England v Tonga series

[Mathius Hellwege]

13 minutes ago, RigbyLuger said:

In an ideal world we'd have the money to fly them as we used to do, but we don't. What's the other option? Magic money from the same place we find the "better" refs people ask for? 

It's not about people on the breadline, it's that we're all suffering because prices are going up. The RFL aren't immune from that!

they are not rich but of course could have funded the business flights to incerease our chance of winning

[M j M]

 

1 hour ago, Derwent said:

17 hours ago, Derwent said:

Absolutely. Especially when you hear that Tom Burgess and the other NRL players had to pay for their own flights over as the RFL couldn’t afford it.

  

15 hours ago, M j M said:

This is untrue.

Not according to Tom Burgess who says he is actually out of pocket for playing in this series. Re the flights he said every other time he has played for England the RFL have paid for business class flights for the players but this time they were told the RFL would only pay economy. Burgess and others paid for business class themselves and the RFL reimbursed them the equivalent of an economy flight fare.

I made no comment on whether it was appropriate or not that the RFL didn't pay for business class.

But your claim that they just made the players pay for their own flights is clearly not the case.

[17 stone giant]

3 hours ago, iffleyox said:

Milton Keynes, on the other hand... 30500, quicker to get to from central London than Brentford by rail....

I'd be happy with that. Near Bletchley Park too, which is a great place to visit, and fits nicely with the rugby codebreakers thing.

[17 stone giant]

43 minutes ago, RigbyLuger said:

In an ideal world we'd have the money to fly them as we used to do, but we don't.

Is the RFL really that low on money that it can't pay for a few players to travel business class on a couple of flights to and from Australia? I know they're expensive for the average person, but these are top sports people playing for England (and it's not as if we play that often). How many players was it anyway? 5?

I'm curious now how the Tongan's got here. Did we put them in some big crates and transport them as cargo?

[RigbyLuger]

9 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:

Is the RFL really that low on money that it can't pay for a few players to travel business class on a couple of flights to and from Australia? I know they're expensive for the average person, but these are top sports people playing for England (and it's not as if we play that often). How many players was it anyway? 5?

I'm curious now how the Tongan's got here. Did we put them in some big crates and transport them as cargo?

We can't be making enough off every training range Oxen bring out!

[crashmon]

1 hour ago, 17 stone giant said:

Is the RFL really that low on money that it can't pay for a few players to travel business class on a couple of flights to and from Australia? I know they're expensive for the average person, but these are top sports people playing for England (and it's not as if we play that often). How many players was it anyway? 5?

I'm curious now how the Tongan's got here. Did we put them in some big crates and transport them as cargo?

War Canoe...  

[Archie Gordon]

1 hour ago, 17 stone giant said:

...

I'm curious now how the Tongan's got here. Did we put them in some big crates and transport them as cargo?

Would be good to know. Business class, surely. 

[RigbyLuger]

52 minutes ago, crashmon said:

War Canoe...  

Not Rolf!

[dead man inc]

2 hours ago, 17 stone giant said:

Is the RFL really that low on money that it can't pay for a few players to travel business class on a couple of flights to and from Australia? I know they're expensive for the average person, but these are top sports people playing for England (and it's not as if we play that often). How many players was it anyway? 5?

I'm curious now how the Tongan's got here. Did we put them in some big crates and transport them as cargo?

Unfortunately, and it gives me no please at all in admitting it, but YES the RFL & the game over here really is that skint

A relative recently had to do a return flight to Australia for work, economy flight was around about £1800 - their boss went on exactly the same flight, but went business class and the cost was in excess of £9500. 3 England players upgrades would be more than a league 1 team gets in central funding!

Its sad, worrying and disappointing just how poor a state financially the RFL & the game is over here

I say this partially in jest , but maybe if more of ‘us fans’ put our hands in our pocket and sold out the 3 games, rather than just taking the easy option of blaming the RFL (yes i know & agree the RFL has plenty of faults - I don’t agree with many of their decisions or strategies recently) & any other excuse not to go to the games. If all 3 had sold out the RFL would have had the funds to pay for the upgrades £15-£25 for a international game is a bargain in my opinion - especially when so many fans cry out that the lack of international games is holding the games development and growth back.

[Dave T]

2 hours ago, Archie Gordon said:

Would be good to know. Business class, surely. 

I'm not so sure. It could be the difference between a travel bill of £200k and £50k.

And whilst clearly business class would be far better for athletes, modern air travel is pretty luxurious. 

[ATLANTISMAN]

The difference between economy and business class is currently around 5500.

A squad of 30 with all the staff you are looking at around a min of 200K economy 45K

[ATLANTISMAN]

1 hour ago, dead man inc said:

Unfortunately, and it gives me no please at all in admitting it, but YES the RFL & the game over here really is that skint

A relative recently had to do a return flight to Australia for work, economy flight was around about £1800 - their boss went on exactly the same flight, but went business class and the cost was in excess of £9500. 3 England players upgrades would be more than a league 1 team gets in central funding!

Its sad, worrying and disappointing just how poor a state financially the RFL & the game is over here

I say this partially in jest , but maybe if more of ‘us fans’ put our hands in our pocket and sold out the 3 games, rather than just taking the easy option of blaming the RFL (yes i know & agree the RFL has plenty of faults - I don’t agree with many of their decisions or strategies recently) & any other excuse not to go to the games. If all 3 had sold out the RFL would have had the funds to pay for the upgrades £15-£25 for a international game is a bargain in my opinion - especially when so many fans cry out that the lack of international games is holding the games development and growth back.

All the freebies retainers and expenses for the rugby league council is costing the game between 400/500K a year thats League 1 sorted 

[Anita Bath]

53 minutes ago, Dave T said:

I'm not so sure. It could be the difference between a travel bill of £200k and £50k.

And whilst clearly business class would be far better for athletes, modern air travel is pretty luxurious. 

Pretty luxurious?  Have you flown economy from Australia to UK recently. Nothing luxurious about it I can assure you. I have no idea how a rugby league player manages to fit into an economy seat…and for 20 hours or more.

How do the RFL mucky mucks travel I wonder.

[Dave T]

34 minutes ago, Anita Bath said:

Pretty luxurious?  Have you flown economy from Australia to UK recently. Nothing luxurious about it I can assure you. I have no idea how a rugby league player manages to fit into an economy seat…and for 20 hours or more.

How do the RFL mucky mucks travel I wonder.

I've done plenty of flights to Oz and in that direction using the Middle East airlines and many are pretty good. 

And Rugby League players aren't generally freaky giants, they'll be far more comfortable than many other people on these flights. 

Of course, there is a debate over whether your employer should expect you to flybthat long in Economy, but let's not make out they are flying Ryanair. 

[Anita Bath]

My understanding of the word luxurious is ‘extremely comfortable or elegant’. I have never flown economy in such conditions.

Burgess is 6ft 5 ins and touching 19stone. 

[Hopie]

I'm sure I heard Burgess say he came over to England on holiday before he was even announced as part of the squad, but he could have been joking about it if there was a disagreement about who was paying what and what type of ticket was involved. 

[Dave T]

10 hours ago, Anita Bath said:

My understanding of the word luxurious is ‘extremely comfortable or elegant’. I have never flown economy in such conditions.

Burgess is 6ft 5 ins and touching 19stone. 

The word pretty was used alongside luxurious, tempering it. 

The reality is most flights people take are pretty average experiences, most are short haul in cramped seats with warm drinks and poor food and no entertainment. National carriers are rarely better than budget carriers nowadays. 

Many other forms of travel used (coaches and trains) for matches are as bad. 

Even an economy flight with the likes of Qatar and Emirates are far superior than these other forms. 

But, irrespective of geeky discussion on flights, I think it was Damien who posted about the root cause here is lack of money. We are now seeing outcomes of poor commercial performance. But we do need to be realistic about cost savings, if the RFL carried the full costs for this series, then as pointed out the difference between Business and Standard is huge. 

We really need to be building these tests up to the point where we can build partnerships with Airlines, Hotel providers and even potentially having host towns bid for games and teams staying in their locality. We appear to be miles off that place. 

[The Masked Poster]

Except…..we aren’t talking about flying out 30+ players, coaches etc etc are we? Just a handful of players who play in the NRL, even if the difference between bog standard and ‘half decent’ was quite a few bob, would it really add up to that much? 

Like it or not, Rugby League is in the entertainment business. If it acts like a bargain basement affair, then that will just result in a further lowering of standards until a complete “that’s good enough” mentality prevails over the whole sport. This never results in raised standards or expectations, only lower ones. 

[Tommygilf]

9 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

Except…..we aren’t talking about flying out 30+ players, coaches etc etc are we? Just a handful of players who play in the NRL, even if the difference between bog standard and ‘half decent’ was quite a few bob, would it really add up to that much? 

Like it or not, Rugby League is in the entertainment business. If it acts like a bargain basement affair, then that will just result in a further lowering of standards until a complete “that’s good enough” mentality prevails over the whole sport. This never results in raised standards or expectations, only lower ones. 

A "That'll do" attitudr has epitomised a lot of RL over the past decade or so.

I agree, how many flew from Oz, 4? Young, Radley, Burgess and Whitehead. That business class flights for these lads weren't deemed possible demonstrates exactly where the sport and the RFL are financially.

What's worse IMO is that they do not know how to get out of this mess. They banked on a 3 match series in the heartlands and managed to poorly plan that too. It being deliberate gives them too much credit.

[The Masked Poster]

2 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

A "That'll do" attitudr has epitomised a lot of RL over the past decade or so.

I agree, how many flew from Oz, 4? Young, Radley, Burgess and Whitehead. That business class flights for these lads weren't deemed possible demonstrates exactly where the sport and the RFL are financially.

What's worse IMO is that they do not know how to get out of this mess. They banked on a 3 match series in the heartlands and managed to poorly plan that too. It being deliberate gives them too much credit.

Precisely. It’s all very well people defending them and saying “oh we have no money” but it was obvious a long time ago that unless the game started to change its ways, this would be the result.

Take 2 salesmen, both are skint. One borrows some money to get a decent car and clothes. The other wears Tesco value jeans and trainers and arrives by bus. One is being more honest and the other is putting up a bit of a front…..but who do you think will do better in terms of sales? 

[Dave T]

25 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

Except…..we aren’t talking about flying out 30+ players, coaches etc etc are we? Just a handful of players who play in the NRL, even if the difference between bog standard and ‘half decent’ was quite a few bob, would it really add up to that much? 

Like it or not, Rugby League is in the entertainment business. If it acts like a bargain basement affair, then that will just result in a further lowering of standards until a complete “that’s good enough” mentality prevails over the whole sport. This never results in raised standards or expectations, only lower ones. 

Who do we think paid for the Tonga flights? I don't know the answer, other than it won't have been the Tongan federation themselves. I expect it will have had to have been covered by the series (i.e. the RFL). I'd caveat that with the fact that we have seen the IRL get involved in underwriting the GB Tour a few years ago.

When having a look around at stuff like this last night, it was interesting to see that there have been far richer organisations than the RFL making decisions on Business vs Economy due to substantial costs - often with the women's teams being shunted to Economy while the male players are in Business. This is entirely justified through costs - so we aren't the only organisation making these decisions to avoid hefty costs.

[Dave T]

22 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

A "That'll do" attitudr has epitomised a lot of RL over the past decade or so.

I agree, how many flew from Oz, 4? Young, Radley, Burgess and Whitehead. That business class flights for these lads weren't deemed possible demonstrates exactly where the sport and the RFL are financially.

What's worse IMO is that they do not know how to get out of this mess. They banked on a 3 match series in the heartlands and managed to poorly plan that too. It being deliberate gives them too much credit.

I think it's clear that we lack any kind of visionary in charge. I would hope this is what IMG would bring to the table, but we just don't appear to have that mindset within the game. Even Nigel Wood looks like a visionary right now.

[Anita Bath]

it would be good to know how the games leaders travel when on international flights.

[Dave T]

51 minutes ago, The Masked Poster said:

Precisely. It’s all very well people defending them and saying “oh we have no money” but it was obvious a long time ago that unless the game started to change its ways, this would be the result.

 

On this one, I will go into bat slightly for the RFL. And I say this as somebody who is extremely critical of the game and its insularity, but I actually feel they have been dealt a bad hand on the international game, and often have been flying solo in the world of International RL.

If we look at the last 30 years, the RFL have been pivotal in trying to drive forward international RL. 

1995 - we had the first new format World Cup, which introduced many of the nations that are now smashing it.

2000 - we followed it up with another one - this one delivered disastrously, but there was absolutely no lack of ambition here. Probably too ambitious and almost bankrupted the game here.

Early 2000's we then went into a bit of consolidation and hosted the Aussies a couple of times in small grounds. It was a necessary action that steadied the ship somewhat.

Mid to late 2000's and early 2010's - we led the development of the Tri Nations, then the Four Nations. We had a regular calendar, even a title sponsor and the tournament grew quite nicely. Again, plenty of poor decisions, but that goes without saying. 

In 2013 we staged what is probably still the best World Cup ever. A large list of sponsors, a decent level of ambition, strong crowds, improving coverage etc. Plus a large profit!

2013-2019 - we continued with some Four Nations, we went Down Under mid-season to play Samoa, we went to Denver to play the Kiwis, we organised Test Series versus the Kiwis when the Aussies didn't want to play Rugby League, we even toured NZ and PNG in 2019 (ignoring the awful mess of the GB branding).

And then we had Covid. This cancelled an ambitious Ashes series. And then the World Cup. The World Cup that was delivered in 2022 was hampered by cost reductions due to the delay (and plenty rubbish decisions) but ultimately was still successful in the grand scheme of things. 

The Aussies and Kiwis erased their memories of the last hundred ears of RL and decided they didn't really want to bother with Europe any more, so the RFL have staged a Test Series against Tonga. 

There are absolutely loads of things they could have done better over this period - but for me, that shows that they have basically been the main drivers of what has been good in international RL. In an alternate universe, we would have staged a very strong Ashes in 2020 and then a more successful WC in 2021 and we would be in a completely different position. 

The international game is a bit of a car crash at the moment - the real bright sparks are actually the likes of PNG and co. but I do think that the RFL are constantly having to battle to get anywhere with this - usually carrying the Kiwis along, but they have now jumped firmly in with the Aussies - and we saw how that went last week with a real low in Hamilton, despite it should have been a real high due to the on-field stuff. 

I'll criticise the RFL every day of the week for their incompetence, but I think they have constantly been the most ambitious governing body around Int RL. And I accept that isn't a high bar.

[iffleyox]

3 minutes ago, Dave T said:

On this one, I will go into bat slightly for the RFL. And I say this as somebody who is extremely critical of the game and its insularity, but I actually feel they have been dealt a bad hand on the international game, and often have been flying solo in the world of International RL.

If we look at the last 30 years, the RFL have been pivotal in trying to drive forward international RL. 

1995 - we had the first new format World Cup, which introduced many of the nations that are now smashing it.

2000 - we followed it up with another one - this one delivered disastrously, but there was absolutely no lack of ambition here. Probably too ambitious and almost bankrupted the game here.

Early 2000's we then went into a bit of consolidation and hosted the Aussies a couple of times in small grounds. It was a necessary action that steadied the ship somewhat.

Mid to late 2000's and early 2010's - we led the development of the Tri Nations, then the Four Nations. We had a regular calendar, even a title sponsor and the tournament grew quite nicely. Again, plenty of poor decisions, but that goes without saying. 

In 2013 we staged what is probably still the best World Cup ever. A large list of sponsors, a decent level of ambition, strong crowds, improving coverage etc. Plus a large profit!

2013-2019 - we continued with some Four Nations, we went Down Under mid-season to play Samoa, we went to Denver to play the Kiwis, we organised Test Series versus the Kiwis when the Aussies didn't want to play Rugby League, we even toured NZ and PNG in 2019 (ignoring the awful mess of the GB branding).

And then we had Covid. This cancelled an ambitious Ashes series. And then the World Cup. The World Cup that was delivered in 2022 was hampered by cost reductions due to the delay (and plenty rubbish decisions) but ultimately was still successful in the grand scheme of things. 

The Aussies and Kiwis erased their memories of the last hundred ears of RL and decided they didn't really want to bother with Europe any more, so the RFL have staged a Test Series against Tonga. 

There are absolutely loads of things they could have done better over this period - but for me, that shows that they have basically been the main drivers of what has been good in international RL. In an alternate universe, we would have staged a very strong Ashes in 2020 and then a more successful WC in 2021 and we would be in a completely different position. 

The international game is a bit of a car crash at the moment - the real bright sparks are actually the likes of PNG and co. but I do think that the RFL are constantly having to battle to get anywhere with this - usually carrying the Kiwis along, but they have now jumped firmly in with the Aussies - and we saw how that went last week with a real low in Hamilton, despite it should have been a real high due to the on-field stuff. 

I'll criticise the RFL every day of the week for their incompetence, but I think they have constantly been the most ambitious governing body around Int RL. And I accept that isn't a high bar.

Post of the week certainly, of the month maybe, of the year potentially. 

There's so much wrong with this game it's almost beyond analysis (or satire) but the RFL have definitely got their hearts in the right place. Brains and wallets not so much, but definitely their hearts.

I'm not about to bash the NRL too much either, but their problem is they've got enough cash to not really need to worry about doing anything they don't want to do, and right until the Pacific series this year, that has usually meant them cutting across the strategy (such as it is) of everyone else. Even the successful tournament this year is basically on their terms and for their purposes.