Speccy is right, Lewis only played tennis, he's never had any other role in that sport, and clearly he's earned enough kudos to now be at Sport England as well. Wouldn't you rather have your own sport represented at the top table of the national body for sport?

You could equally ask each club or business how their managers got to be where they are now ... there's no set route to getting to the top, but they've done it and you and I haven't, so get over it.

To add to Wellsy13: modern stadia, players welfare support, an improved international game, maybe even better/some integration with the amateur game (???)

So, an opinion only.

Abolsutely no facts or statistics to back up your bat[is[/ihit loony opinions then?

Carry on

Like someone said previously, look at the debacle in the RFU and compare it with ours. Considering the participation of the Code-That-Must-Not-Be-Named compared to ours and the shambles its in

We dont do badly.

I didn't cite a recognition document, I mentioned my own experience in sports development. I'll give you an example - I was in an NGB meeting in Bristol with the County Sports Partnership. The CSP were outlining their new framework for performance development programmes for governing bodies. The sport they cited as an example of best practice was Rugby League. This was just after Vinny Webb got the UK Coach Educator of the Year award.

I can cite that award for youhttps://www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/16098rl

I drew a comparison with the RFU. I can cite their circumstances rl]ad nauseumrl], if you like, but here's one exampletp://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/jul/10/martin-johnson-england-manager-rfurl

[i"Blackett's panel, which included two independents, concluded that the RFU's board needed to be replaced, having failed to provide good governance. Blackett was said to be appalled that the consequence of three weeks of exhaustive inquiry, which took in 65 witnesses, more than 90 media articles and hundreds of RFU documents, was the board remaining in place after a defeated vote of no confidence, apart from two members who had served their four-year terms, and Thomas more entrenched than ever."[/i

Of course you may perfer we were goverened by this lot at the FAhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1355211/Premier-League-chief-Sir-Dave-Richards-rejects-Lord-Triesmans-bullying-claims.htmlrl

...or their friends in the international gamehttps://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16002436rl

Some sports - eg cycling, swimming - are very well run. Others struggle. Given our pro game is all-but confined to a corridor along the M62, we punch massively above our weight in media coverage, tv rights and sponsorship. Our NGB makes a profit, is the best funded sport-per-participant at Sport England, and runs all amnner of imaginative, innovative programmes that other sports copy (video refs, sin bins, play off to decide champions, magic, club call, licencing). We are the only sport to have its premier student league competition televised. We've just been given recognition for the work done with LGBT communities. We are a Sport England priority sport, generally regarded as one of the top 4 sports in the country (with soccer, union and cricket). I would say imagine how big we'd be if we were national, but the Championship Review process is dealing with that... might have several more pro clubs outside the heartlands before the decade is out. Oh, and there's the World Cup, which will be a huge event in 2013.

I am delighted, I have to say, at how many positive posts there are in this thread. Not everyone is a flatcapper, naysayer, doom monger. Some people actually realise we're doing pretty well.

So basically Joe , they do loads of good stuff nobody knows about , but stuff up all the high profile stuff that involves the fans who pay to watch ?

I was born & bred in Hull, played my rugby in Hull and apart from the last two years, refereed from Hull. I've either played at or offiated at most of the "heartland clubs". McLaren Field was a sh[ii[/ithole, as was Mount Pleasant, Craven Park (both of them), The Boulevard, Knowsley Road, Headingley and yes, even Central Park was a crap hole.

They were clubs that started as major parts of communities, they grew along with their communities. Then things changed. People had cars, they found entertainment without going beyond their front door, just by switching on a television. Rugby League soon cottoned on to that, even Bill Fallowfield (who I think epitomises everything that is wrong with our game), knew the benefits and went for them.

Then we get to Maurice Lindsay: After nearly bankrupting one of the mainstays and certainly most known names of the game, we let him loose on the game as a whole. That resulted in the 2000 RLWC £2 millions deficit.

I simply refuse to accept any criticism of how RL is administered from any Wigan fan, especialy ones so blinkered that they cannot accept where they came from