Article in The Independent

Quote: Tre Cool "The difference between now and 10 years ago is that these articles are rare and there are many more positive articles from other sources and a much more positive treatment by national BBC services on TV and radio.

It used to be horrific.'"

Correct. As others have pointed out, there's no great anti-League conspiracy out there. There's still prejudice, but not all without justification. It's true that our list of sponsors looks very provincial, but its not true (IMO) that there's something written in the laws of nature that League must always be a minor provincial game - which is sometimes an implicit suggestion in these things.

Where the article is wrong IMO is to place so much emphasize on League's big day out being incredibly important for our profile. You get poor (big) games in all sports - the tripe usually served up by England RU for example. We're in a bad place for PR if a poor CCF or GF messes up our profile for the whole season. From a PR perspective our media strategy should adjust the balance somewhat towards spending more of whatever limited PR resources we have ensuring constant news flow, however small the story. You capture fans (armchair especially - but hey, they buy the Sky boxes and watch the ads) by keeping them involved in an ongoing narrative throughout the season. It's this lack of continuing story that's so sad when I speak to friends in the south who are almost surprised to be reminded that League still exists when they see some PR twice a year. They've no idea who's doing what in the League - and let's face it, even League fans don't care that much any more thanks to the daft playoff format. I don't think the split structure does a great deal to fix it.

As for structure, the best thing would be something that unfortunately we can't achieve unless the NRL take pity on us - a proper champions league - not an end of season jamboree, but something like they have in football which throws big interesting fixtures into the season all the way through, creating massive newsflow. You need to finish in the top 4 to qualify, then you get to play in two leagues of 4 against the top 4 sides from down-under. Travel is fine - you play your two overseas away games in one 10 day trip. That's it, one return flight is all that's needed, and given that they're getting two games to see, it would be popular with the richer fans out there. Every couple of weeks almost there'd be a big champions league game coming up from which we could get better media attention for the top of the game.

As for the content of the stories, it's complete myth if you think that it all has to be good news stuff 'talking up the game'. A confident sport is at ease discussing its own problems ( witness Union press re. their scrums ) and should also welcome the kind of gossip, feuds and trash talk, etc. that all sports have. ( e.g. more has probably been written about Stuart Broad edging a catch than about every League game combined this season ). Finally, one of the best ways to convince people that you're a minority sport, is to have the people who share the largest number of words about the sport with the public ( i.e. the Sky commentary team) go on and on and on and on about how brilliant the sport is. It sounds desperate. There's a reason Geoffrey Boycott is so popular and why so many people love to hear him commentate on cricket (along with a few that can't stand him of course, but the balance is massively +ve). Intelligent analysis, not breathless hype, or breathless contrived 'controversy', but still able to add to the viewing experience. Provincial accents aren't a problem, it's what you actually say.

Eddie, Stevo, etc. (and yes, when you see him on TV, Nigel Wood) are all (collectively) contributing to our provincial image. I say 'collectively' because Stevo would be absolutely fine surrounded by better people.