The traditionalists said the same thing about the increase of the one day and T20 games compared with the more traditional 4-5 day county games. Some people don't like change. RL cant be accused of significant long term change just 'cheesy' short term headline grabbing adjustments that they go back on. Franchises, Middle 8's. P&R........

I have no issue with change at all (I regularly attend T20 matches at Lancs) but I'm not a fan of the 100. There's plenty of of room for 50 & 20 over Cricket but the Hundred is just a gimmick too far IMO. The England test team is already suffering with the barrage of white ball Cricket affecting players ability to build a long innings and the techniques of a lot of the crossover players (who play all formats) is really suffering. There needs to be a balance with white ball Cricket and I don't think we've found it yet.

One of the reasons I support my county team is because generally it's packed with local lads with the odd overseas star and a few players brought in from other counties. When you see the likes of Liam Livingstone starring for Birmingham Phoenix and Saqib Mahmood at Oval Invincibles it's just not the same. Add in the generally cr@p commentary teams (obviously put together to tick "diversity" boxes) and influx of Reality TV muppets acting as some sort of pitchside reporter and sorry but it doesn't really float my boat. And don't get me started on "Match Hero's"..... cringey AF!

T20/Hundred cricket worked as it took what was originally a 5-day game, then a game that lasted all-day, and made it into a 3-hour game.

Having a 2-hour game of RL isn't the problem. Cheapening it to a 7/8/9 player game would make the product worse. I don't think it'd attract any new fans.

If RL had the marketing campaign for a new structure that he Hundred had, it'd be a game-changer. Having both Sky and BBC going to bat for you, to use a cricket term, is a huge advantage . . . but also probably extremely expensive.

This bloke?
rlhttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/07/super-league-clubs-transformed-adam-pearson-hullrl
Talking out of his 'arris again....

Pearson shouldn't be allowed out to speak in public given how unformed, contradictory and damaging his comments too often are. Imagine working on the Hull media team trying to clear up this latest mess.

What a job he's done on selling the Hull derby, trampling all over the build up to it by talking the game down. What a genius.

He said if they don't win the club could be done, so at least its a high stakes game!

25,000 people at Lords for the finals.......
On the BBC siteThe crowds over the tournament's 31 days - attendances have been close to 90% of availability <snip> It's understood around 20% of the spectators across the tournament were children, a big jump on the Twenty20 Blast in recent years. A total of 21% of tickets sold were bought by women.'"

Agreed, well done to the ECB whilst RL continues to use covid as the reason why crowds are down.

I stopped right here, as I felt you'd nailed it.

I first watched Rugby League sevens in the 1960's and it was too short and too open, one speedster could win a game in minutes,

I saw the nines version at Wigan maybe sometime in the eighties. That was better.

80 minutes of action is fine, Cricket had to change as it was so slow and lacking much action, that was the problem.

For me RL set re-starts has been a smart change to Rugby League, but it's not just the rules that count, teams need to be even, and we salary capped to try to get this (albeit that could be tweaked to be better)

Pearson is showing himself up here, is he positioning himself to stomp out of the game? Reaity is we have changed our game many times to make it interesting, and you can see this via the comparison with Union, just how far we have gone in doing this.

I've been going regularly to RL games for decades. I don't have many decades left but will be going even more next season on.

I have only done a few games this last couple season directly because of COVID, same for many others, so why not wait until next season to actually see what the truth here is.

Crowds are down not just on the disease, the integrity of the league is down due to games being cancelled and players being unavailable due to erm....... "covid".........

Soccer has re-set just as restrictions are remvoved, we re-set in 2022 when we will see whether crowds go up or down.

I would not start praising the the ECB, fact is Cricket in it's true form has already died, and is being replaced by a speeded up version of baseball.

The aim is the boundary for every ball - exactly the same as baseball.

It's not cricket that has succeeded here. It's Baseball dressed up as cricket.

I take it you don’t watch much baseball with that comment.

Poor effort....even for a seasoned troll like you, that's just poor.
16k and change went to the Wigan saints derby....25 went to the "baseball" so let's slag off the organisers of the better attended event.....as I say....you're a poundland leaguefreak

Seen it live in San Fran, sure they hit short at times to get the runners round so it's got a bit more to it than the big slog, but the subject is how hundred cricket is somehow showing Rugby League up as staid and boring, again our game is always looking to rule change moves to avoid this. Recent positive changes are under the noses of people who like moaning about the game....Judge RL on a proper season, judge Hundred Cricket on the interest in a few years time..........