Exactly. If he keeps behaving like this, he'll slowly become an embarrassment to those of us in who grew up in the East Hull community from whence he sprung. Hundreds of people - like my uncle who coached him and his mates as a kid - put in their time and energy for free to help get kids involved in our great game, and then the people who get paid a pretty decent wage for doing something the rest of us would love to have done decide to use their limited oxygen of publicity denigating our great game. What a kick in the teeth.

Don't give me all that freedom of speech balls either - the free market is like war, you may argue amongst yourselves behind closed doors about what is the best strategy, but when you confront the outside world you have a duty to your comrades to present a united front. If a member of my organisation undermined our direction like that, I'd fire them. You're either inside the tent p*ssing out, or outside the tent p*ssing in. Time to make up your mind Jon.

Too long in St Helens I think - he must have caught the small town hero disease from Cunningham... you know, the one that eventually leads to you not even being bothered to play for your country when asked, no doubt because they won't play their games at the end of your street.

So Jon, wake up and smell the coffee. People are starting to wish you never sprung from our midst seeing as that's your attitude.

Yup - there's something rotten in the first team culture at that club. What do they do all day at training, sit around slagging off the supporters for making them get off their backsides once a week? Sickening.

As has been said there was nothing wrong with Graham voicing his concerns and dislike for the event, but they can't complain if people don't like their views or the way they air them.

Views are always going to be split on such different events as MM but its not an event where any opinion is going to be right or wrong its all personal preferences and he can't complain about those who don't agree with his view or it makes him seem like a spoilt child

people giving him and saying he's undermining the hard work put in. he's expressing an opinion as JG did when asked a question. it's hardly a kick in the teeth to those putting work in at the grass roots. i've heard plenty of fans moan about MM, all these two are doing are putting accross the players opinion of it, something we as fans are not in a position to do. some players like it, i believe Jon Wells wrote that in his colum (the best RL player writing in the press too) and some dont like JG, exactly like the fans. i love MM but plenty dont.

and if were talking about high profile players, or in this case ex player, undermining plenty of people's hardwork then lets talk about Gary "i dont want RL anywhere other than the M62 corridor" Schofield. His constant rants about RL in london are a disgrace and competely disregard the amount of hardwork that volunteers the length and breadth of this country do spreading the greatest game. i think thats far more harmful than a player saying he prefers having the same preperation every week.

I don,t think you could be any further from the truth, these players at "that club" do lots of charity, community and school function to promote rugby league.
They train in a professional manner and when that professional entity is taken away with a RFL gimmick, I think they have a right to have an opinion.

"That club" has given high entertainment value for the past 13 years and put their bodies on the line week in week out."That club" has always has always had emphasie on quality thant quantity. Until we address the issue we can forget any international status.

I'm sure the club does a hell of a lot of valuable work in the community, and the players do within that, and there's no doubt they've set standards for the sport to follow on the field. But to say that being asked to play a game in a non-standard location ONCE A YEAR somehow takes away from all of their work to build professional standards is surely just nonsense? They're not being asked to go out on the road all the time like the Harlem-bloomin-globetrotters, just gracefully make a few compromises ONCE A YEAR in order to help develop our game beyond its current boundaries.

I'm sorry, but the amount of bleating about this "problem" is totally disproportionate to any genuine impact on them as individuals and a club. Add into all this the fact that our sport generally struggles for publicity at the best of times, so all stakeholders should be professional enough to choose when, where and how to air any grievances in the wider interests of our game, and you get close to seeing why things like this really wind me and many others up.

might have given Great Britain more of a chance of beating the Aussies over the last decade, is there.

I think the St Helens players are a better judge of the non standard locations and the demand of professional organisation after all they play in 3 non-standard locations (MM,CC,GC) every season for nearly 3 years.
The players opinion therefore of the MM is likely to be an accurate one as regards the standard of organisation required for such an event.

Also John Wilkin won the cooperative award last season for his work in developing and promoting the game nationally and locally, so when he expresses an opinion, you don,t have to agree with it but I should imagine he knows what he is talking about.

What annoys me most is most,clubs are run in a very proffesional manner but the RFL is still run at amateur level, they are completley devoid of any projective plan to make the game internationally sound. But prefer to tweak the domestic game in a gimmicky way. We have the top 8 for instance why don,t the RFL just make it a top 14, so that the bottom club who may have lost more than 20 games more than the leaders get the chance to be superleague champions.

Given the comments he made demonstrated that he clearly had no idea what he was talking about, in terms of the ability to access and play League in Scotland, I beg to differ.

I still cannot see how having to travel to Edinburgh to play a game of rugby is such a hardship, or affront to their professionalim as elite athletes. I imagine having to travel to Rome to play a game of football this week may well result in Man United's training schedule being different to their average Monday and Tuesday at Carrington, but I'm not entirely sure you'd hear their players bleating about this insult to their professional preparation standards. FFS, that lot need to get a sense of perspective. If you don't want to have to flex your standard pre-game routine, then play in the amateur leagues and stay in the same area all the time.

Anyone would think they'd lost...

I happen to agree with James Graham , though possibly for different reasons .

The integrity of a league system is based on playing each team home and away , if the result of this extra fixture alters the final standings in any way , then that integrity has been destroyed .

As for expanding the game outside the M62 corridor ..... why ?

The game has done perfectly fine for over a century , without being played all over the UK . If others want to come on board , let it be a natural progression , rather than a contrived result from the Magic Weekends .

Has anyone considered the possibility that after 114 years , the reason the game is still confined to a small area of the country is because only we are intelligent enough to "get" it .

I'm not sure what you mean by the integrity of the league. Certainly it would be wrong to claim that the team who was top of the league at the end of the regular season had won something. Fortunately we don't do that and the competition is won at Old Trafford.



Some people might have briefly considered that. However there's plenty of evidence (on here for a start) that not particularly intelligent people "get" it as well as intelligent people.

Choosing to wait until after you've lost an important game to complain about something that both Sky and the BBC have done for years without anyone raising a whisper makes him look a small minded idiot.