If you look at the Cas result today they battered London by fielding a pretty strong 17, we decided to rest at least 6 possibly eight if you include Clarkson and Ward and with Sinny serving his last match of his ban, Bradford with nothing to lose playing like it was their cup final the task was difficult, that said I take McDermott's point if you drop so much ball as Leeds did you aren't going to win any rugby matches.
To put the game into perspective if we'd have played only three of the players rested we would have beaten the bulls, to take both your centres out of the game was nonsensical when you don't have recognised centres to replace them, the pack needed a bit more grunt but when all said and done the acid test will be next Saturday when those rested will return to play the Wolves. My preference would have to followed the Tigers approach, played a stronger team and claimed the two points. Taking in winning run into a cup competition has to be the way to go

Fair enough and you're probably right about folk not paying it. Without the extra being spent on the team, why would they? Can't comment on football as my interest there is zero but if you look towards the top union sides - the ones where our poached players tend to end up - then their prices are a lot higher than ours. For a spectacle that is, in my view, inferior.

I can understand why clubs can't afford to run a reserve team. We currently have a squad of 25 plus any Acadmey players that make the step up. To have a reserve team you would realistically need an additional 10 players as a minimum, which would probably add in the region of £250k to the wage bill. It was OK in the past where the players were part time and therefore the running costs were much less but it just doesn't stack up financially now.

Also, I may be mistaken, but the NRL teams don't have a reserve teams as such do they? Don't any players not selected go to a form of feeder club in the NSW / Queensland comps? I'm sure that in the NRL games I've seen there have been comments about part timers being called up to first grade during a bad spell with injuries or losing a lot of players during the rep period. I don't see that beoing held up as an example of the NRL being in poor health.

I don't have any stats to back this up but I think you see proportionately far more women/kids/families at RL games than at football. I think it is generally seen as more "family friendly" than football.

I agree, I think links with the elite side are important for amateur clubs to increase/retain participation. As you say the kids look up to the top players and to have some link with them is what really gets the kids excited. Just playing a half time game at Headingley is a massive deal for a lot of kids! But I don't think the performances of the team has much effect on the kids because they don't understand it yet. I'd agree that the performances, especially at home, has an effect on the parents though.
Whilst on the links with amateur clubs, it frequently annoys me how little the pro & semi clubs do in that regard. Even clubs like Leeds, I think, could do an awful lot more. Some individual players do a lot but clubs as a whole I think are pretty poor in this respect. I think they vastly underestimate the effect of just a couple of players turning up and passing a ball around with kids for half an hour has on those kids.

Agree entirely with your first paragraph. It's something that both angers and confounds me at the same time. It turns so many kids and adults away from our sport.

Isn't the Holden cup competition in Australia for the under 23s from the NRL clubs?