Responding to a question in the Times thread, I thought this deserved a thread of its own...




GB & England beat Australia every year they played them between 1988 and 1997, which is in sharp contrast to now. The last 3 games between Eng & Oz show an average win of 29pts to the Aussies.

We hosted tests at Wembley, Old Trafford & Elland Road in front of big crowds, as opposed to a 4N final with a whole stand unopened at Elland Road.

1995 saw up host a wonderfully successful World Cup with a 26K crowd at Central Park for England v FIJI. In 2009, England v AUSTRALIA could only attract 23K at the DW - a far nicer stadium in Wigan!

The Challenge Cup was a far bigger comp with semi-finals regularly played in front of 20K crowds by the mid-90s, compared to this year's poor crowd for Leeds v St Helens.

We had other competitions back then like the Regal Trophy which was shown live on BBC1 with finals played in front of big crowds.

The current WCC champs were an English side who had won the trophy on Australian soil - unthinkable now.

Away from the M62, London came 4th and 2nd in 1996 and 1997 and sometimes even got crowds of 9 or 10k. They had the financial muscle to attract star players. Cumbria had a competitive side in the Big League with Workington coming 9th out of 16 in 1995 and reaching the quarter finals of the Cup (along with Whitehaven).

There were far, far more home-grown players playing in the top flight in 1995 than in today's Super League.

Players of the mid-90s, as Chris Irvine says in his League Weekly article, had a much bigger profile than today's stars. We got far more column inches back then and a charismatic leader at the RFL who knew how to sell the game.

The Kiwis picked many players from our comp in the 90s. Now they pick none - and they're the world champs.

And, although this is only opinion, the game was a lot more entertaining, with halves much more creative, forwards possessing more ball skills and wingers there to score tries not run from dummy half and catch bombs.

I think you make a number of very fair points and the comparison of the ‘state of the nation’ between then and now is an interesting one

A few points to consider – not necessarily argument

London

The London club you mention “had the financial muscle to attract star players”, whereas the Quins club of today lie near the bottom of the table. But is that the big picture? The club today is based on predominately English players, many of which have come through the vibrant London amateur scene which wasn’t there 20 years ago. If a sport has a strategy to build from the bottom up (which I believe that RL has in London) then this will take decades, not years. My belief is that the London club will thrive in the years to come and the whole sport will benefit from it. We may not win the hearts and minds of the whole London population but keeping a single identity and building on home grown players is a solid foundation. Would I rather have the 1995 situation or today? Looking at the big picture, today

Internationals

It is fair to say that the profile of the international game has suffered in recent years and this is due to a World Cup in the UK which suffered bad publicity and the end of the GB and Kangaroo/Kiwi tours. The latter in particular is a sad loss as these tours were the lifeblood of the international game and certainly the Kangaroo tours caught the imagination of not only the RL public but the wider sporting nation. The new 4 Nations concept needs time to grow and what would I give for a successful UK world cup. Would I rather have the 1995 situation or today? Difficult to say as I miss the 3 match test series but I think we are moving steadily to a well structure international scene

Domestic competition

The Challenge Cup has lost some of magic in the early rounds – the gap between the top flight and the rest has something to do with this as shocks are very difficult to find and it really only comes to life in the latter rounds when Super League clubs play each other – this is not meant to be a disparaging comment to Championship clubs, simply that the BBC will look to SL clubs to make the competition more marketable. The semi’s don’t attract the crowds of previous era’s but the final is always well populated and makes great TV. If you add the SL grand final, we have two massive finals in RL these days which we didn’t have before. There is no way the premiership or Regal Trophy would be compared to the challenge cup in previous years whereas the SL Grand Final is either as big as or bigger than the Challenge Cup final now. Would I rather have the 1995 situation or today? Today, but I wish SL had a decent terrestrial TV presence as it deserves a higher profile

Player profile

Agreed, the stars of 90’s were widely known by the UK wider population – this relates back to the comment above about the SL not having a major terrestrial TV presence. We went into bed with SKY and now get two very well produced (I didn’t say presented!) live RL matches a week and one from the Championship – something we could have only dreamed of before SKY, as fans we are spoiled... the down side is the game is more niche and the profile in the wider community has dropped. Would I rather have the 1995 situation or today? As a fan, today but the players deserve a higher profile

I think a lot of the arguments against the present day might also be levelled at a LOT of other sports as well

Sky has been a boon and curse to sports in the Uk, with some getting a much needed injection of cash when it came round, but losing the national coverage is enjoyed through the BBC.

(Such as Test cricket for one)

Another thing that simply cannot be ignored is the effect soccer has had on the sporting landscape. In 1995 the footballing juggernaut had yet to truly get rolling, once it did it obbliterated everything in its path.

Plus we played with the greatest ever ball, the lime green and white puma ball.

We did hav more star names plus star names from Union, I beleive the only way RL can move forward is to scrap the salary cap and let clubs spend half of what they earn.

Add to that have Max Cliffird on board to publicise the sport.

Get Great Britain back again and have Australian tours with us going over there and them coming over here every 2 years and have a test at Wembley.
Simple.

Correct me if I'm wrong but regards to the internationals being played at Wembley and Old Trafford etc pre Super League, weren't these test matches being played after the domestic season had ended? IE in the summer months when there is no clash with the football season?

As Code13 mentions, in 1995 the Premier League wasn't the multi million franchise it is today. Therefore is it little surprise that we can now only average 20,000 for an international when most casual supporters who would have gone to a game pre Super League are now at the football?

I'll confess I was only a tyke when Super League began but if I've got my dates right then surely thats a plausible explanation for a decreased attendance at internationals.

No, they were played in October or November (two or three months after the start of our domestic season) and the players would often play for their clubs the next day. In fact Steve Hampson one weekend got senf off on the Saturday playing for GB v NZ and then again on the Sunday playing for Wigan v Castleford! That was in 1989 btw.

Football was still huge attendance wise before 1995. Cup Finals sold out, England filled Wembley and the big clubs filled their grounds every week. I don't think football has affected rugby league to the extent you suggest in my opinion.

I think it has, yes football was huge but now it is utterly all pervasive, given a huge boost in the Euro 96 competition that never saw it look back.

Yes prior to 96 it was the dominant sport, but now it is ubiquitous, there is not a single TV show on TV that doesnt reference it in some way, there isnt a single page on a single newspaper that doesnt reference it and TV companies, advertisers and sponsors spend sums of money on football that other sports can only dream of.

Football has subjugated all other sports under its bhemoth form, add to that the issue that no matter what the evidence the average football fan always views a major international competition with optimism (having won nothing since 1996, even GBRL has won something significant since then! and been to more finals).

The other factor that cannot be overlooked is the professionalisation of RU, all the head burying in the world cannot change the fact that they handled the sky money and conversion to full time pros much, much better than RL - where our clubs bickered over scraps and ploughed money into players pockets, they set up a brilliant infrastructure and where we sacrificed our internationals they elevated thiers to a whole new level - and added new teams to competitions, recognising the need to give them chance to grow and improve!

That said, I think RL is much stronger now than it was at the start of SL, crowds at the top level are up across the board, new young and exciting players are beging developed at [iall[/i clubs not just the top 3-4, the amature scene in London is thriving and now producing pro players of its own and the on field product is simply a generation ahead of every other team sport in the world.

Part of this has to do with the disparity concerning overseas players.

If Super League clubs were required to nominate just one of their quota players as eligible to play in ties against Championship clubs this would remove an artificial advantage and make the Challenge Cup much more competitive.

That's a great idea. Put it in your League Express column!

The big picture now, in my opinion, is that the club is broke and is losing its best players (Orr, Sharp, LMS). It no longer has the resources to compete for the signatures of today's equivalents of Edwards, Offiah, Hammond, Carroll, Young, Barnett, Hetherington, Dymock etc etc (even if they weren't all (Carroll!) a success). Even after Branson, they were a draw for big players.

The club is in a hugely perilous state, and it may have no future at all if rumours of David Hughes pulling out are true. Ian Lenagan still has shares in the club that he doesn't want which is a real mess.

People point to the number of homegrown players they have, but the truth is they can't afford to play anyone else.

This very same argument, with fewer references to football, was taking place on TMS on Radio 4 this afternoon. Jonathan Agnew and his co-commentators were talking about taking the Sky money or getting your sport/product to a massively wider audience. It's a difficult situation that many sports find themselves in.
On a side note, not one of the 72 Football League clubs made a profit last year.

The RU factor shouldn't be ignored. Look at any decent GB backline until RU went pro and you'll find probably 2/3 quality union converts 1-5. We simply don't seem to be producing many big, fast outside backs - bucketloads of smaller lads, but its very poor that players with the build and speed of Keith Senior are so rare.

The other poor thing on the field is the quality of British halfbacks. Bobby Goulding would be the last genuine class halfback GB produced. Schofield was the last genuine stand off (possibly Sculthorpe for a short while at a push but you get the point). Without real quality in the backs you're always going to struggle to beat Australia, regardless of how top notch your pack is.

I suspect the crowds for internationals went the same way as GB's competitiveness. The Tri/Four Nations is a good concept but has taken some time to replace the old Ashes series. Unfortunately there's absolutely no point in holding a 3-game series against Australia until England is reliably competitive. The Australians wouldn't dare book that sort of series in Australia for fear of the one-sided contests that would result.

Twickernam 7's in 96 with Wigan beating Wasps, on the telly on a saturday afternoon, I think it was on during Euro 96.

Ok its union (theoretically) but it was a League on the BBC on a staurday afternoon and certainly created some profile. I remember watching it and I didn't even follow league at the time.

Have to agree about the RU factor. Like it or not RU is a more interesting product than it was in the 90s. It is bigger and as a result is more of a money making machine than it was. The Heineken cup is a huge competition much bigger than SL ( the rest of the RU leagues are pretty crap though).


This means that RL and particularly at an international level is finding it hard to get any publicity.

There is only one domestic sport in this country that gets big publicity and that is football. Everyting else gets scraps. The only difference is Sport that has an international dimension can sometimes break into that. Without an international dimension RL will whither. Al those who knock Crusaders, catalans and expansion should bear that in mind.

That was becuase certain forward thinking RU types USED Wigan and RL to shock the RU dinosaurs into making changes.

It was a glorious 15 minutes of fame for Wigan and RL but potentially undermined the rest of RL becuase it gave our big competitors a wake up call which they have siezed with two hands.


It then took another 14 years for RL to wake up with a salary cap being policed, franchising, expansion and everything else that goes with it.