Lets take our game back from the RFL then.

If people can overthrow governments then sure the same can be done for sporting organisations. The idea of becoming a fugitive doesn’t appeal to me though so don’t invite me to lead any revolution..







For the second one we could do a Rugby League wag. Ashley Gibson is with a glamour modal

I remember when the times used to sponsor the Super League coverage on Sky Sports.

Anyway, personally I'm not that concerned. National Newspapers will soon be defunct with technology moving on all the time. With hardly any copyright restrictions in the online world the working class (which is mainly what our sports fans are) are not the kind of people who will pay to read newspapers online.

I've always found national coverage a token gesutre anyway. They only seem to put the stuff in the northern editions from my experience.

A bigger priority for our game is getting a national highlights show onto BBC Television or another freeview broadcaster. Last year the BBC offered to do a highlights show for the Blue Square Premier (thats the non league of English Football). They actually turned it down. Yet we still have a regional highlights show that is clearly very low budget. Pathetic!

I also think they need to get all England tests back on the BBC. Now that Sky have taken (or will do next week) the football results show (Soccer Saturday) off Freeview we have a big opportunity to be a lead in to the "Final Score" show on the BBC. Could claw some exposure back. Then again improving the BBC coverage would perhaps be required.

What I don’t get is why we want to save our sport off the field. If a stadium was just piles of rubble and a rugby pitch I’d still go and watch if I really wanted to.

I don’t let how posh the surroundings are dictate my experience. I’ve watched Rhinos at Headingley many times and I’ve had good and bad experiences despite been in the same place.

You go to an estate like where I live you’ll find that the underclass are happy here and the working class aren’t despite it been the same location.

Sport is played without ‘professional surroundings’ and ‘professional equipment’. I went to a sink estate school and pupils still used an empty bottle to play football with.

Didn’t stop their enjoyment - just made the most of what their had.

That’s what we need to do with rugby league right now and stop with this obsession of expanding the game off the field.

Newspapers sales are in decline no matter what Chris Irvine says. Readers can get their news much quicker via 24 News channels and the internet, and most of that is for free. By the time a newspaper can get to press, the same news story is old news.

As a result national newspaper owners have to cater for what will sell copies. Football sells newspapers. Political scandals sell newspapers. Katie Price (unbelievably!) sells newspapers. A poxy little sport in the north of England doesn't sell newspapers.

You mention that The Times is owned by News Ltd, but Super League has one of the highest average ratings on Sky Sports behind football, rugby union internationals and cricket internationals. Therefore Super League is a valuable asset to Sky, and the fact they get exclusive broadcast rights means they pay more than if they didn't. ([size=50I mention that in an effort to silence those that say the BBC should broadcast the odd Super League game. Its a topic that gets on my tits reading this forum)[/size

Journalism as an industry is dying anyway. Print sales are falling, while internet advertising doesn't provide enough for any decent website to make a profit. Editors can often use fresh blood such as students, who provide decent copy that trying to get experience becomes slave labour. Once they leave they're thrown out in the wilderness and struggle to get a job even at a local level. The recession has made things ten times worse, so now freelance journalism is the only viable career opportunity in the industry.

Rugby League, whilst struggling to attract media coverage, is growing as a sport. More Kids are playing the game, the governing body have taken a dying sport and turned it into a profitable business (not quickly enough for some) and are trying to make the game a national sport rather than an M62 pastime.
Yes, the media are shocking in their lack of coverage, but that's nothing new. Before I got the RL bug in 2002, I really can't comment on the lack of covergage because I wasn't looking for it.....but that's the point. Unless Murray has a chance at wimbledon, Union do well in a RUWC/6 Nations or the ashes are on it's wall to wall wendyball. League (well in the south anyway) really never got a look in.
Journalists like [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyleague/3259506/Rugby-League-World-Cup-Englands-match-full-blood-guts-and-skill.htmlTHIS GUY[/url are few and far between, so much so that I nearly chocked on My Sunday Lunch when I read this, in print, in the Sunday Telegraph. Problem is, it's up to the RFL to get column inches and if you look at the attendance figures for wendyball, T20 or even Union then it is the advertisers that drive what's in a paper or not.
Wrongly...rightly, either way, your average Union fan is perceived to have more cash than his northern cousin......your average cricket fan at Lords wearing an MCC tie probably has a distant aunt who owns half of scotland and even though your wendyball fan may be as thick as pig, there are enough of them to warrant an ad spend. Compare this with a game that has a premier competition which has 12 of it's 14 teams pretty much along one stretch of motorway (wrexham isn't that far away) and you will see why anything other than local press has no real interest.I know not all northerners wear flat caps and fany pigeons, the same way all Londoners aren't pearly kings....but avertisers are becoming increasingly targeted in their spend and until the Northern Sport tag is removed, that's the brush league will be tarred with.

If only we had more people like yourself on this forum then I wouldn’t get too much slack for refusing to do ‘voluntary work’ to get experience. Its all Boll*x to save money for the corporate interests.

Rugby league was on the front and back covers of most national newspapers last year, on at least 3 occasions. happy with that

I agree with that but taking test matches off the BBC in 1997 has proved to be a bigger error in my opinion. Since then we've gone from playing tests at Old Trafford, Elland Road and Wembley sized stadiums to our own club grounds.

But probably only in our local region. Most back pages are regional anyway, certainly from the Daily Mirror. Even from City to City you can find a different back page in Manchester from Liverpool. So if you saw Warrington on the page back winning the cup, that was probably only printed for Warrington.

I've still got the front and back cover of The People I had in my room at uni from the following Sunday, a photo of the team celebrating with the words 'Yes!' as the headline.

On the Sunday morning in London however, there was just a small box in the front page corner with Briers lifting the cup. Nationals have different editions, again in an attempt to attract sales. What might sell and be relevant news in the north won't be the same in the south for example. I agree, copies of The People in Warrington would have had that special cover and no where else. All to draw in those suckers who will be after the best cup final coverage from the previous day. Believe me, it worked.

We all have to pay our dues in this world Damo. I do it by being being ignored by an editor and have colleagues who take credit for my work. It is slave labour, but to reap the rewards you have to get your hands dirty from the start.

Its different for everyone.

Just been reading Dom Joly’s autobiography and he got his degree by the MI5 despite dropping out of University. Of course I don’t know how true that is but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was. I’ll have to ask him when I see him in September