Society is a VERY different place to what it was 20 years ago when Summer rugby was in its infancy. When there are pranksters on YouTube with more followers than the population of the UK, it's kind of telling what youngsters are more interested in these days. Sport must be so far down the list of the social media generation's interests, I'd be surprised if it even registers.

Can I interest you in a mirror?

I absolutely agree with that. But where I think I'm at odds with some is that I think it is up to each and every club to make an equal contribution to that solution, rather than looking to the RFL to do it, or expecting bigger clubs to run at the pace of the slowest man.

The clubs should be investing in media training, they should be engaging with their communities and community clubs in their area better and they should be thinking much more carefully about whether a player who sticks his appendage into a dog's mouth is the sort of player who should be representing them.

The launch of Super League was all about the word you used - hype. It was about the event, the experience and something that people couldn't get elsewhere. But since then, we've stood still. We haven't progressed, we haven't developed that experience and we haven't tried anything new, because it has been cheaper not to and because it was easier to just let the RFL be the lighting rod. As a result, other sports have overtaken us.

That's the 'race to the bottom' that I talk about, and it's disapointing that some people want to take that observation and see it as an attack on their club. In truth, it's a commentary on any club that has failed to move on from the mid-late 90s, because that's ultimately why the sport is still struggling.

Whilst the clubs do hold individual responsibility, I dont agree with the race to the bottom and blaming the smaller clubs.
The round ball game seems to cope well enough with having unfashionable clubs in the top flight
When you compare Man U at the top averaging 75000 to Bournemouth 11182 or Burnley 20558
and in RL Leeds with 14418, with Salford 3842 and Widnes 5592 and yet, nobody calls out the smaller Football clubs for "holding the sport back" or a "race to the bottom".
In Football, they embrace the diversity of clubs with their different grounds and history.
Of course, they dont have the salary cap and this is probably where the biggest gripe is from supporters of Wigan and Leeds etc

As I said in a previous post, when you look at some of the crap that people become interested in, it boils down to clever publicity and marketing.
If we doubled the salary cap overnight and jettisoned the clubs with lower attendances, do you really think it would change ANYONE'S perception of the game, would it hell.
Time to stop looking for excuses and focus on the positives of the sport, a game played by the toughest athletes on the planet, a hard fought contact sport, with strength, skill, fitness etc, etc

Dont moan about what we haven't got, promote what we have, it's that simple and stop looking for gimmicks, which rarely last, and have a short, medium and long term plan for the game with some focus on lifting participation numbers at the bottom end 6,7,8 year olds.

Getting rid of the shoulder charge has had a huge negative impact on the game too.

Late, high and from behind shoulder charges were already banned which was correct. However, fair, firm and spectacular to watch shoulder charges should never have been banned. When you think, a player running with the ball can shoulder charge defenders at will but defenders cannot shoulder charge an attacker - that’s just stupid!

It’s taken a lot of excitement of big hits out of the game and is sorely missing!

The difference with your football comparison is that the smaller clubs in the Premier League are still largely selling out their venues, are still growing their clubs and aren't making concious voting decisions to reduce the spending power of those around them. The reason why I call it a race to the bottom is because it is easier for those chairmen who largely underwrite their club's losses - people like Hudgell, Davy and Carter - to vote in a way that minimises their liability. It's not in their interest to act in a way that potentially increases their cost base and/or makes them less competitive than those around them. It's why our players have had a £1m per club real-terms pay-cut imposed on them.

I've spoken plenty of times about the marketing of the sport and again, the bulk of the blame lies with the clubs. The RFL can come up with the best marketing concept imaginable, but it is ultimately the clubs that have to carry that concept and turn it into ticket sales, commercial revenue and cash in the club shop tills.

I've also said all along that this isn't necessarily an issue of "jettisoning" the "unfashionable" clubs. It's about making sure that every club is making an equal contribution to the growth and promotion of the sport. Every club should be promoting their games as well as each other, every club should understand how digital marketing works as well as each other, and every club should be delivering the sort of matchday experience that the modern leisure consumer is looking for. But we don't have that. We have some clubs who work hard, who innovate and who attract sponsors, and we have others who bumble along, can't generate commercial revenue, blame the RFL and point to their couple of hundred away fan following as some justification for being in Super League. We're not big enough and we can't generate enough to go around to for three, four or five clubs to carry the rest, and that's the big difference between us and football. The smaller clubs in RL need to contribute more.

The point you make about the strength and physicality aspect is interesting, because I wonder if that itself is a bit outdated. I've got a 14 month old and, when he's old enough, I'd love him to get involved in the sport if he wants to. I know that it's a great sport, is a safe sport, and can teach him a lot.

But I've already got the in-laws in my ear about he "he can't play rugby" and how he'll "get hurt". Now, it might be a bit hyperbolic at this age, but it is certainly worth the RFL exploring whether that sort of sentiment is some sort of elephant in the room behind our falling participation numbers. Look at the language that has surrounded contact sport in recent years - words like "concussion". "head injuries", "heart conditions", "defribulators" and to some extent, "depression" - these aren't the sorts of words that are going to encourage parents to drive their kid down to their local amateur club.

So instead of selling the strength and physicality, should we be focusing more on the speed, the skill and the guile? Should we be promoting forms of the games such as touch and tag much more, moving the emphasis away from "give it to the fat kid to charge through them" and encouraging skills such as ball handling and evasive running much more? I'd say it's worth looking at. Rugby Union certainly seems to have this right, where contact elements are introduced in later on, and different elements of the game introduced with each age group.

Sorry Bramley but, we're mixing messages there.
RL at the top level should be promoted based on it's speed, skill, contact, aggression and athleticism and there are plenty of advertising agencies that could put a decent promotional video together to make people sit up and take notice but, "we" just dont do this.
I'll gamble that Perez over in Toronto could find someone to do a great job but, for whatever reason, our sport just doesn't bother. The SL advert a couple of seasons ago, featuring Jonny Vegas, whilst slightly humorous, was embarrassing and it yet again "dumbed down" the sport and we should be doing the opposite.
Union has a higher profile and will draw more youngsters in on the back of this but, the drip feeding of contact seems to be designed so as to not scare the kids away, rather than reduce contact apart form the work on line outs, which only become truly competitive as the kids get to 15/16, with no lifting before this age.
Maybe something should be done to put more emphasis on skills, rather than power but this directive needs to come from "above", it cant be done by individual clubs.
As I said earlier, the shortage of "conscripts" has little to do with the game itself and is far more to do with modern society, which is far happier sticking their kids in front of a tv or tablet, than going to the trouble of taking little Johnny to the local sports club twice a week and then matchday at the weekend and this seems unlikely to change any time soon.
The negative stuff that you mention again, is again partly due to the lack of positive stuff that the RL "media machine" comes up with.
Certainly I dont think the risks in RL are any higher than Union, where the greatest risk of serious injury is in the scrum, something that is minimal in League.
Both codes will have their fair share of muscular, ligament and break's.

All sport should be sold on the social aspects, playing in a team, meeting people, fitness, etc, etc

Good post that wrencat. Unfortunately kids would rather get their “social kicks” from social media these days than actually, you know, meet people and converse in the flesh. Think that’s most sports are suffering from participation levels. It’s not just rugby league. The local football leagues near me are all dwindling, from the pub leagues down to kids leagues

Regards

King James

Tag/touch should replace contact up til u10 at least. Big kids coach will have to learn to teach him to pass. Get away from him celebrating that his team has half a dozen players physically 2 years older than the opposition and that's why they're winning 50 0 every week. Gets to u14s then starts to wonder why they're losing.

If you're that coach reading this, please stop it.

I agree that the top level should be based on skill and athleticism, but it shouldn't be done in a way that portrays RL as purely a sport for the big and the strong, because I have a suspicion that doing so does us something of a disservice. Rob Burrow is one of the most decorated players in the British game, and one of the very few that sound remotely eloquant with a camera in their face, but he's also someone who completely bucks that "only the big and the strong survive" narrative. If we want to attract more of the Rob Burrow type of player and less of the gurning, knuckledragging meat head type of players, I'd suggest that approach needs to change.



That's kind of my point. By softly introducing the contact elements of the sport, you make it easier for players of all sizes, strengths and skillsets to learn at the same pace, and for them to only experience the contact elements when there is less of a disparity in their physical development. That helps to encourage the players that aren't bigger or stronger, it creates a more reassuring environment for the parents, and it promotes skills development.



I agree. I know that RL, when played correctly, is a safe sport and as safe as any other contact sport. But we can't stick our heads in the sand to the conversation that is going on around contact sports and in particular, head injuries.

Broken arms and legs won't frighten most reasonable parents - most accept that you are as likely to suffer one of those as you are riding a bike or playing in the park. But head injuries? That's a different conversation entirely and one that we as a sport may have to adapt to.



Then that's down to the clubs to address. There are twelve full-time clubs in Super League, which means there are at least 12 people in Super League with the words "media", "marketing" or "Public Relations" in their job title. What on earth are they doing all day?



I don't dispute that is an issue, but new media and new ways for kids to fill their time have always emerged. I remember being a kid and hearing that the PlayStation 1 would be the death of youth sports and kids going outside.

And if there is an audience on a new form of media that we want to reach, then the obvious answer is to go to that media. If the kids are watching YouTube, let's make an RL game look like the place to be on a Friday night / Sunday afternoon and use pester-power to our advantage. You can reach an audience very cheaply on YouTube, and you can also focus your content on a very targeted demographic. So if, for example, Wakefield wanted to reach a mass of people of a certain age group in the Wakefield district with some content on YouTube that challenged perceptions of the sport and the club, it could do so very easily.

But oh, what's this? The rlWakefield Trinity Official YouTube channelrl hasn't been updated in seven months. SEVEN months, and not a single piece of content on one of the biggest media channels in the world, and one where supposedly our next generation of supporters and players are hanging out because they just spend their life on tablets and smartphones.

And this is why, whether it involves Jonny Vegas or not, it's not just about "an advert". It's about an end-to-end marketing and promotional approach where we set objectives, get the product right, and where we actually carry it through.

The RFL actually does some good work in this regard. It's digital content is better than anything that any of the clubs produce, and I've seen some of the development work behind the OURLEAGUE scheme; it's impressive - the sort of thing that if the RFU did it, we'd be asking "why isn't the RFL doing this?". But where the whole stack of cards falls down is the week-to-week promotion of the game, and who that week-to-week promotion reaches, because that absolutely falls on the clubs. They're the primary point of consumption, they're the ones who are (or should be) most actively engaging with their communities, they're the embodiment of the 'image' that we portray, and they're the ones who have the biggest influence on the product.

It should be a mix of both.
Tag/Tough massively improve passing and evasion skills and improve speed in all aspects of the game.
Regarding contact, it's a difficult one.
All RL players need to be able to tackle and players need to enjoy the contact side of the game.
However, when junior teams have a "beast" (early developer), the can become the focus of all the attacking play and these guys are difficult for the smaller players to deal with.
Although it would weaken the year that the should be playing in, maybe these players should be "moved up" a year and tested against players that are better equipped to deal with them. Maybe put a size limit on age group games (this will never happen but, you know where I'm coming from).
In cricket, which is a totally different sport with different physical needs, young players are advanced based on ability and it has little to do with age group.
Junior players, regularly play senior cricket, when they are ready nad apart from embarrassing a few adults and probably introducing them to the "social" side of things a little early, it works very well.

You need to keep up.

Since the introduction of Trinity TV (around 7 months ago) you have to subscribe to see the Trinity games and other media stuff so, the you tube channel is redundant and the Trinity fans have far more to keep themselves entertained on cold winter nights.

Perhaps they should do both but, clearly, they are wanting to steer people towards their subscription service.

Have you considered that Trinity may have better marketing people than you and maybe, just maybe, they have this one about right.
Having launched a subscription TV channel, it may not be in their interests to put all of their content on a zero revenue you tube site.

Once they have a decent number of subscriptions, then it may be wise to do both but, right now, they need to channel everyone towards TRinity TV, maybe you should try it, instead of yet more cheap shots at Trinity.

This thread is not about Wakefield anyway but, YOU chose to take a pot shot.
Back on topic though, Trinity will have plenty of sparkle this season and at least in some parts of the RL world the game is on the up

Increased crowds (albeit from a very low starting point, improved stability on and off the field, some of the most exciting youngsters coming through and improved league standing.
Plenty still to do but, definitely going in the right direction.

I've got no idea who is running the marketing at Wakefield. I've made some observations, and that's that. If Wakefield are making a success of their subscription service, then all power to them. My suggestion is about reaching and engaging new audiences - something which you said was difficult in the YouTube / tablet era, and I've highlighted one way in which this could be tackled. If the intention of Wakefiled at this present time isn't about new audiences but instead, monetising the ones they have, then that's their decision.


I'm not taking a cheap pot-shot at Wakefield in the slightest. My argument is that the clubs carry the biggest burden for marketing the sport, and I highlighted the activity of your club as I figured this would be the most relatable. There are examples of bad or lazy marketing at all clubs - including the one I support.