Responding to a question in the Times thread, I thought this deserved a thread of its own...




GB & England beat Australia every year they played them between 1988 and 1997, which is in sharp contrast to now. The last 3 games between Eng & Oz show an average win of 29pts to the Aussies.

We hosted tests at Wembley, Old Trafford & Elland Road in front of big crowds, as opposed to a 4N final with a whole stand unopened at Elland Road.

1995 saw up host a wonderfully successful World Cup with a 26K crowd at Central Park for England v FIJI. In 2009, England v AUSTRALIA could only attract 23K at the DW - a far nicer stadium in Wigan!

The Challenge Cup was a far bigger comp with semi-finals regularly played in front of 20K crowds by the mid-90s, compared to this year's poor crowd for Leeds v St Helens.

We had other competitions back then like the Regal Trophy which was shown live on BBC1 with finals played in front of big crowds.

The current WCC champs were an English side who had won the trophy on Australian soil - unthinkable now.

Away from the M62, London came 4th and 2nd in 1996 and 1997 and sometimes even got crowds of 9 or 10k. They had the financial muscle to attract star players. Cumbria had a competitive side in the Big League with Workington coming 9th out of 16 in 1995 and reaching the quarter finals of the Cup (along with Whitehaven).

There were far, far more home-grown players playing in the top flight in 1995 than in today's Super League.

Players of the mid-90s, as Chris Irvine says in his League Weekly article, had a much bigger profile than today's stars. We got far more column inches back then and a charismatic leader at the RFL who knew how to sell the game.

The Kiwis picked many players from our comp in the 90s. Now they pick none - and they're the world champs.

And, although this is only opinion, the game was a lot more entertaining, with halves much more creative, forwards possessing more ball skills and wingers there to score tries not run from dummy half and catch bombs.

Yes, but that space is now being taken up by football, football and more football. As has been said, football now dominates every sport in this country, even during it's off season.

And no matter the fact that the national team has only ever won one major final, and only ever reached a semi-final one other time.

Another factor, apart from the ludicrous growth of football since its spread to pretty well every TV channel, is the fact that newspapers have been on a bout of sustained cost and staff cutting for a good 20 years now.

Regionalised editions contain far less differences than they used to - because all regional offices have been cut back on in favour of freelances and stringers - and the concentration of printing (nearly all papers are now printed by one company) leaves much less flexibility in edition times.

The RFL has many powers, but it doesn't actually control that.

But what came first the cuts leading to a lack of interest in the game from the media or cuts because of the lack of interest.

I just believe if the game had been managed/marketed better than it has then its profile would be bigger/better than it currently is.

10 years ago (pre salary cap) Andy Hay, Darren Fleary, Scott Naylor, Chev Walker and Tony Smith were helping England to a 6-49 flogging at home to NZ in the world cup. Paul Deacon was also playing stand off and Paul Wellens was on the wing.

I think I'll take today's standards thanks.