Quote: El Barbudo "League's biggest enemy is history.
For over a century it was regarded as the bastrad offspring of another game, a strange anomaly of a game, played by a few strange Northerners.
This was reinforced by the style of BBC coverage for many years and still is, by the ongoing perpetuation by newspapers of an old view that was never actually accurate.'"
It wasn't an image that those in charge of the game itself were particularly quick to try and shed though either.
The same northern voices were always wheeled out as public faces of the game - Eddie Waring, Ray French, Alex Murphy, Colin Welland etc. The same Northern clubs populated the league from the 30s onwards when the Welsh and London sides fell by the wayside.
Even with the introduction of summer rugby, Super League and US style team branding, they still managed to find a couple of stereotypical Northerners to present BSkyB's coverage to the country at large. Sponsors continued to be beer and fags companies.
Only under Richard Lewis can the RFL be seen to be making strides to disassociate itself from the flat cap and whippet stereotype, bringing on multinationals as competition and national team sponsors and looking to expand the reaches of the sport beyond the area from Hadrian's Wall to the Humber again.
