What is this obsession with widnes 'losing' to championship opposition? FFS Widnes put out a load of kids against Doncaster and still won without getting into second gear. its a little sad some of you seem to get such big hard ons about us theoretically losing game. I would argue there are several other teams still in the cup who are much more likely to lose to the likes of fax.

Smokey, I am one of the Warrington reps on the RLWC2013 Fans Local Advisory Group. We regularly meet the RLWC2013 team and have been to their offices at Media City. I can assure you that whilst they are employed by the RFL, they are a quite separate team to that at Red Hall.

I know there have been some people employed by the RFL specifically to do things for the RLWC, aswell as some consultants/contractors like Mccan and fasttrack, but the decision making (not least the decisions to employ/contract to those people) and overall running of the RLWC comes from the RFL and the same people at the RFL who get the criticism normally. As I said before Sally Bolton who is the RLWC General Manager is also Director of planning and Projects at the RFL, Nigel Wood is tournament director and obviously Big Chief at Red Hall. They have also been the ones in the press talking about the RLWC.

Im not trying to say no-one else is involved they clearly are, or trying to do down the good job those in media city are doing. Just highlighting that when the RLWC is doing something good, it is the RFL doing something good, because we all know, should the RLWC fail it wont be those at media city who we blame, it will be the people who had the power.

So we've established that if it's good it's this mysterious RLWC team but if it's bad it's the RFL? Got it!

Indeed. I'm not trying to detach RLWC2013 from the RFL. The RFL deserve massive credit for recruiting such a big and experienced team AND for locating them at Media City - a stones throw from the BBC and ITV. But people should realise that the people currently working hard organising and promoting the tournament are people working specifically on the RLWC and not just doing it on top of their day job. I am hopeful the tournament will be a big success and many of the lessons learned can be applied to the rest of RL. Plus, hopefully the profile of RL will be raised further helping the sport. Ticket sales so far have shown success at attracting people from outside RL to buy tickets - sadly the bigger challenge will be persuading the typical, over-critical RL fan to get on board.

Great article in the Guardian about competition manager Sally Bolton. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/ap ... lly-bolton

Great article in the Guardian about competition manager Sally Bolton. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/ap ... lly-bolton