Just because the national media ignore Rugby League doesn't mean Rugby League hasn't had any big news stories since the GF. If you base your news intake purely on what you see on national TV news then you will be getting a particularly skewed and very superficial view of the world. Which might explain a lot actually.

Now THAT is a huge mystery which not even the most professional of marketing experts have been able to solve to date.

Draw a circle of 30 miles radius around Leeds, then pull the eastern side right out to the coast and the northern side right up to Teeside - its a big area isn't it - now count up the number of amateur Union clubs inside that stretched circle, I'd be surprised if there were less than 50, not even surprised if there were 100.

Do Leeds market to all of these clubs - absolutely yes.
Do they give financial incentives for these clubs to sell tickets - absolutely yes.
Do they give away free tickets to juniors, run training sessions with juniors, send along first team players to prize presentations, rotate dozens of junior teams for half time tag games and bring-along-your-parents sessions - absolutely yes.

And yet you can still go to home games and find that 50% of the crowd are the parents of the kids who played at half time, its completely baffling why the RU community inside that stretched circle just will not support a professional team - now compare to Newcastle where a similar take over of two well known amateur teams were funded by a wealthy local businessman for the purpose of buying into the new professional RU closed shop that was the Premiership, and for some strange reason, it worked.

I played Union for years, up to a half decent standard.

It's a great game to play.

It's sh|t to watch and, despite improvement, still has very mediocre tackling, passing, handling and attacking movement skills, even at international level.

opinions are like s, everybody has one, mediocre tackling you obviously didn,t wales vs boks on saturday, ferocious tackling and hitting. brad barrit having stitches on his stitches for england, never understand why some league fans seem to belittle union, you don't see much of the reverse from union fans, small man syndrome maybe ps i love both games but prefer top class league to union

You should know of course that its a hard core football region but since they moved to Kingston Park they've averaged around the 7000 mark pretty consistently which clearly makes the thing sustainable - like the Rhinos they have always favoured a Friday night game which doesn't help away supporters that much, especially not when most of those supporters have nearly a full days travel to get to you (you don't just pop along the M62 to support a team in RU), but a Friday night in the South Stand at Kingston Park (yes, the South Stand is also the place to be although its behind the posts) is superb, good beer and a hog roast, read it and weep

Give it a go next time you're up there, its on a Metro line not too far out of the city centre and as always they are a friendly bunch.


Oh, I forgot the hot tub, yes you can pay to sit in a hot tub and watch the game, seriously.

Yep, one stop before the airport.

I had the pleasure of watching Jonny Wilkinson return from injury in a home game at Kingston Park, he took one penalty kick after about ten minutes and missed it and then five minutes later got injured again, the substitute who replaced him for the rest of the game kicked every single attempt and played like a man possessed, I think that was when he decided a life in the south of France might be nice, or Nice.

I have always thought Union is better to watch on TV and awful to watch live. As a player and qualified coach I still can't watch a game live just for the game.
However, the spaces and pauses in the game suit TV. The close up TV angles allow you to see what you can't see live.
League is far better to watch live - no contest. But if you add the whole match day experience then it's hard to say. I have had some great days out at big league games, but the best day was me and my 9 year old at Twickenham two years ago for his first international.

Union in this country has issues with ball handling, especially finishing breaks- too easy to go to ground and let someone else make the decision. Most players have no clue what to do if they make a break into open space and support play isn't as good. There is a reason for this, support players in league can afford to overrun the ball carrier if he's tackled, in Union the first man there has to always compete for the ball so support players are not looking to get on the end of a possible offload or break, they are looking to clean out after the ball carrier is tackled. As a result they arrive late - too late to back up a clean break.
The RFU is trying to change the junior game to produce players who are first and foremost ball handlers.

I'd agree with all that, and Twickenham definitely seems to have the "event/experience" thing nailed, which at least partly explains why so many of the people who attend Twickenham games wouldn't go to club games.
I agree on the skills, it's something i think the RFU has been incredibly slow to pick up on. I think they thought that simply turning pro would solve the problem, or maybe they just didn't get why those skills are important until relatively recently. It infuriates me when I see some Union attacking lines where you can just see that the players involved really have little idea what to do. Especially when you see some All Blacks attacks where they prove that you CAN attack "properly".
Unfortunately England (and too many Premiership teams) still seem wedded to the idea of rolling mauls as their "best" way to score a try.

I also think they keep signing the wrong RL players. Burgess might garner some headlines and he'll probably do ok, but I think there are other far better suited players out there.

I'll just repeat that I thoroughly enjoyed playing amateur Union, much more so than League.
Union is far better at developing interest in the sport as a whole, League is much more based around the pro clubs.

I am not surprised that The RU team can't attract crowds bits and it is bits what I've seen at Headingley is awful

One I heard most recently in RU was the fans aiming homophobic abuse at the referee.

Ooooooooh get you.
All very noble that last line if I could believe you or the others defending RU have never criticised a sport that you haven't played and don't have a true appreciation of.

I've not seen any comment on here that's been anything more than a light hearted pi** take so untwist the knickers.