Hindsight is a wonderful thing but stats like your last one cannot be simply coincidental if it is accurate.

It's impossible to say what would have happened, if anything the game has proven itself remarkably resilient over the last 100+ years so I refuse to accept that in this country we would be playing in front of 2,000 fans at most places. I'm not saying that RL hasn't had benefits from Super League but we simply do not know what would have happened in it's place. We may have become a mainstay on national TV and seen an exodus of our better players to the NRL meaning that we competed better internationally.

Likewise in Australia I don't think we can simply say that RL would be the dominant force in the southern hemisphere. There is a tendency to only look at the good points and ignore the unforeseeable yet inevitable problems. If we look at Souths now, ironically I think they are stronger because of the SL war. I remember prior to their exclusion they used to get some miniscule crowds but I think they are more well known now because of it.

As a historian I would be extremely interested to see the parallel universe where SL never happened in 1995. However if you asked me to gamble and swap what we have now for the unknown effects of no-SL, I wouldn't take that risk. Despite numerous worries, the game is in a relatively strong position at the moment.

Wigan would still have been at Central Park.

We would still have the Ashes and not pointless end of season jollies that no-ones really bothered about.

oldham would have gone bust............oh hang on..

There would be no top flight rugby outside of the M62
Warrington at best would be at Wilderspool at worst gone bust owing the council millions(more than they did)
You doubt whether Leneghan, Moran etc would have bought into RL
Saints, Cas, Wakey, Salford wouldnt be making plans to build new grounds
RL wouldnt have the profile it gets on TV that it has now
There would be no or not as much funding from British sport funds etc

...for some off course traditional run down grounds, ing against a wall......is where we should still be

Keighley Cougars would be one of the most successful clubs in this country playing in a redeveloped stadium.

As it turned out completely the opposite happened due to the "situation" that developed with Messrs Lindsay and Hetherington at the World 9's in 95 to sort out the "ing" contest between Packer and Murdoch!

That still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth even today.

You cannot state these things as if they are fact.

What is it about Super League that has caused the buildings of stadiums? Framing of the future had almost no effect until licensing came in, meaning clubs didn't need to get their acts together. I would suggest that virtually all those stadiums would still have been planned without Super League.

This also is equally unlikely.

Since 1995 sport has seen massive changes and RL is no different. It's no coincidence that almost all sports are seeing a situation where the teams with the biggest crowds and most money are dominating. Keighley would almost certainly not have been one of these.

It is impossible to say what would have happened.
I will admit though if Sky had not put the money into RL in 1995 I reckon quite a few clubs would not exist today.

There wasnt a super league war over here, only the creation of super league. Anyone claiming that was a bad thing is a little The super league war was down under and very detrimental to the game. Wiki's explanation en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League_war

There wasnt a super league war over here, only the creation of super league. Anyone claiming that was a bad thing is a little The super league war was down under and very detrimental to the game. Wiki's explanation en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League_war

spot on

without the sl war rl woulve been dominant n the sh

well still get there anyway cause its such a good spectacle

not often I agree with DM but have to agree, it set the growth of the game in Australia back by at least 10 years, probably longer as the game contracted, lost alot of credibility and became the whore of TV stations.

Sadly the NRL didn't have the gumption in 96 or 97-98 to make the really tough choices it should have made, if they had we may well not have struggled to keep apace with AFL in terms of growing the game and $'s in the game.

the cream always rises to the top

even with SL decimating the nrl weve fended off AFL easily

now with a fairer tv deal well wipe them off the map as we did union

if afl ever had a civil war like the sl war it would never recover

we are strong and getting stronger

In terms of Australia -
Crushers still would have gone bust
The Bears would have moved up to the Central Coast as a by product we wouldn't be having argument's for the next team for the NRL to expand to.
The ARL club's wouldn't have lent the ARL $16 million dollars each to fight the process and therefore some teams might not have had to merge i.e Norths and Manly (by the way this money is still owing, I'd hate to know how much it is now with percentage on it)