I work in TV ... sadly it does make quite a large difference to ratings.

I think that's pretty fair coverage for a competition that very few people are interested in. You can't really expect England v Lebanon to be on BBC1.

Will it make much difference given the times the games are being shown? It's not like we're talking 3pm Saturday afternoon like you would for a CC Final or 6 Nations match. 10am on a Friday morning for End v Aus.

Given the kick off times I'd suggest that a fair chunk of the audience will be via on demand viewing rather than live. As such hopefully it will have less impact than it would have done a decade or so ago. It does suggest there will be very little publicity for the games on BBC 1 though which clearly won't help in terms of attracting casual sports fans to watch the games.

We're lucky it's even on the BBC. International RL is a joke.

I think we are bound to struggle anyway given that the big game is during normal working hours, and the other two ought to be over as a contest by half time.

No it isn’t. If you have no interest don’t comment.

This is mostly down to the overpaid fat s ar Red Hall, frankly they don't care because they'll get their noses in the trough no matter what the viewing figures are.

With all the nationality "swapping" going on, yeah it is.

Yes, let's just have people agreeing with you and saying how utterly correct you are.

So the tournament that nearly 500,000 people (16,374 average per match) paid to watch live, with millions more watching on tv is a joke, but Leigh Centurions and Wakefield Wildcats are not?