League Express editor MARTYN SADLER has some advice for the RFL as the governing body contemplates a possible investment into its leading competition by the NRL.

THE NRL has apparently said that it is going to lodge an offer for some sort of investment into British Rugby League within the next couple of months.
As you will see from page 3 of this issue, last week the RFL Chairman-elect Nigel Wood had a meeting with the NRL supremo Peter V’landys, presumably to discuss the principles of how that investment might transpire.
But my advice to Nigel is to not allow the NRL to make all the running.
Anyone who has a vision for Super League in the northern hemisphere surely knows that the competition is doing quite well in 2026.
The decision to expand the Super League competition to 14 clubs seems to be working out as well as anyone could have expected.
The three new clubs have each won two games from four matches, and although none of them won at the weekend, Bradford came to within an ace of winning at St Helens, York were only beaten by eight points at home to unbeaten Warrington and Toulouse probably did well to hold Wigan to a 20-point margin after going down by 18 points after less than 20 minutes.
Now that seven games are being broadcast each week, it would be useful to know how well the games are registering in terms of the number of viewers.
But if the RFL is going to benefit from a closer association with the NRL, it needs to make its own plans to put to the Australian body.
The first thing to say is that the idea that the NRL will totally take over the control of British Rugby League is surely a non-starter.
If we are going to bring the NRL into the game in this country it has to be as a partner, not a ruler.
The clubs surely couldn’t be foolish enough to hand everything over to the NRL, regardless of how much money might be on the table.
And the best people to understand how a partnership might work are the RFL and the officials at RL Commercial, the game’s investment arm.
It strikes me as fairly obvious that if Super League is going to enhance its future profile it needs the London Broncos to join the elite competition next year.
And in the longer term it needs more teams from outside the current heartland of the game.
We need to find a way to get clubs like Newcastle up to Super League standard as well as a club in South Wales and perhaps in other parts of the country.
For all that some people claim that Rugby League is a northern, working-class game and will never be anything more than that, we can’t afford to try to stand still with that identity.
The game faces the choice between expanding or stagnating.
I certainly know which of those two alternatives I would prefer.
Meanwhile there is one other aspect of the relationship between the RFL and the NRL that I would like our governing body to explore.
The NRL apparently made a A$2 million profit on its recent Las Vegas extravaganza.
I understand that profit was largely generated because the NRL took charge of the various travel packages to the event.
The NRL clubs effectively went to Las Vegas at zero cost to themselves, whereas the Super League clubs more or less had to pay for themselves, despite taking more than 10,000 spectators to the event.
That obviously can’t be allowed to continue and the RFL needs to negotiate a much better deal for the Super League clubs.
We’ll then find out whether the NRL really wants a genuine relationship with us.