Quote: wrencat1873 "Whilst the clubs do hold individual responsibility, I dont agree with the race to the bottom and blaming the smaller clubs.
The round ball game seems to cope well enough with having unfashionable clubs in the top flight
When you compare Man U at the top averaging 75000 to Bournemouth 11182 or Burnley 20558
and in RL Leeds with 14418, with Salford 3842 and Widnes 5592 and yet, nobody calls out the smaller Football clubs for "holding the sport back" or a "race to the bottom".
In Football, they embrace the diversity of clubs with their different grounds and history.
Of course, they dont have the salary cap and this is probably where the biggest gripe is from supporters of Wigan and Leeds etc
As I said in a previous post, when you look at some of the crap that people become interested in, it boils down to clever publicity and marketing.
If we doubled the salary cap overnight and jettisoned the clubs with lower attendances, do you really think it would change ANYONE'S perception of the game, would it hell.
Time to stop looking for excuses and focus on the positives of the sport, a game played by the toughest athletes on the planet, a hard fought contact sport, with strength, skill, fitness etc, etc
Dont moan about what we haven't got, promote what we have, it's that simple and stop looking for gimmicks, which rarely last, and have a short, medium and long term plan for the game with some focus on lifting participation numbers at the bottom end 6,7,8 year olds.'"
The difference with your football comparison is that the smaller clubs in the Premier League are still largely selling out their venues, are still growing their clubs and aren't making concious voting decisions to reduce the spending power of those around them. The reason why I call it a race to the bottom is because it is easier for those chairmen who largely underwrite their club's losses - people like Hudgell, Davy and Carter - to vote in a way that minimises their liability. It's not in their interest to act in a way that potentially increases their cost base and/or makes them less competitive than those around them. It's why our players have had a £1m per club real-terms pay-cut imposed on them.
I've spoken plenty of times about the marketing of the sport and again, the bulk of the blame lies with the clubs. The RFL can come up with the best marketing concept imaginable, but it is ultimately the clubs that have to carry that concept and turn it into ticket sales, commercial revenue and cash in the club shop tills.
I've also said all along that this isn't necessarily an issue of "jettisoning" the "unfashionable" clubs. It's about making sure that every club is making an equal contribution to the growth and promotion of the sport. Every club should be promoting their games as well as each other, every club should understand how digital marketing works as well as each other, and every club should be delivering the sort of matchday experience that the modern leisure consumer is looking for. But we don't have that. We have some clubs who work hard, who innovate and who attract sponsors, and we have others who bumble along, can't generate commercial revenue, blame the RFL and point to their couple of hundred away fan following as some justification for being in Super League. We're not big enough and we can't generate enough to go around to for three, four or five clubs to carry the rest, and that's the big difference between us and football. The smaller clubs in RL need to contribute more.
The point you make about the strength and physicality aspect is interesting, because I wonder if that itself is a bit outdated. I've got a 14 month old and, when he's old enough, I'd love him to get involved in the sport if he wants to. I know that it's a great sport, is a safe sport, and can teach him a lot.
But I've already got the in-laws in my ear about he "he can't play rugby" and how he'll "get hurt". Now, it might be a bit hyperbolic at this age, but it is certainly worth the RFL exploring whether that sort of sentiment is some sort of elephant in the room behind our falling participation numbers. Look at the language that has surrounded contact sport in recent years - words like "concussion". "head injuries", "heart conditions", "defribulators" and to some extent, "depression" - these aren't the sorts of words that are going to encourage parents to drive their kid down to their local amateur club.
So instead of selling the strength and physicality, should we be focusing more on the speed, the skill and the guile? Should we be promoting forms of the games such as touch and tag much more, moving the emphasis away from "give it to the fat kid to charge through them" and encouraging skills such as ball handling and evasive running much more? I'd say it's worth looking at. Rugby Union certainly seems to have this right, where contact elements are introduced in later on, and different elements of the game introduced with each age group.