England vs Samoa Series

[Damien]

1 hour ago, Dave T said:

I think our poor record away from home is definitely an issue. Both the Aussies and Kiwis come over here and win series, whereas we haven't won anything over there for decades.

We have had some good series, iirc the last 4N there was fingertips from Hall away from beating the Aussies and a 2 at game versus the Kiwis (we chose not to take the draw), and a 6pt WC final, but we are too inconsistent.

That GB tour was a car crash, and tbh I put it 100% at Wayne Bennet's door that one. He stayed with the RFL too long.

I certainly think we'd have beat NZ over the last couple of decades if we'd have toured there and played them with the same regularity as they've played here.

I certainly think teams often don't tour well though and for whatever reason look far from the team they'd look at home. Its all the harder the less games you play and if there's no warm ups too. We've seen this with NZ and latterly with Tonga and Samoa.

Quite obviously, and annoyingly, Australia are the consistent exception to this!

[WN83]

9 hours ago, Hopie said:

I think this probably had a lot to do with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Great_Britain_Lions_tour

No doubt about it but that tour was a mess and much of that was on the head of Wayne Bennett, who just didn't get it and who is much the same as the biased Aussies I'm bagging on here. Imagine being a super coach and ignoring James Roby and Sam Tomkins more often than not!! 

 

[WN83]

1 hour ago, Dave T said:

I think our poor record away from home is definitely an issue. Both the Aussies and Kiwis come over here and win series, whereas we haven't won anything over there for decades.

We have had some good series, iirc the last 4N there was fingertips from Hall away from beating the Aussies and a 2 at game versus the Kiwis (we chose not to take the draw), and a 6pt WC final, but we are too inconsistent.

That GB tour was a car crash, and tbh I put it 100% at Wayne Bennet's door that one. He stayed with the RFL too long.

In fairness, it's tough to really do anything away from home when we don't really get the chance. I think as Damien says above, had we had opportunities to go away to New Zealand and play them in 3 match series, I think we would probably have won a series or two in the last couple of decades. They more often than not get beat over here as well. The Aussies are a different beast. We haven't really beaten them anywhere in my lifetime but again in recent times, you can't win games against a side you don't play. 

 

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, WN83 said:

In fairness, it's tough to really do anything away from home when we don't really get the chance. I think as Damien says above, had we had opportunities to go away to New Zealand and play them in 3 match series, I think we would probably have won a series or two in the last couple of decades. They more often than not get beat over here as well. The Aussies are a different beast. We haven't really beaten them anywhere in my lifetime but again in recent times, you can't win games against a side you don't play. 

 

Absolutely - it wasn't a criticism as such, as we've seen, when we started to go a little more regularly, we have clearly started to close the gap (although consistency is an issue, driven imo by a shallower talent pool). 

 

[WN83]

37 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Absolutely - it wasn't a criticism as such, as we've seen, when we started to go a little more regularly, we have clearly started to close the gap (although consistency is an issue, driven imo by a shallower talent pool). 

 

We're so reliant on having our first choice team available. I think that team can be competitive both here and abroad but if we start to lose 2 or 3 really top end players (like Farnworth, Williams, Radley etc), the drop off is too big for us to cope. It's always been the same though and likely always will because we just don't have enough players to choose from (and sides want to get more players off the quota, so they can bring more overseas players in).  

[Human Punk]

Apologies if this has already been gone over endlessly, but can anyone shed any light on why attendances are so poor? Within a few miles of Wigan, there are also Saints, Wire, Leigh, Widnes and Salford just no name a few, and the combined home attendance for these clubs must be coming up for 50K. Why don't regular supporters of these clubs turn up for England?

[MatthewWoody]

1 hour ago, Human Punk said:

Apologies if this has already been gone over endlessly, but can anyone shed any light on why attendances are so poor? Within a few miles of Wigan, there are also Saints, Wire, Leigh, Widnes and Salford just no name a few, and the combined home attendance for these clubs must be coming up for 50K. Why don't regular supporters of these clubs turn up for England?

That's a good question.

I'm afraid that's because people there don't like International RL as we do in this forum. 

[MatthewWoody]

23 hours ago, unapologetic pedant said:

Would most attendees at a typical England Soccer or RU game be all that familiar with opposition players? Doesn't appear to affect the prestige and allure of their international fixtures. 

Probably academic re Tonga and Samoa anyway. If the Pacific Championship continues to grow, they'll be keen to stay in the SH and play in front of their masses of diaspora fans.

But I'd say touring is a great experience too. Especially in a sport without club International games.

[Human Punk]

1 hour ago, MatthewWoody said:

That's a good question.

I'm afraid that's because people there don't like International RL as we do in this forum. 

I find that really hard to understand. I'm from Scotland, and the same weekend England were playing Samoa in Leeds the Scotland RU team were playing a sell-out match against a decidedly poor opposition (Fiji). Over 50K turned out for that, yet you'd be lucky if a tenth of that number show any interest in domestic RU. I appreciate that there are a number of factors involved, but whatever way you look at it, the contrast is shocking. What is it about international RL that's so unattractive? Samoa are a decent side, even without the likes of Crichton. Why not just go along, and help make RL as a whole stronger? It's just sad more than anything.

[MatthewWoody]

10 minutes ago, Human Punk said:

I find that really hard to understand. I'm from Scotland, and the same weekend England were playing Samoa in Leeds the Scotland RU team were playing a sell-out match against a decidedly poor opposition (Fiji). Over 50K turned out for that, yet you'd be lucky if a tenth of that number show any interest in domestic RU. I appreciate that there are a number of factors involved, but whatever way you look at it, the contrast is shocking. What is it about international RL that's so unattractive? Samoa are a decent side, even without the likes of Crichton. Why not just go along, and help make RL as a whole stronger? It's just sad more than anything.

I think it's a lot of reasons. The International scene has always been 3-4 teams, with Australia dominating. And rugby league has always been more a club game. 

But what you say is true. I'm not shocked casual people in England don't go to RL test matches. I'm shocked England games aren't sold out in RL so called "heartlands". What is there in club games that people don't find in test matches? 

[Worzel]

10 minutes ago, Human Punk said:

I find that really hard to understand. I'm from Scotland, and the same weekend England were playing Samoa in Leeds the Scotland RU team were playing a sell-out match against a decidedly poor opposition (Fiji). Over 50K turned out for that, yet you'd be lucky if a tenth of that number show any interest in domestic RU. I appreciate that there are a number of factors involved, but whatever way you look at it, the contrast is shocking. What is it about international RL that's so unattractive? Samoa are a decent side, even without the likes of Crichton. Why not just go along, and help make RL as a whole stronger? It's just sad more than anything.

I think you'd find most in here agree with you, but culturally for whatever reason there's never been a 'natural' following for international rugby league amongst core club fans, perhaps with the Ashes tests as an exception.

What's needed is for the RFL to market international games to non-core supporters. It's the general sports watcher who is more interested in international sport, as an 'event', which seems to mirror what happens in Scotland from what you say. However they rarely ever seem to do that, or at least in anything other than a half-hearted way... i.e. they don't do anything that would need strategic marketing insight and planning, or cost them any money.

Madness really, as 20,000 tickets at even just £25 per head would be £500k... and £500k buys you a huge marketing campaign (more than enough) so you'd have thought the internal ROI calculations were pretty compelling.  

[JonM]

2 hours ago, MatthewWoody said:

But I'd say touring is a great experience too. Especially in a sport without club International games.

Pretty much everyone who plays RL professionally plays club international games. 

Touring by amateur clubs obviously doesn't happen so much due to the lack of money in places where RL is played (and lack of a tradition for it) but even in the eighties the team I played for toured (to London and France). Same club has sent kids teams to Czechia and hosted Australian teams in recent years. And there are certainly amateur clubs in England that have longstanding exchanges with French clubs, hosting each other in alternate years.

[MatthewWoody]

Which club International games you mean? I meant Champions League/Champions Cup kind of competitions. 

[Barley Mow]

2 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

Which club International games you mean? I meant Champions League/Champions Cup kind of competitions. 

I assume @JonM means Super League clubs play British & French opposition. NRL play Australian & New Zealand opposition. Championship - British & French. Q Cup - Australian & PNG. Etc

Edited November 5, 2024 by Barley Mow

[MatthewWoody]

Well, having a team from abroad (so travelling there once a season, maybe two) is not the same as having International club competitions and they have in football, RU, basketball, etc. 

I thinks this is something that RL players miss. 

[JonM]

16 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

Well, having a team from abroad (so travelling there once a season, maybe two) is not the same as having International club competitions and they have in football, RU, basketball, etc. 

I thinks this is something that RL players miss. 

I suppose though, that most professional footballers never play in one of those international club competitions. (Or at least that's true here in the UK, where there are over 200+ professional clubs and fewer than 10% of them will play in European Competition each year.)

[Big Picture]

1 hour ago, Human Punk said:

I find that really hard to understand. I'm from Scotland, and the same weekend England were playing Samoa in Leeds the Scotland RU team were playing a sell-out match against a decidedly poor opposition (Fiji). Over 50K turned out for that, yet you'd be lucky if a tenth of that number show any interest in domestic RU. I appreciate that there are a number of factors involved, but whatever way you look at it, the contrast is shocking. What is it about international RL that's so unattractive? Samoa are a decent side, even without the likes of Crichton. Why not just go along, and help make RL as a whole stronger? It's just sad more than anything.

You're overlooking something there: there really is no comparison between the two matches.

In RU the lesser teams never tour on their own, they tour at the same time as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.  That gives them a degree of authenticity their RL counterparts simply don't have.  Scotland for example also plays Australia and South Africa in this series so that makes a bigger deal than just playing Fiji would.

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, Human Punk said:

I find that really hard to understand. I'm from Scotland, and the same weekend England were playing Samoa in Leeds the Scotland RU team were playing a sell-out match against a decidedly poor opposition (Fiji). Over 50K turned out for that, yet you'd be lucky if a tenth of that number show any interest in domestic RU. I appreciate that there are a number of factors involved, but whatever way you look at it, the contrast is shocking. What is it about international RL that's so unattractive? Samoa are a decent side, even without the likes of Crichton. Why not just go along, and help make RL as a whole stronger? It's just sad more than anything.

I think you can reverse that and ask why those Scotland RU fans don't go to watch Edinburgh or Glasgow if they are RUgby Union fans? 

It's clear that international crowds aren't just built of club fans toddling along to support the national team. It's probably the biggest failing in our sport that people don't get that.

Whereas SRU have built up a fan bases for their national team, we just haven't. And that ain't on people, it's on the RFL and England RL as a brand.

Just expecting the 50k or so regular RL fans in the area to turn up for England games has probably been the strategy, and it's one that doesn't work.

To add a bit more to it, I'm a man in my 40's with a fair amount of disposable income, who has supported RL and international RL for almost 40 years. England games are just not attractive enough for me to prioritise above other things that take my time and money. I watched the first test on the BBC and I haven't watched the 2nd test as I was at the theatre.

The last WC actively damaged my loyalty to international RL as I was bored to tears, and had dragged loads of new fans along, spent a fortune and a considerable amount of time attending. 

[MatthewWoody]

27 minutes ago, JonM said:

I suppose though, that most professional footballers never play in one of those international club competitions. (Or at least that's true here in the UK, where there are over 200+ professional clubs and fewer than 10% of them will play in European Competition each year.)

But still, top players do. 

I meant, RL - not having actual international club tournaments like those I mentioned - offers less opportunities in terms of travell, experiences, etc. 

So a tour is still attractive from time to time. 

Let's not forget money but also a better test and club international games is what sometimes make the players switch code. 

[Human Punk]

38 minutes ago, Big Picture said:

You're overlooking something there: there really is no comparison between the two matches.

In RU the lesser teams never tour on their own, they tour at the same time as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.  That gives them a degree of authenticity their RL counterparts simply don't have.  Scotland for example also plays Australia and South Africa in this series so that makes a bigger deal than just playing Fiji would.

If that was RL though, we'd be saying that 3 games was too many to expect everyone to go to, and that's why no-one turned up to the Fiji game. There's obviously a lot of work to be done, but people actually making the effort to go might start a virtuous circle where the increase in takings allows more money to be spent on promotion, or making it a better event. We can't rely on the RFL to get it right, we need to try to kick-start this ourselves.

Having said that I didn't go to the Samoa games either - my excuse is that it was going to cost over £100 just to get the train down to Leeds, and I couldn't make the Wigan one - so I'm part of the problem myself.

[Dave T]

15 minutes ago, Human Punk said:

If that was RL though, we'd be saying that 3 games was too many to expect everyone to go to, and that's why no-one turned up to the Fiji game. There's obviously a lot of work to be done, but people actually making the effort to go might start a virtuous circle where the increase in takings allows more money to be spent on promotion, or making it a better event. We can't rely on the RFL to get it right, we need to try to kick-start this ourselves.

Having said that I didn't go to the Samoa games either - my excuse is that it was going to cost over £100 just to get the train down to Leeds, and I couldn't make the Wigan one - so I'm part of the problem myself.

Non-attending fans aren't the problem.

[Hopie]

29 minutes ago, Human Punk said:

If that was RL though, we'd be saying that 3 games was too many to expect everyone to go to, and that's why no-one turned up to the Fiji game. There's obviously a lot of work to be done, but people actually making the effort to go might start a virtuous circle where the increase in takings allows more money to be spent on promotion, or making it a better event. We can't rely on the RFL to get it right, we need to try to kick-start this ourselves.

Having said that I didn't go to the Samoa games either - my excuse is that it was going to cost over £100 just to get the train down to Leeds, and I couldn't make the Wigan one - so I'm part of the problem myself.

When Scotland play the big teams everybody wants to go, but most people don't want to see them play Romania etc, hence they do ticket packages for three games so to get to see the All Blacks etc you also come to see the other games, similar to when teams draw Rangers/Celtic in the cup you get priority if you also come to a league game beforehand. RL doesn't sell out the biggest games so that doesn't work for us, and we don't have a regular fixture so there is no habit making. A friend of mine in Edinburgh goes to the autumn internationals every year with his family, doesn't matter who is playing, I go to internationals every autumn when there are some, but it would be easy to stop when they are not announced far enough in advance, if the Ashes aren't announced soon I may not be able to book the weekends off work to go watch them.

I went to see England play the worst team in the RL four nations because there was a discount if you had tickets for the other games, that got me to a game I would have normally avoided. I also bought the three ticket package last year but I was planning on going to all three games anyway so they lost money on that. There is a balance to be found. 

[north yorks trinity]

2 hours ago, Worzel said:

Madness really, as 20,000 tickets at even just £25 per head would be £500k... and £500k buys you a huge marketing campaign (more than enough) so you'd have thought the internal ROI calculations were pretty compelling.  

As you say, madness. Especially as subsequent campaigns would become easier and therefore cheaper. I say that because add 20,000 to our current attendances and we'd be getting 30-40k for Samoa and Tonga and selling out major football stadia, possibly including Wembley, for Australia. That in itself would be enormous in boosting the profile of the sport as a whole and certainly the international game. 

We can but dream!!

[Worzel]

1 hour ago, north yorks trinity said:

As you say, madness. Especially as subsequent campaigns would become easier and therefore cheaper. I say that because add 20,000 to our current attendances and we'd be getting 30-40k for Samoa and Tonga and selling out major football stadia, possibly including Wembley, for Australia. That in itself would be enormous in boosting the profile of the sport as a whole and certainly the international game. 

We can but dream!!

We under-invest in promotion. Some would say “nobody spends 100% of their revenue on marketing” in advance, and of course they’d be right in a sense. And in the real world you wouldn’t need to spend that much, just more than we’re prepared to today. But I’ve always taken the view that some of your products are your specific new customer acquisition engines: If you spend £500k to get £500k the first time, you can then remarket other things to that now-captive audience. Consumer goods firms think in terms of ‘lifetime customer value’, and build marketing ROI models on the multiple purchases they know they’ll get further down the line - rather than just “purchase number one”

For challenger sports, which is what we are, international matches are the new customer engine. It’s how you engage people who have an affinity to their country, even if only a passing interest in your sport. There’s a connection there. If you believe in the quality of your product, then it follows that once attracted once then enough people will then come back a 2nd time. Maybe only for another international, but in a smaller proportion of cases then some will come to a club game, or a major final or some other “event” with a little more cache. 

[Dave T]

35 minutes ago, Worzel said:

We under-invest in promotion. Some would say “nobody spends 100% of their revenue on marketing” in advance, and of course they’d be right in a sense. And in the real world you wouldn’t need to spend that much, just more than we’re prepared to today. But I’ve always taken the view that some of your products are your specific new customer acquisition engines: If you spend £500k to get £500k the first time, you can then remarket other things to that now-captive audience. Consumer goods firms think in terms of ‘lifetime customer value’, and build marketing ROI models on the multiple purchases they know they’ll get further down the line - rather than just “purchase number one”

For challenger sports, which is what we are, international matches are the new customer engine. It’s how you engage people who have an affinity to their country, even if only a passing interest in your sport. There’s a connection there. If you believe in the quality of your product, then it follows that once attracted once then enough people will then come back a 2nd time. Maybe only for another international, but in a smaller proportion of cases then some will come to a club game, or a major final or some other “event” with a little more cache. 

The lifetime value piece is absolutely critical. When we look at marketing cost we cant just look at that as selling a ticket for £25. It's attracting a customer. A premium customer, or whatever we want to call them could be worth hundreds or thousands of pounds, depending on what term you measure it over.

In our bank we sometimes measure customer value over 10 years for example.