Quote: SmokeyTA "he is right. RL isn't a particularly welcoming game, it does treat strangers with suspicion. There is a large proportion of fans in the game who think if you didn't watch Widnes v Fax in 1902 in -20 weather from the side of a field with no protection from the elements and the 6 metres of snow that fell that day, you don't deserve a voice or you aren't a real fan. We denigrate other sports and the people who watch them, we denigrate those who maybe aren't prepared to make their whole life about RL, but would be interested in watching a game every so often.
The vast majority of people aren't going to pass these 'realness' tests we put on them. hundreds of thousands will watch on sky that a few thousand will attend. Most people aren't just mindlessly handing over money to a club they feel obliged to. In this country Most people who watch the FIFA world cup don't watch Premier League, football claims them as football fans. The fans and the sport claims them as 'one of us'. More people watched the RL World Cup than watch SL. We claimed none of them. We expect people to want to watch all RL from everywhere when in reality most people just want to go to 2 or 3 games a year and some of the bigger events and sit down on a Friday night with a few cans and watch the game on sky. One person doing that is possibly £500 a year for us, if its a family with two kids its probably closer to £1800. That's not only a lot of money for us to be looking down on, its a fan. By any measure that is a pretty committed RL fan'"
What on earth are you talking about. Everyone's welcome at games, i've never seen anything happen in 30 odd years that would say otherwise.