Remains to be seen, but currently, I would say that RLWC 2013 is going to need a massive influx of interest and ticket sales heading into the home stretch.........we've gone from some fluffy initial announcements regarding sales for the final and England games to 1,500 tickets sold "as a group sale" to London and St Albans youth....Wembley holds 90,000....

As for everything else, the RFL seem to be increasingly unable to figure out how to run the game.....

I am firmly of the opinion that much of Richard Lewis's time at the RFL was taken up in attempting to save club chairmen from themselves. Now he's gone, there doesn't appear to be anyone capable of continuing his work.

Left to their own devices, those running the majority of the clubs would blindly see the final nail hammered into the coffin of professional rugby league in this country

I agree. Lewis was the boy with his finger in the Dyke. That he managed to introduce licensing, fill in the hole in the game's finances, restore international rugby to pre-eminence, get a new SKY deal, land a huge Sport England funding package, and persuade/force some clubs to address their crumbling facilities, is testament to what we could achieve as a sport if we had a Governing Body of competent professionals. Instead, he was fought at almost every turn, and even parodied in the RL Press for being too posh and southern.

He's gone now. Big Nigel is in charge. Not posh or southern. How much better are we doing....?

God.

God?

He'd struggle too with this lot.

rlWhat does Rugby League need? Perspective.rl

Someone collate the stats in a nice manner and I'd gladly spend a little time on that. I'm just far too lazy to go through the data myself.

Actually I just chucked the League points each year together and checked the Gini Coefficient each year (the pretty standard inequality measure) and basically:

SL1 was the most unequal (shock)
There was a very slow movement towards equality between then and SL10
SL11 and 12 were significantly more equal in terms of league points (most equal season in SL being SL12)
After this, we had year on year increases again in inequality to SL16, and it peaked at about the same level of inequality in league points we had in SL10.
Last year we were slightly more equal.


Overall, in the P&R super league era we had slow movements to equal league results, with a quick dip towards the end (around when Catalans came in I think), and under licensing the league had been getting less equal over time, but was always more equal than pretty much all the P&R years.

Although the sample size is tiny, so I'd conclude there's pretty much nothing to conclude from that.

Sadly, RL in the UK needs a lot more than perspective.

www.sportinglife.com/rugby-leagu ... rfl-debate

www.sportinglife.com/rugby-leagu ... rfl-debate

How many times will Nigel be asked how much he eats or if he fancies going on a diet do you think?
My point is that most will probably think they will have already made their minds up so will take the chance to have a dig.

so, the 12x12 then 8x8x8 is going to get pushed through that will mean 2 teams relegated in2015 then another 4 half way into the season meaning 6 teams will be relegated that year by that time the first 2 will have had to ditch all of there good players to remain viable the 4 who come down will have to realy cut their playing rosta to remain viable the end result is we go from a stable league into a league with 4 yoyo teams every year and every year all it will do is make the rich richer and the rest fighting off admin v good plan that.

Anyone who supports that system must be completely and utterly stupid.

Hopefully the clubs tell these idiots where to stuff it and we can somehow convince Richard Lewis to come back.

Now, now, these are our leaders you're talking about

On 2 nd thoughts I agree with your 1 st point, its completely bonkers

It was interesting hearing Smith’s & Gentle’s comments on the proposed new structure tonight.

It appeared that Gentle was up for a twelve team S.L with a one up, one down system, whilst Smith appears to be in the licence camp

Not sure if Gentle was quizzed regarding the “all or nothing” path that some clubs would practically bankrupt themselves in order to stay in the top division?

However, Smith was advocating the licence system, presumably with either ten or twelve teams, in order to have the quality of tonight’s game replicated week after week.

Whilst I agree with Smith regarding youth development, his stance on high quality games, week on week flounders on the number of clubs he’s proposing.

I don’t believe there are ten clubs which could produce the intensity of tonight’s game every week – not yet anyway.

Finally, just to throw another spanner in the works, when the S.L clubs signed up for a three year licence were they made aware that at the end of the said licence period that maybe two clubs would be demoted?

By threatening to remove two clubs at the end of 2014 will cause mass panic to the bottom eight clubs, and so the cycle continues…