Ta dah!

I'll moan about the RFL for as long as its run by a man who has not the slightest idea about strategy or marketing. When he occasional delivers the odd thing here and there that might just about be in line with the bare minimum requirement of the job, I'm not going to suddenly give him praise. He's paid a lot of money, and therefore doesn't deserve credit just because he delivers something for which you might give a pat on the back to an 18 year old marketing intern. We deserve better, and he should deliver better. He can't, because he's not smart enough and he's an accountant not a leader. The job is hard, but don't let the challenges he faces convince you that nobody else could do better. He's not good enough, end of.

exactly. Some of the RFL's defenders need to ask themselves "if this is good work, what would bad work look like?" We put up with absolute clowns.

Look, if this was the main sponsor of the SL you may have a point, but it's not. Let's wait and see what that is before we start flapping around.

What we have is a financially sound company putting money into RL because they see value in it, this is actually a good thing. As someone posted earlier, Keno in Australia are a sponsor of the NRL and I don't see anyone calling that a disgrace, is that because it's Australian so it must be better?

There you are, Sky have a monday night game in the soccer off season because we pull the punters in. For me the buck stops with the rfl.
I remember seeing that nrl advert with tina turner. It was sensational. Made rugby league look the sport to watch, fashionable and easy on the eye. I'd love us to do something like that. It sometimes feels as if we are always apologising for something instead of saying look at us, we are awesome.

There's an irony in the calls for brands that sell big money, premium products to sponsor the game when, at the same time, these boards are constantly littered with complaints about ticket prices, costs and the RFL "not realising that this is a working mans name and that fans can't afford x......!"

RL is one of the cheapest professional spectator sports in the UK and yet these boards are constantly littered with incessant complaining about the cost of play-off tickets, CC tickets, Magic Weekend travel costs and demands for the RFL to dish out free / cheap tickets left, right and centre.

If you were a marketing / brand manager at a blue-chip, premium product brand, would you honestly read this forum and think "yep, these sound like just the type of people we want to market to!" For most on here, RL is one of our biggest passions and yet we somehow object to spending £18 to see a play-off semi-final.

With fans like these, who needs enemies?

Good post!.

Whilst I am not a fan of Foxy Bingo being on board, this time last year we were all having a pop at the RFL for giving the sponsorship away...this year, regardless of how little cash is changing hands, they are announcing partnerships like this and saying there are more to come.

So who did it ' wrong and rushed ' ? , and who said it was being done wrong and rushed at the time? ,so how should it be done and how long will it take?

So you are obviously an expert on how it shouldnt be done, so how in your opinion should it be done? , and why should expansion done your way exclude building the sport in the heartlands?

Im not the expert on how it shouldn't be done just pointing out the type of sponsor the game attracts in its current format.

I cant imagine RBS, O2 etc getting involved with a sport located in one region of the country-Maybe Woody will prove me wrong next week.

Build the sport everywhere but dont have more teams in the top league from small towns on the M62 (1 limited potential 2 compounds the current problem-do you not see it)

?

I meant an expert on how not to expand into London

Correct, they probably wont, so the options are what?

Once again if we dont have SL standard clubs springing up here, there and everywhere , what other options are there for the makeup of SL in the near future ?

But the RFL are trying to expand with the introduction of 3 new teams in the championship. This is how it should be done in letting them build and growing a fan base. Lets concentrate on getting London right before fast tracking new expansion teams with no fan base or foundations and hope that the likes of O2, Vodafone will suddenly take notice that we have 1000 people attending them.

Is this how it should be done? , I'd have said something in between what they did do and what they are now doing

They annonced 4 before they had any, and are now spreading their resources too thinly, and have completely devalued a whole division as a result

1 new club every 3/4 years properly supported in a spreading pattern rather than the ' sattelite scattergun ' they have employed

The inclusion of all these new clubs at once could damage some existing expansion clubs, I really dont see how they come up with some of these idea's