" The time and money spent on the Magic Weekend should be spent on an area like Cumbria ... "

Whilst ive been to both events in wales and im going upto scotland, james graham does have a point with his above comment.

No he doesn't. Cumbria will never get it together enough to put out a Superleague team for a start.

Whitehaven, Workington and barrow all national league clubs

notable ARL sides playing at decent standards...eg millom, egremont, kells, wath brow

not to mention other sides dotted around....ambleside, windermere etc

a darn site more about cumbrian RL than scottish RL....but i dont see a "cumbrian Magic'' in the pipeline....

This venture should actually generate money for the game, rather than costing money - meaning more is available for development in other areas.

I personally dont think the Magic weekend will become a major event in the RL calendar tbh. The only reason I feel that is because of its timing. The only problem is that it should be the first weekend of of the season to make it work but thats obviously not going to work in February. The other option is to have it as the last weekend end in the season but having the Cup final, Magic weekend and GF within 2 months would be a bit too much in that time period also

Graham could always ask Mick Potter to leave him in St Helens if he's that unkeen on the idea.

Scotland has people living in it. +1 to Scotland.

Poor luv.

What exactly is this "burden" - sitting on your chuff on a bus to Edinburgh? You should try getting a proper job.

Tell you what, James, let's scrap the whole comp, and you can just sit on your fat lazy arrse drawing your pay cheque for doing fsck all. How about that?

Or can you see the flaw?

If you aren't too fussed about playing that game - don't! Make yourself "unavailable" or pretend you've injured your little finger or something. If you just want to play local park rugby, there's plenty of it available.

We can take it that Mr Graham would be content to play the odd game at or within 40 miles of home, and let the expansion of the game go hang. We can also take it that he is quite, quite mad as he presumably thinks that Sky will cough up his mammoth wages for running around in shorts, with less games, less events and less national appeal.

I'd rather see a round of on the road matches like they did one year, so more parts of the country get to see the game

And at no point have any of them got their act together and made a decent SL bid.

Oh and just where would a Cumbrian Magic be staged and where would every one stay?

Was talking to a well known ex-player & you'll find most of the players don't like the Magic weekend, YES it great for us fans but the players this day & age 5 hour bus trip or more can't go into the stadium untill 1 hour before the game it all seems a bit rushed for them & there was 3 teams in the same hotel last year all in each other way that not good peperation & then when it comes to the end of the match there rushed off.
How could the RFL make it better for them maybe a Plane up to the venue could be one don't know about the rest.

As a fan i utterly love it in Cardiff, Mingling with all the other fans having a pint or 2 & i'll be there in Edinburgh hopfully doing the same.

Indeed, because Scotland will wont it!

Whether we agree with James Graham's comments or not, it will be interesting to see if his negative comments have any effect on his team's performance on the weekend.

imo Jamie Peacock's negative comments at the beggining of the season has rubbed off on his Leeds team mates and you can see it in their body language.

As I said on the Saints board, it's the timing of this that winds me up.

there's plenty time for debate after the event - through the appropriate channels rather than a high profile player ranting in the press. Why put a downer on something that is due to take place in 5 days? Does Jammer think they might cancel it midweek?

Graham is developing a propensity for shooting his mouth off - blasting the RFL for trying to take RL to other regions p*sses me off. He has a well paid job and the poor love has to go up to Edinburgh to play in a famous international stadium so that Scots get to see SL live and so that those amongst us who want to go up and enjoy the weekend can do so.

No doubt if the RFU had a similar event their players would hype it up rather than badmouthing it and we'd all look on enviously and whinge that the RFL doesn't have the balls to do something similar.

Two fixtures in a weekend over Easter is one gripe. But if he wasn't playing in Edinburgh this weekend he'd be playing in some little northern backwater town and nobody outside of said town would pay any attention. If he can't be bothered travelling a few hundred miles to play the sport he's paid to play and to play a part in taking the sport to a potential expansion area, then that says more about him than the RFL.

That is the end game, yes. We'll start with a third tier side first though hey.