It's simple really when you think about it, union has been learning off league, they've stolen our coaches and players, they've looked at all our innovations and matched or improved on them.

We know our on field product is superior, it's vastly more entertaining.

So what is the solution, merge League and Union, have our game and their. ..well their everything else.

We then have a huge number of players to pick from , clubs all over the country One game we can all unite on, our own national stadium.

Union doesn't pull in big sponsors because they are innovative or forward thinking , it's because they wear the same old school ties as the CO's of top blue chip company's while RFL struggle to get appointments with the marketing arm of the jaffa cake factory down the road. Nothing to do with know how but who you know.
Lord Farqar Quentin III is not going to put a dime into Rugby League.

Without doubt some truth in that, however if we just accept that as the reason, we'll never get anywhere

It's not just that. That's the lazy, chip on the shoulder excuse. It's about what the company's get in return. What does a major multinational get from sponsoring British Rugby League? Access to a couple of hundred thousand TV viewers alot of whom are based a handful of postcodes in the poorer areas of the country? That's the reality. Football attracts big sponsors - not many of their people went to top public schools.

Acceptance of this ^^^^^^^is what is killing the game.

Gillette are a P&G brand by the way......regardless of how much or how little they paid, they are all over the England RL shirt.....there is nothing stopping other big names being engaged, even if it is initially for small amounts of cash. Emirates were linked with Leigh for a while IIRC and have hooked up with wire now.....Carlsberg Tetley are hardly minnows of the brewing world (probably)....the "names" are out there, it's the people RL entrusts to engage them that are the problem!

We are all of us lying in the gutter......but some of us are looking at the stars!

Ambition, determination and a certain amount of aggression/passion are what are needed at Red Hall.....look at a picture of Nigel Wood and tell me if you see any of those traits?

While our ( Leigh ) support by Emirates was due to the CEO originating from the town, we did get it by sending an e mail, pure and simple, this year our primary shirt sponsor is O 2, yes it will be prefixed by the local store, but ultimatly it must have been sanctioned by head office

If you dont ask, you dont get

I would ask the question, has the RFL contacted every RL club ( SL and Championships ) to provide a list of every ' Brand ' company within 5 miles of every club ?

Surely that would be the 1 st thing you would do , I'm sure some ' Names ' would crop up on every list and they would be the primary ports of call

The 80's called, they want their argument back...

do you run a correspondence course on internet forum etiquette and if so, where do I sign up?

Did you not watch Harrow school documentary on sky 1 ?
everything they do there is to do with 100 year old traditions (no league tables) to the point i was beginning to think what possible advantage there was in paying tuition fees to go to a school that does't seem to prepare their students for the modern world more like isolates them from it, then came the episode were top Directors came to see the students in their final year with job offers. And it wasn't to flip burgers!
These top Directors were old Harrovian's throwing a golden carrot like they got before them, they want like minded people to come on bored from the same background as them like the old estate owning Gentlemen passing down their worldly goods to their son and heirs.
A few days later The prime minister David Cameron commented Business leaders should go to comprehensives to seek out talent and not just go to the top private Schools, this was debated on loose women(wasn't watching, it just happened to be on while i was doing something else) it was obvious they hadn't watched the Harrow Doc as they missed the hole point David Cameron was making. as someone said, they didn't need a leg up and he was just being patronising to the working class.

Businesses sponsor sport not just for commercial reasons. They give millions to charities as well as sport to give something back for ethical reasons (you get behind a community the community gets behind you) and if your going to give something back you do it for things you care about. The only sport in England that is still divided by class is Rugby , Football is a bad example of a sport that has broken down barriers that don't exist and the premier league has over a billion pounds of debt anyway.
When Union turned professional kicking and screaming it looked to football for ideas how to run a professional sport and every idea they adopted was a unmitigated disaster, only then they looked to League.

I remember writing a letter to Open Rugby magazine and the RFL at age 14 on Rugby League policy , i mentioned the game should switch to summer and make more of an occasion on game day with cheerleaders mascots fireworks fireeaters jugglers big screen tv's rock bands , i mentioned dropping the county cups and the Regal trophy, changing the contract system, adopting a end of season play-off with a grand final ,having minimum standard for facility's to be in the stones bitter championship as it was then called.
The Magazine just published an extract on summer Rugby, but i got a very nice letter from the RFL going over every point i made and either said they wouldn't do this or that and why or said they were considering this or that idea but under another format to what i proposed, that was 28 years ago and everything in that letter has since come true. So i am more forward thinking than the most forward thinking and innovative sport in the country. I got idea's coming out of my ears how to grow the game but i'm not sharing them on here to get ripped apart from the "your a backward thinking flat cap wearing pigeon fancier" just because i see no future in wasting time and money trying to ram our game down the throats of those who for cultural and class reasons despise it.

Doesn't change a thing regarding your earlier sweeping statements though, but I am sure you felt a sense of overwhelming wellbeing typing that.

No comment on the working class roots of association football and their apparent refusal to stick to your stereotypical pigeon holing as a downtrodden non posh sport? Oh, that's right, because it has crossed the divide, you declare it as a "bad example"

By the way...good on you for getting it right 28 years ago. Having the foresight to see PSG, Crusaders, London, Wakefield, Widnes, Bradford, Salford, Sheffield, Gateshead and a pile of other clubs go to the wall (or near to it) was insightful and I am stunned you haven't been snapped up by the RFL to pave the way for the next super 28 years. It is a shame that your future plans don't seem to involve expansion, but I have no doubt that in 28 years RL will be a predominantly northern English sport that struggles in comparison to the other codes of football....and you can smugly claim that you saw it all coming AGAIN

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wiki is saying this ridiculous idea for a match is going ahead next year and even gives a date. Have I missed something?

no...you are correct, it is in Wiki

Leak it
Deny it
Do it

Hegelian Dialectic. Works wonders in politics of all kinds.

A surprising amount of sports sponsorship is based on either individual or political agendas. A company I previously worked for spent a lot on hockey for several years, because the CEO was a hockey fan. They never gave the sport a cent before or after his time. The previous CFO had been a big Union fan and we sponsored the Wallabies for a while (not the major sponsor but doling out plenty of cash).