Where did it go wrong? International RL

[Sports Prophet]

24 minutes ago, Dave T said:

The problem is that the evidence isn't there that we have lost fans at international level. 

The OP refers to a game against the biggest nation in the World that actually had 43k in. We got that sized crowd versus Samoa in 2022, smashed that versus the Kiwis in 2013, and beat that versus the Kiwis in 2015/6 IIRC. 

This may be true but the public consciousness between the internationals of the 80s and 90s was drastically lessened in the years following.

8 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Sort of. RL always maintained a terrestrial TV presence, and pretty much always on the BBC. 

Even for the decade or so that internationals were on Sky, the 2000 World Cup still had presence on the BBC and the BBC always had extensive highlights of internationals. 

I don't think we were anywhere near as hidden as people make out. 

A Sky paywall correlates with this drop of consciousness and is similarly replicated by many sports in UK and Aus which went behind paywalls in the 90s.

The presence on terrestrial TV since can only be described as inconsistent, vague, unreliable and disinterested. You can’t expect to capitalise public interest with that type of coverage.

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, Damien said:

To be fair that was a capacity crowd at Old Trafford at the time and it's also fair to say we'd have got many more if capacity would have allowed. Ditto at Elland Road. At that time outside Wembley that crowd was the maximum crowd that could be got anywhere else.

Whilst that is true, the size of the Wembley crowd does suggest that it's unlikely we'd have got masses more at OT or ER even if possible. None of my comments are to play down what we did in the 90s, we just can't ignore the good crowds we have had since then. 

Taking away the farce of what is happening right now, the 00s and 10s were pretty decent periods for international growth. For some reason we #### about with it though instead of keep going. 

[Dave T]

49 minutes ago, Sports Prophet said:

This may be true but the public consciousness between the internationals of the 80s and 90s was drastically lessened in the years following.

A Sky paywall correlates with this drop of consciousness and is similarly replicated by many sports in UK and Aus which went behind paywalls in the 90s.

The presence on terrestrial TV since can only be described as inconsistent, vague, unreliable and disinterested. You can’t expect to capitalise public interest with that type of coverage.

It's your final paragraph that I disagree with.  What we lost was the county cups and regal trophy which were often treated with disdain by the BBC. But the Challenge Cup has never been off the BBC, that's consistent. 

And whilst the late 90s was a bit messy, my understanding is that the BBC has always either shown internationals live or extended highlights. 

I don't think there has been a year where the BBC haven't shown international RL in the Autumn. 

[Sports Prophet]

7 minutes ago, Dave T said:

It's your final paragraph that I disagree with.  What we lost was the county cups and regal trophy which were often treated with disdain by the BBC. But the Challenge Cup has never been off the BBC, that's consistent. 

And whilst the late 90s was a bit messy, my understanding is that the BBC has always either shown internationals live or extended highlights. 

I don't think there has been a year where the BBC haven't shown international RL in the Autumn. 

When I say inconsistent, I mean irregular fixture dates. Put your house on at the bookies when the Six Nations will be on tv and then double that bet on it occurring annually. That is the consistency I mean.

The irregularity of the internationals and the inconsistent regularity of the CC means when RL has been televised on BBC, it has usually been at random occurrences due to a draw, like the CC, or when governors can get their act together to organise an international.

In saying all of that, I don’t think all international crowds have been terrible. When Australia have been playing, the crowds are reasonably respectable and sometimes better. 

[Click]

2 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

This is a philosophy I disagree with. There is ample evidence in the world across many sports which demonstrates the size of the talent pool is less important than the quality of coaching and training. 

I am not sure what evidence there is - There usually is a correlation with the size of the talent pool and the access to quality coaching and training.

RL in the UK is fishing from a much smaller talent pool, and therefore has a lot less money for things like coaching and training in comparison to Aus where RL is a much higher priority sport where they get some of the "pick of the litter" so to say. 

[Damien]

7 hours ago, Dave T said:

Whilst that is true, the size of the Wembley crowd does suggest that it's unlikely we'd have got masses more at OT or ER even if possible. None of my comments are to play down what we did in the 90s, we just can't ignore the good crowds we have had since then. 

Taking away the farce of what is happening right now, the 00s and 10s were pretty decent periods for international growth. For some reason we #### about with it though instead of keep going. 

I think we would have got considerably more after winning both first tests but it's all opinion now 30 years on.

[Dave T]

7 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

When I say inconsistent, I mean irregular fixture dates. Put your house on at the bookies when the Six Nations will be on tv and then double that bet on it occurring annually. That is the consistency I mean.

The irregularity of the internationals and the inconsistent regularity of the CC means when RL has been televised on BBC, it has usually been at random occurrences due to a draw, like the CC, or when governors can get their act together to organise an international.

In saying all of that, I don’t think all international crowds have been terrible. When Australia have been playing, the crowds are reasonably respectable and sometimes better. 

Aye, the challenge cup has been all over the place to be fair. I agree on your last para, the biggest issue with the international game right now imo is that we aren't building on the good work of the last 20 years. The Four Nations was generally great and should now have grown to be even better, the World Cups are great, and things like Pacific Nations and Eur Nations cups really should be growing in their own right. 

I think the demand is clearly there, Australia has had half decent crowds when done properly, same with Kiwis, Tonga and Samoa are bright sparks, we can get a good crowd in England, France ain't bad. It is conscious decisions that have thrown away a lot of the good work. 

[Dave T]

23 minutes ago, Damien said:

I think we would have got considerably more after winning both first tests but it's all opinion now 30 years on.

Yeah, I can't disagree with that, and I suspect had we won the first test in 2020 (in an alternate universe) we'd have sold Spurs out for the 3rd test. 

I think where it does look like those audiences were probably about right and not massively limited by capacities, was that 1 year after that Jonathan Davies try at Wembley we opened the World Cup with only 40k in versus the Aussies at Wembley. 

[Damien]

1 hour ago, Dave T said:

Yeah, I can't disagree with that, and I suspect had we won the first test in 2020 (in an alternate universe) we'd have sold Spurs out for the 3rd test. 

I think where it does look like those audiences were probably about right and not massively limited by capacities, was that 1 year after that Jonathan Davies try at Wembley we opened the World Cup with only 40k in versus the Aussies at Wembley. 

I absolutely think the 2020 test series v Australia getting shelved was a real lost opportunity. That the series would have rejuvenated international RL and had everything that people have been calling for on here for years. Big stadiums, a good spread of stadiums with a big London venue and hopefully big crowds. There would have been zero excuses for that not doing well. That would have obviously carried through to RLWC2021 as well. Covid was absolutely disastrous for the international game and the effects are still being felt.

I think in the 1995 World Cup a lot of northerners waited for the final at Wembley for their trip to London and skipped the opener. The final was pretty much nailed on to be England v Australia again with the draw.

[Dave T]

3 minutes ago, Damien said:

I absolutely think the 2020 test series v Australia getting shelved was a real lost opportunity. That the series would have rejuvenated international RL and had everything that people have been calling for on here for years. Big stadiums, a good spread of stadiums with a big London venue and hopefully big crowds. There would have been zero excuses for that not doing well. That would have obviously carried through to RLWC2021 as well. Covid was absolutely disastrous for the international game and the effects are still being felt.

I still get angry about the shambles that was the RLWC in 2022. Whilst there was plenty of good elements to it, ultimately, the events were rubbish. The 6N game was on tv last night as I was going about my business, and the effort with light shows, pyro, flames etc to build up the atmosphere in that stadium in advance of the match was night and day compared to anything we put on.

People are dismissive of this stuff, but they could sell that stadium out twice over, yet they still put on a show for customers. We did everything as cheap as possible. And whilst people will point to cost of delays, we've been like this for years. 

The missed opportunity from that tournament is a crying shame. The legacy is that we have retracted. 

[Tommygilf]

You can point to the end of the 4 Nations following 2016 and indeed the 2015 Kiwi tour (which I enjoyed) with a lust for nostalgia in the UK leadership and an apathy from ARLC HQ.

Since that point, the international game fro  the UK has been lacklustre and from the NRL has been like they have discovered a brand new thing...

I know people point to the planned 2020 Ashes Tour as a positive, but whilst I would have enjoyed it and had tickets, I still can't help but think it would have been too much of a nostalgia fest that didn't live up to the hype of those pining for it for nostalgia reasons. Equally I don't think it lays the foundation for any further international development than what we have now particularly.

The nostalgic leadership at the RFL have now left England caught between a rock and a hard place. The Australians and Kiwis don't need to come here for a decent international series, and we don't have anyone locally we think are worthy of playing.

[JohnM]

1 hour ago, Dave T said:

I still get angry about the shambles that was the RLWC in 2022. Whilst there was plenty of good elements to it, ultimately, the events were rubbish. The 6N game was on tv last night as I was going about my business, and the effort with light shows, pyro, flames etc to build up the atmosphere in that stadium in advance of the match was night and day compared to anything we put on.

People are dismissive of this stuff, but they could sell that stadium out twice over, yet they still put on a show for customers. We did everything as cheap as possible. And whilst people will point to cost of delays, we've been like this for years. 

The missed opportunity from that tournament is a crying shame. The legacy is that we have retracted. 

That's an interesting point, and one that crossed my mind when seeing the build-up coverage of today's game on BBC Breakfast.  I'm a big advocate of RL turning big matches into events in the same way union does. I feel instinctively (and evidentially) that is the way to attract the new and lapsed fans we crave. The paradox is that for me, I just want to turn up 30 mins before kick-off, chat to adjacent fans about the game, watch it, celebrate victory then clear off home. 

[Tommygilf]

34 minutes ago, JohnM said:

That's an interesting point, and one that crossed my mind when seeing the build-up coverage of today's game on BBC Breakfast.  I'm a big advocate of RL turning big matches into events in the same way union does. I feel instinctively (and evidentially) that is the way to attract the new and lapsed fans we crave. The paradox is that for me, I just want to turn up 30 mins before kick-off, chat to adjacent fans about the game, watch it, celebrate victory then clear off home. 

To be fair to you though, and to some extent I fall into this bracket myself, is that because there is no reason to turn up any earlier usually?

[Sports Prophet]

 

2 hours ago, Dave T said:

I still get angry about the shambles that was the RLWC in 2022. Whilst there was plenty of good elements to it, ultimately, the events were rubbish. The 6N game was on tv last night as I was going about my business, and the effort with light shows, pyro, flames etc to build up the atmosphere in that stadium in advance of the match was night and day compared to anything we put on.

People are dismissive of this stuff, but they could sell that stadium out twice over, yet they still put on a show for customers. We did everything as cheap as possible. And whilst people will point to cost of delays, we've been like this for years. 

The missed opportunity from that tournament is a crying shame. The legacy is that we have retracted. 

The Six Nations is not hugely popular because the game is popular. It’s popular because RU made it popular.

Marketing in RL is in most cases light years behind its direct competitors.

[DACS]

The single biggest issue with international RL is that GB/England just aren't good enough.  If we could actually beat Australia more often than not I guarantee the interest in Australia would snap back. I've been to several tests in Brisbane, and frankly GB were mostly embarrassingly bad.  I still think people underestimate how close we were under Bennett. Had we squeaked that game things might look very different now. 

[Exiled Wiganer]

I disagree entirely with the premise of this thread. 

We had a great 95 World Cup and emerging nations trophy, then 2000 happened. It took us to 2008 to recover. 2013 was the then highlight of the international game, with 2017 being ok, but a missed opportunity. 2020 and 2021 could have been huge for us, but COVID happened. Many of 2021 in 22’s issues were a consequence of 2020 and 2021. France’s government’s lack of support scuppered 25, and so 26 will be leaner than we would like. 2021 had many of fantastic things in its favour. There were 3 successful world cups in one, with record viewing figures and many superb crowds. It would have been better in 2021 after a Kangaroos tour, and the original organising team kept together, but the Pandemic put paid to that. 

We have never had sufficient resources in the international game, and so have essentially gone from World Cup to World Cup. But the future could well be very bright indeed. We have the greatest game and greater depth at the top end than we have ever had in the past. 

We will never be football, but we are already the biggest football code in the South Pacific, and the NH game has a brighter future if we grasp it. 

[Pulga]

2017 was the peak of the international game. After the successful 2013 WC it really felt like things were building. We had the Emerging Nations World Championship planned and then held in 2018 but by then things were starting to come apart.

New nations were kicking off all over the globe. It was very exciting. 

The 2017 WC was financially weak but probably had some of the best results ever with Tonga's dream run and Fiji beating NZ. This was the year after Scotland tied NZ in the Four Nations. There was a sense that there could be a top 8 or so teams that could really be competitive.

As unimaginable as it may seem, Nigel Wood oversaw the best time for the international game. Although I believe it was through no real input from himself.

A combination of COVID, poor finance from the 2017 WC and a new-look, bloated IRL essentially killed off the momentum.

[Sports Prophet]

If it hadn’t gone wrong by then, it had certainly all gone wrong when Meninga and the Kangaroos decided players would be wearing squad numbers instead of positional numbers in the ‘22 WC

Edited February 3 by Sports Prophet

[rlno1]

17 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

 

The Six Nations is not hugely popular because the game is popular. It’s popular because RU made it popular.

Marketing in RL is in most cases light years behind its direct competitors.

It is big because it has tradition and credibility with the public. Something our Ashes series once had. Look at the Ashes in the UK from 1982 to 1994 it was growing and had become a huge occasion. Attendances alone had grown for the tests from 67k in 1982 to 140k in 1994 and media interest was massive. Imagine if it had continued that growth what it would be today.

[rlno1]

I think in Australia the broadcasters particularly nine just want origin promoted because it makes money.

I think GB suffered after the super league war with not as many union converts coming across and obviously with a smaller player pool then Australia it took them longer to adjust to the new style of game.

Also in Australia the broadcasters weren't interested in tests with nine preferring to promote (or should I say over hype) Origin.

Though if England can become consistently competitive with Australia which I'm sure they can the potential for growth is huge in both countries.