Quote: wrencat1873 "Also, I massively agree with your comments regarding coverage of the game and how negative it has become.
We should be banging the drum about the athleticism of the players and the skills involved in executing certain plays both in attack and defence and offering some explanation as to how sides have read the play or opened up the opposition - I think that John Wells is pretty good as this.'"
I tend to agree - the coverage is stale and old, and tends to over-focus on negatives, errors or referee calls that are questionable, at least in the eyes of the commentators. It would be much more of a sell for the game if there was more notice paid to the strength, power, toughness, skill and athleticism on show - of which, regardless of your view of the quality of the game right now, there is plenty, every week, in every game. To a fan it's just annoying, eye-rolling stuff; to a new viewer, it's probably off-putting.
I also note that RL players are mostly absent from other media - there was a brief period when Tomkins and Sinfield were on QoS and such, and Keegan Hirst was a minor celeb for a while due to his personal story - but we don't have any 'personality' players who have transcended the sport and become celebrities in their own right; which seems odd, because the physicality and extreme challenge of RL would, you would imagine, be an interesting hook to find out more about the guys who play. That's perhaps an area in which the Hearn's would be an interesting proposition; they've made international celebrities out of some fairly ordinary guys who happen to be talented boxers. There would be a tonne of ways to market a RL player's personal brand, not least in the area of health, diet and wellbeing - with the added spice of ordinary, working class backgrounds, which is always a handy backstory.
It's not my area of expertise, but I would bet that a decent, centrally funded agency could do wonders with 3 or 4 RL players as clients.