The RFU make regular financial losses....... A loss attracts less tax. As for hush money...... Its hardly news that the RFU are as corrupt And ruthless an organisation as you could find...... But christ on a bike they run their game with assurance and Confidence that we will never have in league....
.... I wonder how many pies we had to give big nige to keep shtum when he left....

Nigel Wood left with a huge payout

Plenty I'm sure, but I guess it goes to show the sports can be very similar in some ways. The RFU certainly isn't whiter than white or wholly "rub by successful and admirable competent administrators and people with vision" as Joff/RLRealist put it so well.

Bristol Bears (yes that is a new animal themed name in 2018!) have sold 25K tickets for their return to the Premiership. Helped of course by clever scheduling in getting them to play Bath (sorry Barrrrth) from down the road.

the fact a yo-yo RU team can attract a bigger crowd than the SL record in their first game says it all about the difference in marketing skills and budget between the two sports.

Rugby League doesn't do marketing.

So you believe RL is a well run as RU do you??

We do sport.... They do professional business...... Ergo we will soon be extinct and they will continue turd polishing of the highest degree and making money..... Tickets for England v the all Black's later this year are changing hands for over a grand....... A flipping grand...... But let's all laugh at the fat boys eh..

As a game we had a short window of opportunity to become a national sport when Sky First started to bank role is and union were in a disorganised change over to professionalism. Since then union has looked at our model and seen what worked and what did not.
Look at the state of the London experiment, what would have happened if we had not panicked because London/Fulham were only getting 9000 on? Perhaps we were too risk averse and we should have parachuted new teams into expansion areas and backed them to the hilt. Of course it is not my money that I am spending.

It does not need to, it has the heartlands the lifeblood of the sport, all they have to do at Featherstone, Leigh, Oldham etr is open the gates and 10-12000 people flood out of the mines and factories and into the RL ground on a Saturday afternoon. The heartlands are the lifeblood this is what props the game up, why waste money on expansion and marketing when we have 100's of thousands of hardcore fans turning out every week.

Sarcastic @@@@

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Which mines might those be then??? Not heard of May opening salt mines in Cumbria or West Yorkshire! "


Which mines might those be then??? Not heard of May opening salt mines in Cumbria or West Yorkshire!

You do realise that those crowd figures include a regular round match played at Twickenham. London Irish for example didnt get many crowds last season over 4k yet had an average of 12k which was bumped up due to a 55k crowd at Twickenham. Same with Harlequins, Bath & Saracens. They all have crowds registered above 50k. Take away the Twickenham crowds which totalled 6 games and you'll see rugby unions reported average attendance for the league drop by almost 3000.

Good point.

This is satire?? Surely?? Then again....