To someone who hasn't seen the game before, the Salford match would have been a great one to have as an introduction because it had all the qualities of a highly entertaining game: running rugby, tries, end to end play, the lead changing hands and a tense final quarter with an extra tense finish. A noob would have no clue as to the rules or what 'good defence' should look like. I would imagine any noobs to rugby watching the Salford match would have been instantly converted to the sport.

Maybe. But I can imagine equally imagine the backbone of the game's support flicking their TV off in droves rather than watch a game with little intensity and hardly any effort at defending at all.

I'm not one to slag the game off. I love this sport and watch as much of it as I can. But that was a terrible game, and whilst the result was in doubt until the end the fairest result would have been for both teams to lose.

Right now in football's Premiership the bottom 2 are playing....both still have a slim chance of survival. Reading the text commentary on BBC website though the words 'woeful' 'dreadful' and 'like watching paint dry' have been used to describe it.

Salford vs Cas was a contest between two bottom of the table teams......what did people actually expect??.......Let me guess, back in the day when the bottom 2 clashed it was like watching Australia vs New Zealand.

And what's funny is that if these 2 teams were in the Championship or some SL2 you would have people complaining if Sky didn't have no interest in showing a potential top of the table clash.

> what did people actually expect?

Some effort? Maybe? A big ask I know...

Is there no effort involved in every high scoring game then?

I give up. If that's the kind of game you all want and are willing to defend then you're welcome to it.

I prefer a 10-8 game over a 34-30 any day. There were plenty of mistakes last night from both sides. I just don't see where your 'lack of effort' angle is coming from.

Best game I've ever seen was a 1-0 game

Tension was unreal

Not saying it was the best game ever and Salford and Cas' defending was shambolic (not helped by lack of stability at both clubs at present) but if you think there was a lack of effort you obviously didn't see Salford defend those sets on their own line at the end. It wasn't lack of effort, just lack of structure.

Summed it up in one!

You're right, I didn't. I was probably putting the kettle on.

However people argue the point, for any newbie flicking through & witnessing such a sp attendance would be like me coming across a non-league football game.

If they happened to get past the semi-professional looking theatre, the game would have been entertaining, probably like me watching a six-all goal fest in some obscure sub-division.

To the purists, that game was awful, the refereeing was awful & the attendance was abysmal for a game in the “so called” Super League.

I appreciate it was the bottom two teams, but for people to say “what do you expect” well, I expect just a tad more effort, but to be fair to the players – what’s the point?

For a start, the domestic season is over for both of them & it’s only April!

One team is going to be dissected in the next few months, no matter how much effort they put in & the other lot doesn’t know how the future will pan out, only their “go to” man is being jettisoned to reduce the wages bill.

However, the greatest irony is – No worries lads, at least you won’t suffer the ignominy of relegation, a spur if ever there was one to give that extra five percent.

Good luck to Salford they deserve a bit of good fortune, however, if the Doc thinks everything will be rosie in a couple of years, he’d better think again, lets hope he’s a philanthropic as Mr Hughes.

3,686 at fev vs fax today

I know its a complicated concept to grasp, but the 'crowd watchers' like Rugby League too. Its just that they have this bit of insight - something noticeably bad is happening to attendances this year, and it threatens to diminish the sport. And no, it doesn't threaten the *existence* of the game, it doesn't mean the world will end, but it's not good. If you care about the game its not in the slightest bit unnatural to express concern and alarm at *some* of the attendances this year. If you just enjoy Rubgy League, great, you don't have the slightest thing to worry about, because even if the overpaid clowns at the RFL remain in charge for years, you'll still have amateur games to watch.

I haven't seen the game yet but from what I am hearing this is all very symbolic of the wider problems within Super League, that being that there are too many clubs/teams/players that are just not up to scratch, combined with very little to play for for most teams. Realistically even the mid table teams know that they're only going to make it in to the play-offs to act as warm-ups for the top teams in the first round, before Leeds and Warrington get down the business of deciding who will play Wigan in the final. To sit there aiming digs specifically at Salford and Castleford is to miss the point entirely.