Is it just me or does he just state the bleeding obvious in his articles?

Sometimes when you read articles by a journalist/former player or pundit you think ''oh yeah, I never thought of it like that before, or, wow that's true how insightful''

With sadler it's pretty much a case of thinking to yourself ''yup, yadda yadda yadda knew that already'' *skims through waiting for something interesting* it never appears, article ends.

In this weeks league express theres a section on leeds poor start. Theres a whole bunch of things he could have touched upon. Instead it basically comes down to, headingly pitch is crap, brough was in great form...the end.

Only one in a long list of dreadful RL journalists. Add Richard De La Rivere, Tim Butcher, Steve Fox, Dave Hadfield and chums to it.
'Dicky Rivers' has practically ruined Rugby League World during his time at the helm.

I bought a years subscription to RLE last year (ran out in January) and it wasn't worth it. Bearing in mind it came on a Tuesday so the first I saw of it was Tuesday PM. By then the exclusives were generally released or on here already. I'll just buy it now if I'm in the garage on a Monday morning.

There certainly does seem to be a general lack of insightful columnists at League Publications...

The new magazine layout is promising though I reckon.

I don't mind Hadfield but agree that Sadler does state the bleedin obvious. As for Fox I find his style verging on the unreadable. As for Richard delariv I don't mind him so much but I thought he gave far too much latitude to Schofield in some of his columns. His sniping at union recruits particularly John Gallagher left a bad taste in my mouth.

Is it me or does RL journalism completely shy away from examining the technical side of the play itself? Never do we really see much going into depth about what we see on the field in terms of the technical aspects of play. The journos themselves obviously either never got much coaching when they played or have never played at all.

It's the same in RL biographies, only the Aussie journos like Ian Heads tend to tackle this side of things.

"journalist can't be d finding out how things work but writes about it anyway" shocker....

OK, here we are slagging off one of the few established journalists in the sport. What do supporters want from a journalist working in RL?

This I would particularly like to know.

Something interesting to read. Interesting opinions. Not just popular obvious crap.

Would be nice if it was written in a unique style and not read as if written by a robotic drone.

Journalists who actually understand the game and are insightful, rather than media school geeks who portray the sport in a completely inaccurate way.

Although I agree with the OP I find it hard to criticise any press related to Rugby League due to it's spness.

If people are willing to moan about the poor standards of RL articles then is anybody willing to write a mock article and post it on here to show journo's how it should be done?

LOL

Are journos who analyse and criticise players and teams willing to put on a pair of boots and show them how it's done?

I'm sure if you're a critic you can com up with something better and more interesting than the journo's by trying to correct where you think they are going wrong.

A lot of people on here criticise players, team work etc but that doesn't mean we would make better players, it means we are looking more from a coaching perspective than a players.

I await your article

There are two weekly newspapers and one monthly magazine.

The weekly newspapers are pretty much similar in their setup and style and even have the same style columnists.

I can only talk about RLE after being a subscriber but their layout is pretty much the same week in week out. Off the top of my head:

4 pages SL news (2 articles per club)
2 pages of Championship news
2 pages of Champrionship1 news
1 Stevo page
1 Sadler / news page
SL Match reports (one of the TV games centre pages with Opta Stats which we'd pretty much already know from watching it)
C Match Reps
C1 Match Rep
2 pages reserve / academy
Amateur News / Reports / Fixtures
2 Pages of Letters
2 page of International / comment
1 pages of scores.


The news is generally made up of things that have happened the previous week with a couple of exclusives. This can be found easily on the internet nowadays.
By Sunday night we can have seen all the SL tries.

I think they need to concentrate less on transcribing the games (1 or 2 pages per game is overkill) and more on 'how and why' - why was the try scored, who was out of position, was it preventable.

I'd like to see stats of every game, more post match comments, interviews with players after the games (for example MoM interviews).

More about training routines, diet and the different methods players use to get fit.
Info on 'sick lists' - updates on players who are injured - where they are with their rehab. What are they doing to to keep fit, interviews with them.
Info from the RFL on Referees, feedback and comment on the referees performance (ideally unbias)

That's off my head as I sit here - some of it may be impossible / out of budget.

The newspapers need to assume that people will have heard much of the news before they publish therefore they need to being it in a different manner. An example would be the Newton incident - rather than report he has failed a drug test 6 days after it was announced, report on Wakefields plans and problems caused by his suspension.