Still think it should be where you first played as a professional, the 'outside' the UK criteria could stop players playing here because their parents were abroad serving in the forces or working for a company abroad. It would be a bit unfair to prevent a lad being classed as a British player at 18 because his dad was working in Abu Dhabi at the time of his birth, he may have been living in the UK for 17 of those years and never been to another RL playing country.

I presumed he was referring to Ben Galea.

Is it? In what way? How can having a strong national team be bad for rugby league?


Of course. But across the country not just across the M62. Why should people in the south choose to play RL instead of cricket, football, union, tennis etc especially when they're never exposed to it in it's elite form except for occasionally seeing a bit about the Cup Final and when England lose to Australia again.



Why?


Except it doesn't have popularity. It's popular in Hull, Leeds and Wigan and a few small towns. It exists, thats about all you can say for League.


In what way? I assume you know of untapped sources of funding for this marketing that you yearn for? The RFL do regular emails, mail shots, billboards and have even advertised on TV, something which, IIRC, no other major sporting governing body has done before.

if a flat earther had wrote that i would expect him to ripped to pieces by at least a dozen people who post on the board,you included.

While it is off topic, I cannot agree with the endorsement on the health of the Premier League

As with all markets, Association Football goes through periods of boom and recession – they have been in the former for the past decade or two. The problem they have is that some clubs (Man City, Chelsea etc) are immune to commercial pressures due to their financial backers and others are striving to keep up and racking up mountains of debt in the process (I am sure that nearly all of them would vote for a salary cap!)

The assumption that the Premier League is a commodity that will always be over consumed was put seriously in doubt over the last 7 days with thousands of seats empty at Anfield and many empty at Stamford Bridge (I won’t even start on the DW)

I believe that the next few years will see the commercial house of cards that is professional football in the UK come crashing down and several clubs (including Premiership ones) going to the wall

Why? Have I suggested it should stay that way? Is rugby league popular outside of those areas?

You may well be right, or will more wealthy backers simply come in and prop up those clubs. The Man City's & Chelsea's are only the same as Hull KR, Quins etc who rely on wealthy benefactors to prop up that club whilst running large losses. If they had to break even then the likes of KR, Quins etc would have to drastically reduce spending.

Either way, to compare Super League to the Premier League in the context of needing a strong national team was still a bit stupid.

it becomes an m62 game again.

Only if you misunderstand what they are saying, Nobody has said there wouldn't be a tv contract without a presence down south, they've said the contract would be smaller. I think that's pretty well established that without Quins the Sky TV contract would be smaller that it currently is. However, that doesn't mean the sport is popular down south. It quite obviously is dwarfed by football and union.

How is it a contradiction to say that the game is "popular" in Leeds, Wigan and Hull plus a few small towns but the sport is growing down south? Still small, but growing.

it mght be dwarfed by those two sports and it might still be a growing sport,but it must still be popular.
theres a 30 year old club with a SLE licence,theres a semi pro club, RL is in all the schools,1000s play at amateur level, the sky tv deal is dependent on it.
how can it not be popular?.

You may be correct.

According to [url=http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/sport/HULL-KR-RFL-happy-Mason-quota/article-3060965-detail/article.html[uthis[/u[/url Mason is Federation trained. So when Ben Galea finally comes off quota with his Maltese passport Rovers, amazingly, will still have an overseas place available, so 11 foreign players is deffo still on the cards.

So have we gone full circle with the Kolpak (type) loopholes that the Non-fed rules were supposed to close if we're saying people who clearly are non-fed trained now can be classed as Fed trained?