Are they bothering to do one this year

waiting for the sponsor to be announced i guess, plus sam tomkins is no longer here.

They're still familiarising themselves with the new format and trying to work out which angle to come from.

After last year Sky have followed up with Mark Webber, another RL fan who would be recognisable to a large section of sports fans in this country. He basically talks about how you know that you are going to be in for a great contest and how they have to condition themselves for all the hits that a player has to take.

To be fair, The Mark Webber advert is very good.

lol

It's ok, if a bit cheap; for me, it would have been more effective if his comments were interspersed with examples of what he was talking about i.e "getting big and tough" <insert Rocky style training montage>, "big hits," <insert footage of big hits>, "tough physical contest," <bit of biff> etc etc.

It's good to get the product endorsed by high profile athletes from other sports but like the Wiggins one, it's a bit of a low key way to create interest in the toughest impact sport in the world.

Disagree. For me, the strength is in the subtlety. It's not as strong as the Wiggins one, but it still does the job. There's enough intrigue from the ad to get the viewer wanting to seek out more.

When you have some of the most respected athletes in the world (and in the case of Wiggo, the champion of the world's toughest endurance event) claiming "I'm not tough enough to play rugby league", that's a powerful message. You don't need to have a shot of a prop forward knocking over a scrum half to make that message any stronger.

They do this throughout the rest of the year though. Nice to have something different. People almost become immune to, similar to car adverts which are all the same.
Just cars going round really fast. No one pays attention to them.

Fans of F1 will sit up and take notice in the same way if we saw an Advert with an RL player. With the big hits and fast action, people have seen it so many times it doesn't grab you IMO

People who are new to the sport won't have seen it so many times though will they?

The Wiggins one was better - at least he was riding his bike - this one is just a talking head and whilst I get the subtlety angle, for me it's a bit too subtle.

I think the NRL trump us on this too.

I really liked the advert for the Sam Burgess documentary that Russel Crowe narrated. It was different and Crowe's narration really grabbed you. The Webber one is ok, but it lacked some magic. You compare the RU adverts that make it look like the most exciting thing in the world, shows that you really can polish a turd. The irony for us, is that we have a platinum turd and we polish it with 5h1t.

The Webber advert is pretty rubbish. I love rugby league and i got bored. A 30 second reel of big hits is all you need, simple and effective

^^^^^^^^^^ like.

Which is precisely what you get throughout the season.

RL needs ads like this (like the Wiggins one), its classy, uses a well known sporting figure to which non RL fans (the target for these sort of ads) can relate to, advertising is not always about wham bam in your face type of stuff, subtlety, emotion and intrigue are what you need when doing teaser ads like these.

This ad is not aimed at die hard RL fans its aimed at other sports fans.