IMG… thanks for nothing.
I’ve been thinking about this so much that I’m growing a little bit tired of hearing those three letters, and my intention is that this will be the last time I write about their ‘reimagining’ of the game we all love for a while.
But as someone who has been involved in the sport since I started playing at school around 50 years ago, and as someone who regularly talks to people actively involved in the game, and – just as importantly – supporters, I have to say that the more conversations I have, the more I realise there are far more concerned about the so-called new era than embracing it.
And let’s face it, it’s no good driving away those who already invested in Rugby League on the gamble of attracting new followers.
No one is saying everything in the garden is rosy, and that there aren’t major concerns about how to not just sustain Rugby League, but grow it.
We need bigger broadcast deals, more sponsorship, and more people clicking through those turnstiles, and that in an ever more challenging economic environment.
There’s no argument from me on that score, but is this really the way to achieve it?
To make factors off the field more important than what happens on it, to create a system by which a club, London Broncos, who have provided one of the best subplots to a season in memory by winning promotion to Super League against the odds, have no chance of staying in it for more than one season, to cut off a whole region, Cumbria, which has just as much, if not more, going for it than any ‘expansion’ area?
Nothing grows without strong roots, but we’re in danger of destroying them through this attempted Americanisation of a British game.
Our sporting culture is one of winning and losing, and being rewarded, or suffering, as a result of results.
Of course we want to make clubs stronger, facilities better, attendances higher, sponsorship and broadcast deals bigger – but what happens off the field is driven by what happens on it.
Just as with football, this isn’t going to the cinema to see a film, or to a restaurant to have a meal, it’s going to watch a club with which you have an allegiance, which means something to you because of family or where you come from or live.
As I’ve said, and written, so many times, what supporters want to see most is their team being successful, and ideally doing it by playing entertaining rugby. The product on the pitch is the priority.
Improve that, and the other things fall into place far more easily. Let it dwindle, and as we’ve seen from the decreasing revenue from successive Sky broadcast deals, the value of the sport drops.
