , happy to pay fortunes for big blokes pushing each other , a ' pub game ' or being seen as fashionably posh 

It's a mad , mad world 

[GUBRATS]

2 minutes ago, Dave T said:

No, but we can look at the full picture and see that non-London RU clubs can't replicate what they do at Twickenham. That would be very odd to ignore that.

Edinburgh and Glasgow RU stage a huge event at Murray field once a year. It got lower than Catalans in Barcelona. 

 

Ah , so it's always London teams at ' twickers ' ? , I didn't realise , but that does explain it to a degree 

[Dave T]

32 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

So how does the Scottish RL club games compare to that? 

I was comparing the English equivalents. 

Let's leave it there. 

[GUBRATS]

1 hour ago, Dave T said:

Let's leave it there. 

There'll be another thread along shortly

[Dave T]

53 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

Why? You were picking out the bits of RU that aren’t so favourable but ignoring a direct comparison with like for like English competitions.

But yeah, we won’t really get anywhere so happy to drop it.

You missed my point. The suggestion (and not just by you on this thread) is that Union can get 80k crowds in Twickenham so we should be able to, I was providing evidence that even RU can't do it outside of London. Even in places like Cardiff and Edinburgh where Union is big. 

Bringing Scotland RL up was silly. 

There is nothing to criticise RL for that it can't stage those kind of events. 

But happy to disagree. 

[GUBRATS]

5 minutes ago, Johnoco said:

I'm happy to leave it there too . 

But my point wasn't that RL clubs couldn't get 80k in London. It was more that they can't get anything close to sellouts in the heartlands (for a regular game) 

Last one on this , you state that RU can put on a regular club game at Twickenham and sell it out , just how many of those new ' fans ' then turn up at a normal club game ? , I'd suggest hardly any , there is a mostly southern mindset among the ' posh ' well healed in and around London of " the place to be seen " , that is precisely how Wimbledon works , how the boat race works , and other events , some sport and some not , you know this , you aren't stupid , so why use that as a stick to beat RL with , you criticise RL for not being able to retain the occasional fans we have ( as I've pointed out we have ) when RU and countless other sports get more than us at events , but nobody to their regular games 

I'm done 

[Dunbar]

3 hours ago, Dave T said:

Let's leave it there. 

 

1 hour ago, Johnoco said:

But yeah, we won’t really get anywhere so happy to drop it.

 

8 minutes ago, GUBRATS said:

I'm done 

Far too many snowflakes bailing out on this thread... come on, we're only 17 pages in, we can do this.

[GUBRATS]

1 minute ago, Dunbar said:

 

 

Far too many snowflakes bailing out on this thread... come on, we're only 17 pages in, we can do this.

Can we get it to next year 2021 ?

[Dunbar]

Just now, GUBRATS said:

Can we get it to next year 2021 ?

You make one mistake...

[DC77]

On 01/01/2021 at 21:32, GUBRATS said:

So from that post I assume you pay to watch that rubbish ? So Yearns swindling you , not me , no shortage of easily fooled people in the world , you're one of them

Of course I don’t, that’s the gist of my comment.

The last PPV worthy fight was Mayweather vs Pacquiao (and the last I paid for...was a ###### fight though). The standard of boxing has nosedived, at the same time as the number of PPV fights has increased. It’s truly mind boggling how Hearn has pulled this epic swindle off.

[DC77]

22 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Joshua might not be selling out Vegas (Americans are particularly snobbish in that regard) but he is selling out Wembley. Something RL hasn't done for a very long time

Joshua is a C level fighter, that’s why he ain’t selling out Vegas. An over the hill Wladimir Klitschko, glass jaw himself, had Joshua hanging on for dear life. He was out on his feet. The only reason he survived was because Klitschko was in the 40s and didn’t have the gas.

Bar Alvarez (and one or two fighters in the much lighter weight) there are no hall of fame level fighters right now. The standard is truly appalling. For whatever reason (changes in society) there just aren’t the numbers boxing anymore, and that’s impacted the pro ranks.

[DC77]

13 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

It is when defences are good (which in general they are constantly improving as they are in all sports) yes they're very hard to score against. When they're rubbish you can still score multiple, see Tom Briscoe's 5 at Wembley. I don't think that is a problem though. Football can still have stars that don't need anywhere near an average of a goal a game let alone multiple.

I think fundamentally though the focus on scoring tries has shifted from the man who puts it down over the line. Aside from excellent individual efforts from in their own half or midfield, most tries are the end product of team displays. Fans, pundits, and coaches are (more than in most sports) seemingly obsessed by the assist makers more than the point scorers. This is evidenced by comments such as "it still takes some scoring" when such efforts are noticeably harder than usual.

Prime example, Ash Handley. Finished top try scorer for Leeds and I think Super League as a whole this year. Yet there doesn't seem to be much if any clamour for other clubs wanting to sign him to up their try scoring record. Even as a Leeds fan, there's a large element of "well playing next to a centre like Hurrell and on the left he should score a few". To put that in context its like football fans downplaying a striker scoring goals.

I think partly its because Rugby, and Rugby fans, have gone beyond the rather simplistic end product view a lot of (but always increasingly less) football fans seem to have or be able to use as an excuse. Put it this way, if these days your team was only capable of or reliant on scoring long range efforts from your wingers, people would straight away see that as an issue. Equally, the vast majority of rugby fans know a halfback should be one of your most valuable players because good ones can set you up to win games and titles. Yet unlike say NFL with their quarterbacks, we don't seem to make too much furore about these real stars either!

Footballers 30 years ago would be scoring the same goals as today. In fact, they’d find it easier (carpet like pitches, greater protection from referees). Last week Messi scored his 644th goal for Barcelona, overtaking Pele (643 goals for Santos) in becoming the player to have scored the most goals for a club. Cristiano Ronaldo is half a dozen goals short of having the most goals scored for a national team (he’s on 102 goals for Portugal). Two seasons ago Salah broke the goal scoring record for a 38 game Premier League season. Wayne Rooney overtook Bobby Charlton’s England goalscoring record, no doubt Harry Kane will topple Rooney. Records galore keep tumbling, which is how it should be. 

If attacking play in football was getting shut down like it has increasingly been in the rugby codes over the last 15 years the effect would have been enormous. The videos from Ronaldinho that went viral 15 years ago (first vid to reach 1 million on YouTube), the same is happening with players today. They are allowed to really shine and stand out on the field, something no longer afforded in the rugby codes bar sporadic moments.

I showed my old man Rob Burrow’s try from the 2011 Grand final, blown away as you’d expect. There needs to be more of this, much much much more. It’s actually getting harder.

[DC77]

13 hours ago, gingerjon said:

It's worth pointing out that, rather like the decline in participation not being a rugby league specific thing, that sport in this country is simply not as mainstream as it once was.

I don’t think any individual can ever be as big as they were (pre internet days) when media was more streamlined and so the focus was on a small number of people.

Princess Diana and the Spice Girls, you couldn’t open a newspaper without seeing either plastered across them, and newspapers were the main source of news. There is nothing remotely at that level of fame today as there are so many more famous people so the attention is much more diluted.

13 hours ago, Dave T said:

I don't agree that the game negates individual skill, not at all. Those two games you highlight were extremely rare. The Cup Final at Wembley this year was a far better game than the Grand Final and a far better example of a top quality game which was tight and tense and still had some quality attacking play. 

If you think that RL hasn't had a star player for 15 years then you are just wrong. During this period Super League has had attacking talent like Rob Burrow, Danny McGuire, Sam Tomkins, Rangi Chase, Stefan Ratchford, Johnny Lomax, Kevin Sinfield, plus then we have had short term talent like Ben Barba, Chris Sandow etc wowing crowds. I could probably list 50 or 60 players from this period who were known for their flair. 

I think a slight problem we have in this country is the reliance of Aussie coaches and tactics which has led to a more conservative game, but the rules more than allow for creative play and flair players. 

 

You listed great players. The talent level hasn’t changed (certainly in RL, RU is a different story as it’s much more gym focused), the opportunity to stand out and become stars has. None of those are ‘star’ names in the sense of being known. They aren’t known because they can’t stand out. RU has the same issue in this regard. No household name in precisely the same period (15 years). 

[DC77]

13 hours ago, Dunbar said:

Is there any evidence to back this up or is it your memory/perception of how the game is now played?

Statistics from the Super League are impossible to come by but as I have posted in another thread, in the NRL in 2019 4 out of every 10 tries was scored from a play starting outside the 20 metre line of the opposition and 1 in every 10 tries started from a play 40 metres out or longer.

There were 1,331 tries scored in the NRL in 2019 so 532 were scored from a play starting outside the 20m line and 133 from outside the 40m (this is plays where the attacking team plays the ball and so intercepts etc. are not counted in the distance analysis).

When it comes to individual players, St George Illawarra fullback Matt Dufty scored 8 in the year which started further than 40 metres away from the line with Ryan Papenhuyzen on 7 and Josh Addo-Carr with 6.

Now, I genuinely don't know how this compares to tries scored in the 80's and 90's or earlier as those types of stats are not available.  But I posted this data last time in response to a comment that said 'almost every try' is scored from close to the line which is clearly not true.

The problem I have with trying to compare era's is that I used to watch one game of Rugby League live in person and maybe another live on tv... everything else was highlights at best.  Now, I am watching 8 or 9 live games a week.  If I were to simply watch the NRL or Super League highlights packages then I would assume every game was full of breaks and tries.

My view is that modern defences are better organized than ever before and more difficult to break down but modern players are more skillful than ever before in order to break down these defences.

I’m sure a few stattos on here could oblige. Offiah top scored with 57 tries, Makinson with 24, I’m sure there’s more.

The difference is patently obvious from watching footage of both eras though. The much maligned “turnstile defences” (to me, space and opportunities for attacking players), you don’t see now, or certainly not to anywhere near the same degree.

Then there’s the more conservative play (four/five quickfire runs up the middle, as opposed to trying to make plays in the first few possessions).

Its a different sport to the one Wigan played at the old Wembley. 

[DC77]

13 hours ago, Dunbar said:

Indeed.  But Offiah scored 37 tries in the league in the 1988-89 season.   A season in which Widnes played 26 games.  And Makinson scored 23 tries in the league in a season in which Saints played 29 games.

And Saints in 2019 scored more points per game in 2019 than Widnes did in 1988-89.

37 in 26...versus 23 in 29 (and for a top side). So it’s harder to score (not for a team, for individuals). With far less capacity for the individualist tries (Hanley, Offiah, Robinson, Tuigamala) scores are more spread out, more team based. 

Said previously, those four rampaging tries against England that made Lomu a star overnight, he ain’t scoring those tries today. Shut down, nullified in an increasingly attritional dominated game.

Both codes are their own worst enemy.