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. ([sizeI 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 rlTHIS GUYrl 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.

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

first of all RL was never a dieing sport it was a open and honest sport were anyone could do well,you should'nt listen to people like linsey and caisely.

im struggling to see how RL is a growing sport.two thirds of its member clubs are now dieing on there and half the clubs in SL are living from hand to mouth.after all the money sky have handed over to them,it really is a shocking state of affairs.

once upon a time a lot of the written media was based in manchester and RL got its fair share of coverage,thats not the case now....thats why i say SL/SLE should re-locate to london,that way the fat d,lazy reporters dont need to travel far for a story.who knows it might help the london franchise as well.

Disagree....if it had remained as it was it would now be even more marginalised and crowds would be considerably down on current figures. Temper that with the new found professionalism (yeah right) of the other code and the player drain would have been devastating.

...if you were called Wigan

I don't agree with newspapers, and news channels in general, so don't buy/watch them, but I bought about 5 copies of each paper that had Warrington on it last year and still have them, and always will do.

Never felt so proud

Sky pay based on how many coloumn inches in newspapers a sport gets? Silly me I thought they were more interested in auience figures and the last time I looked Sl was doing ok in that regard!

Do agree though that the RFL needs to get its finger out and be working more actively to get media stories covered. In fact I would suggest that they make it an edict that every club has to send at least one news story a day to RFL central who will then send them on to every media outlet every day. If the papers won't do the work then the RFL and clubs will have to.

Let's bring back ration books, national service and hanging whilst we're on a trip down memory lane shall we? Leaving our front door open all day, neighbours popping in, no trouble in the area, them Kray twins never hurt anyone that didn't deserve it...hand full of cold gravel for supper, living in a shoe box on the M62, getting up for work 3 hours before we went to bed.....jumpers for goalposts....the list is endless of how good it was back in the day........IF YOU'RE WEARING ROSE TINTED SPECS AND SKIPPING YOUR MEDS maybe