63,000 tut tut thought they could sell every game out the world cup should be fun with half empty stadiums apart from the only real teams they have nz eng,jocks,paddy's, taffs, frogs,convicts the rest are joke nations,have anyone seen nz group good God looks like they will hit 100 pts most games how did Judas do? Were all the little fat men crying if he tackled to hard.....swing low sweet chariots plenty of empty seats swing low sweet chariot

Good god man, I'm no fan of rugby union either but that is one hell of a chip on your shoulder.
They got 63k for a warm up game, RL will never get that. Ever.

I mean as far as union games go it wasn't even that bad, some nice tries and decent handling.
It's the stoppages, scrums and penalty conversions that ruin it as a spectacle for me.

That could apply to the 3 posts preceding it. RWC 2015 is estimated by Bloomberg to make World Rugby/IRB £150,000,000 , going by the frothing-at-the-mouth posts of Jesus-is-coming (very apt, definitely has a messiah complex) he obviously thinks that is a failure. That means he is admitting that RL is, has and always will be a failure as it will never have that type of profit from the International game, let alone the stadiums, infrastructure or international reach. The bitterness is obviously eating away at him, maybe he should seek divine help

Share it out to all their member clubs and DEVELOPMENT!!!!!!!!!!

This really needs moving to the other sports forum or the mods are just leaving the VT wide open for Gutterfax and his multiple user accounts ( How many now, 4, 5?) to troll this place non stop when the world cup starts.

Re Burgess, I watched the first 5 minutes last night, that was enough for me. Life's too short. I've tried and have given RU more chances than any other sport but it just bores me to death. Watching lots of obese public schoolboys constantly dropping the ball, passing it forward or kicking to touch whilst running around pretending to be elite sportsmen isn't for me. Apparently Sam made the type of tackle you see multiple times in every SL game last night, wow.

They've got more money and get bigger crowds though, just like lots of other sports I dislike. Just wanted to acknowledge that before Jim or Galliant or one of his other alter egos pipe up and call me bitter or something.

'Bitter'? No, if you continually watch a sport that you claim to dislike i'd call you 'obsessed' Funny thing is Mr Chuchill started this whole thread of jealousy and bitterness by watching a sport he claimed to 'dislike', just like you. What a coincidence. You are even teeing up each others posts on the first page of this thread in a mutual love-in. It's almost if you have 2 accounts

I just watched the highlights. As RU games go, it wasn't bad. England's wingers both looked sharp and scored three good tries. Sam did OK, but must learn that unlike in league, union refs dish out yellow cards at the drop of a hat.

The Union World Cup is going to generate £150m. As against £8bn for the Olympics and £4.8bn for the FIFA World Cup?

I thought it was supposed to be watched 4 billion people worldwide? Seems someone at the IRB must be doing a terrible job of selling it if it only generates such a pitiful sum.

RU World Cup is still small potatoes compared with a host of other huge multinational events including
FIFA World Cup
UEFA European Cup
Olympic Games
Winter Olympics
Commonwealth Games
Gay Games
Firemans Games

and quite a lot of Continent based multi national events like The Africa's Cup etc

Don't get fooled by the hype machine employed by the IRB!

Give up for Christ sake.

RU WC is a huge event. Maybe not FIFA world cup soccer but many many times bigger than anything RL could ever dream of.

They wont have games at Workington, Gloucester, Rochdale...... with commentators slavering at the mouth because 8k have turned up.

This will be a massive event, with massive crowds and massive viewing figures. The volunteers out number some of the crowds the RL WC got!

Ha Ha,
Go do your research fella or don't, it bothers me not either way!

Ignorance is bliss!

I watched it for a short while; when they spent 5 minutes waxing lyrical because Sam Burgess tackled someone, complete with multiple replays, I switched it off.

There is no denying the popularity, excellent marketing and buckets of cash that slosh around RU, but it's a shockingly poor spectacle for the most part; rather than feel bitter about RU, I feel disappointed in RL - with the right people in charge, RL could be making significant headway into grabbing some of that attention.

RU isn't more popular and richer because it objectively has a better product; it clearly hasn't. 'The right people in charge' would help a little, but the reasons for league's weaknesses vis-a-vis union are well-rehed here, and they are largely geographical, social, and, yes, if you will, political.

Is that the same IRB/World Rugby whose 7s competition (which is at next years Olympics ironically) was blatantly copied by RL in its 9s format? World Rugby must be doing a good job if RL needs to nick its ideas eh? And you think £150m is 'pitiful'? What does that make the RLWC profit of £2m look like? And that was considered a success on here