Why do we get it wrong?

[EssexRL]

I am having one of my periodic dips into the Forum and reading the normal gripes about the state and poor organisation of our game like the England Fan Club or the lack of match day experiences for families. Why is it that the sport seems so poor at this stuff? Lack of money can't explain it all, can it? 

[sam4731]

10 minutes ago, EssexRL said:

I am having one of my periodic dips into the Forum and reading the normal gripes about the state and poor organisation of our game like the England Fan Club or the lack of match day experiences for families. Why is it that the sport seems so poor at this stuff? Lack of money can't explain it all, can it? 

It's not a lack of money, it's not looking at the long term interests of the game and too many self interested people running the game.

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

5 minutes ago, EssexRL said:

I am having one of my periodic dips into the Forum and reading the normal gripes about the state and poor organisation of our game like the England Fan Club or the lack of match day experiences for families. Why is it that the sport seems so poor at this stuff? Lack of money can't explain it all, can it? 

I'm not convinced other sports are a paradigm of great family match experiences to be honest 

I go and watch loads of stuff from union and cricket to more recently soccer.....not seen anything extra other than the game at most of them really. Whereas at least some RL fixtures I've been to have had things .e.g. the army day at Headingly this year, Leigh's bands and fireworks and the Broncos have had promotions and the skills games, mascots  etc. for kids

Soccer doesn't even have kids mascots from what I can see which my kids always love at games 

Our big occasions should have more though 

From what I saw three was nothing at Old Trafford last year....nothing 

 

[EssexRL]

14 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

I'm not convinced other sports are a paradigm of great family match experiences to be honest 

Fair point but I was just using that as an example. There seem to be plenty of others (like the England Fan Club) and a theme that seems to emerge on threads is that we don't get the basics right. Assuming we don't I was just wondering why?

[Dave T]

58 minutes ago, EssexRL said:

I am having one of my periodic dips into the Forum and reading the normal gripes about the state and poor organisation of our game like the England Fan Club or the lack of match day experiences for families. Why is it that the sport seems so poor at this stuff? Lack of money can't explain it all, can it? 

I actually think it broadly does come down to lack of money.

Which leads to us not having the right leaders in the sport. Which leads to poor strategies, people being over-stretched, which leads to delivering poorly, which leads to less money.

[JonM]

39 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Soccer doesn't even have kids mascots from what I can see which my kids always love at games 

A lot of clubs do. My kids (and all of their mates) used to look forward to their annual birthday card from the Cambridge United mascot, Marvin the Moose.

[burningmuscles]

41 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Soccer doesn't even have kids mascots from what I can see which my kids always love at games

I wonder why Football in the UK doesn't need such "razzmatazz" to get children involved. The FA doesn't even encourage teams to adopt carton animal nicknames.
 

[Archie Gordon]

3 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I actually think it broadly does come down to lack of money.

Which leads to us not having the right leaders in the sport. Which leads to poor strategies, people being over-stretched, which leads to delivering poorly, which leads to less money.

I agree.

We seem very short of entrepreneurs and big thinkers and we instead have an oversupply of managers, promoted from within. I always get the impression that the RFL is a 'doing their best in the circumstances' type of operation. 

[The Masked Poster]

27 minutes ago, burningmuscles said:

I wonder why Football in the UK doesn't need such "razzmatazz" to get children involved. The FA doesn't even encourage teams to adopt carton animal nicknames.
 

They do at a kids level because I've seen a kids football initiative called 'whatever wildcats'. 

But the actual answer is that it's absolutely massive and doesn't need much promotion at all. 

[Gomersall]

Why do we get it wrong? Practice and experience.

[Damien]

I think it's comes down to a lack of money meaning we try and do everything on the cheap. Even if the idea is good the lack of investment means that the execution is usually poor.

[sam4731]

I think the slow import of American sport to this country has exposed to us the idea of the 'game' not being the only draw to the matchday experience. Obviously football doesn't need to do anything to broaden their horizons, the behemoth that it is, but I can see the appeal of trying to win over casual audiences by putting on a bit of a show. Maybe other sports don't try to go the extra mile but maybe this is somewhere we can gain an advantage.

[JohnM]

Lack of money, maybe. Lack of vision, maybe, lack of imagination maybe, lack of understanding of the event phenomenon, also maybe.  Put them all together and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.....

You get no one with the money, vision, imagination, etc to lead the way.  Eg, The Cup Final, The Grand Final, Internationals:  Pre- match entertainment from some popular musical combination just does not cut it.  Get rid of the cacophony and incoherent roe and have some proper entertainment to attract people to turn up early. Cirque de Soleil style, proper warm up games for youth teams, steal some ideas from the Olympic 2012 opening ceremony......

For main season games, named rounds like the Rob Burrow round, with events built on that theme across the game. The Origin round, dedicated to the events of 1895. ....

[OriginalMrC]

Lack of money is a big factor. It for example makes clubs make stupid decisions like persisting with loop fixtures, thinking a few pizzas on a match day is great, double headers, triple headers etc etc. 

[Northern Eel]

Rugby League is one of the most innovative sports in the world on the field. Unfortunately, the expertise to back up these ideas is sadly lacking at the governing body level (partly financial) and this creates an uncertain foundation for owners and investors, which leads to insular protection of their clubs at the expense of expansion of the game. In turn, the 'pull' that fixtures could create isn't great, as fans are reluctant to buy into the constantly changing league systems that restrict success to a minority of teams and a painfully fragmented and disjointed international programme.

To put it a different way; As a result of the above, Rugby League as a sporting product (in the entertainment business) could have the gravitational pull of the earth, but it only generates that of the moon. 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Northern Eel

[Pulga]

The top tier in England is still run like your grassroots local comp. There's not much more to it than that. "This is the way we've always done it". 

Meanwhile the rest of the world moves forward.

 

[gingerjon]

14 hours ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Soccer doesn't even have kids mascots from what I can see which my kids always love at games 

You've missed Donny & Mooie at MK Dons, then?

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

8 hours ago, gingerjon said:

You've missed Donny & Mooie at MK Dons, then?

They are at the family fun days we've been to (and will be there tomorrow ) but they don't come to any of the women's games or most of the men's games we've seen

Edited September 15, 2023 by Bedfordshire Bronco

[The Masked Poster]

There's nothing unusual about getting things wrong occasionally, all sports do it. This is more like death from a thousand cuts.

RL's problem is that when it started raining, rather than go up and fix the roof properly, it stuck a few buckets here and there and hoped it wouldn't rain too much. But now slates are starting to fall off and much of the repair work is impossible to do. So it will move back to the centre of the house and try to fend off the rain for a bit longer. Again, hoping that it will not affect the middle bit where they are focused. But it will eventually.

[Colin James]

Lack of consistency is an issue. Chopping and changing formats and rules doesn't help. We're quite innovative and willing to try new things but we don't stick with anything. We do something and inevitably it isn't perfect for everyone's needs so we scrap it and do something else instead and when we realise that also doesn't suit everyone perfectly we bin that off and try the next new thing.

[Fevrover]

Enter IMG they will change things for the better --- oh wait!

[Mathius Hellwege]

On 14/09/2023 at 17:03, EssexRL said:

I am having one of my periodic dips into the Forum and reading the normal gripes about the state and poor organisation of our game like the England Fan Club or the lack of match day experiences for families. Why is it that the sport seems so poor at this stuff? Lack of money can't explain it all, can it? 

Because we are not even able to create self-explanatory titles for new important topics in this forum

[DI Keith Fowler]

20 hours ago, Colin James said:

Lack of consistency is an issue. Chopping and changing formats and rules doesn't help. We're quite innovative and willing to try new things but we don't stick with anything. We do something and inevitably it isn't perfect for everyone's needs so we scrap it and do something else instead and when we realise that also doesn't suit everyone perfectly we bin that off and try the next new thing.

That's true but it's a symptom of being cash poor. We need all of our ideas to be hits, anything that needs long term sunk cost we reject on the basis we can't afford the risk of seeing it fail at the end. That's why we see so many different ideas and chopping and changing, because we have very little money to devote to the ideas and are just rolling the dice until we get a hit like Magic weekend.

Other sports can have an idea, invest money over time and if it fails it's not a killer. For us it is, so we're scared of anything that doesn't provide immediate results because the risk is so high. So we end up this weird mix of being as you said incredibly innovative because we have to be but also risk averse because we're skint.  

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

On 15/09/2023 at 06:44, gingerjon said:

You've missed Donny & Mooie at MK Dons, then?

2 things 

1. We didn't see the bloody mascots either at the fan zone or pitch side .......

2. We THINK they may have been doing some sort of race thing at half time but we couldn't see as we had gone to the fan bar and they put a load of sheeting up to shield the pitch from the upper stand ........I thought they'd changed the rule so you could see the game now with beer at soccer?

[gingerjon]

17 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

2 things 

1. We didn't see the bloody mascots either at the fan zone or pitch side .......

2. We THINK they may have been doing some sort of race thing at half time but we couldn't see as we had gone to the fan bar and they put a load of sheeting up to shield the pitch from the upper stand ........I thought they'd changed the rule so you could see the game now with beer at soccer?

I think FA and Football League - no, you still can’t. Non league you now can, subject to ground rules.