Again best to get your facts correct, in terms of population the NRL has a greater national reach of clubs as afl has NO clubs outside of capital cities.

Good to see your embarrassed by rugby unions slow death in Australia and rl's dominance and are now switching to another code to take a pop at RL, classic trolling.

AFL has teams in more states than the NRL. It also has a crowd average that is over double that of the NRL and gets bigger TV viewing figures across the board.....that's why you roll out 3 midweek pantomime games as a defence

BTW, I used AFL purely to show that the NRL isn't as dominant as some misguided posters on here would like us all to believe......the state you live in his a couple of AFL sides does it not? Oh...and a S15 side as well. How many NRL teams are there in WA?

You know, I'm starting to think people on these boards see being passionate about rugby league as a crime. Being positive about it is punishable by death (by very long, convoluted posts that do nothing but reiterate the original point, in more words.)

The sport may boom or bust, but at the end of the day were all (well most) here because rl is the sport we love.

People should be applauded for hounding the media, tv, whoever for trying to make them listen to what's important, not sneered at. Without people emailing journalists telling them how wrong they are then status quo remains.

Oh, and I couldn't give a stuff what the Irish rugby union figures are

What's important?
Important to whom? The OP made it clear that in their opinion, the Guardian were wrong to not only exclude the RLWC semi-final but that they compounded their error by including the Union game that didn't feature England.

Opinions are like s, as in we all have one, but the opinions that matter most here is that of both the owners and editorial team at the Gruardian, together with their readers opinions too.

Nobody is knocking Rugby League. What is happening is that childish and idiotic enthusiasm is being reigned in. The BBC have taken RL off their sports landing page tabs, the Times, Telegraph, Indy, Guardian, Observer, Mail, mail on Sunday, express and other non-redtops will continue to give RL little in the way of coverage because it isn't of interest to their readers.

To childishly demand attention BECAUSE YOU LIKE SOMETHING is idiotic in the extreme. It is the responsibility of the RFL as well as the clubs, players and fans to spread the word. Get the attendances up. Get the viewing figures up. Get the NATIONAL sponsors on boards THEN and only then will the press and other media give the game some people on here demand as a god given right.
And before anyone pipes up with the "why does Union get it" argument, they get it because the y sell 80,000 tickets to an international in a heartbeat, get 1 million viewers on Pay TV and will shift the better part of 2.5 million tickets to their RWC in 2015 without the need for double headers. ALL of their competition will be available on FTA TV.......as in on ITV, not access TV and 2 years out, the venues, sponsors, KO times and pricing is already known! They know how to play the media game.

Lol S15, one team for the whole of nsw and their crowds are what?

Afl is doing better than NRL on a number of markets, but it has had a 16 year head start. This year is the first year the NRL has been on an equal footing, let's see what smith and the ArLC do with the new found freedom and wealth to run the game properly.

If RL was killing RU with both hands tied imagine the state of union in a few years now the NRL is cashed up and free to make decisions for the good of the game.

Let the good times roll!

On the field, we all agree that League is the better sport....I spent 2 hours debating this with the former coach of Ulster RFC last night and believe I actually got him to concede (very drunk towards the end)....but off the park, Union is ing light years ahead......LIGHT YEARS!

Rugby Union in the UK gets more money from its TV deal...twice as much, has a number of sponsors paying top dollar including Aviva paying £4,000,000 a year for the naming rights to the premiership. Heineken say they will have invested £100,000,000 in Union between 1995 and 2015.
Saracens, a nomadic club that relies on big event games to raise their pitiful averages gets £1,500,000 a year for sponsorship and naming rights to the ground, the RFU can shift 80,000 tickets in a heartbeat starting at £35.00 a pop. Rugby Union in the UK own touch rugby......something the NRL and Australians think is a big thing given the hard on they got when they did they same thing down under last year.

Internationally?
1954-2013 RLWC's = 2,929,743 fans in attendance over 14 competitions. The last RLWC in 2013 will deliver a $5,500,000 pay day for the RLIF.

The last 2 Rugby World Cups alone have delivered 3,740,517 fans in attendance and $200,000,000 to the IRB in HOSTING RIGHTS ALONE

458,483 attended 28 games over the RLWC 2013.
276,036 Watched 5 Australian Union friendlies over the same period.....233,193 watched the All Blacks in their 4 friendlies....509,229 attending friendlies where tickets cost slightly more than £7.50 each

Really?
the last 2 RWC's got 3,740,000 over 96 games...not one of them was in London......the IRB got $200,000,000 in hosting rights alone with $0 from London....Take London from the Aussie and All Black games this autumn just gone and add South Africa's 191,368 over 3 games and you still get more than the entire RLWC attendance.....are Dublin, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Paris to blame as well

Outside of the Warriors, RL in New Zealand isn't within touching distance of Union. It gets less fans and less viewers than Netball...the Auckland 9's will be a big fancy dress party (jafas always wanted the 7's from Wellington) and it will boost participation numbers in touch, but the reality is that more people got up at 2am to watch the Union friendlies than bothered with the RLWC final......this is a Union country. As starbug will tell you, RL has a bad reputation in NZ with gangs settling scores both on and off the pitch.....it will take generations to sort that out.

The NRL and RLIF would be better placed strengthening the islands. Tonga, Samoa and Fiji, together with PNG would be where I'd concentrate.........get these countries competitive and capable of beating Australia and New Zealand and THEN you'll get the same level of support that Union does.

Clearly, you've never been to NZ.

RU in NZ is the dominant religion.

RL in NZ is an afterthought which registers a mere 0.0000001 on the richter scale of interest.

Actually RU is in all sorts of trouble in NZ. Sadly I don't see anything so far from the NRL to suggest they will use their squillions and self determination to make a big push into NZ. At least not for a decade or so. The next expansion will be Perth and Brisbane, after that we may see another NZ club admitted but that will be a lot of years away.

In the ideal world the nzrl would have got a place at the arlc table when it took over the game in Australia and the $20mill+ the NRL gets from sky NZ (minus the Warriors $7mill grant) would be given to the nzrl to have a real crack at growing the game over there.

Quote: William Eve " RL in NZ is an afterthought which registers a mere 0.0000001 on the richter scale of interest.'" 2012: 35,721 registered players 1,869 teams 159 clubs Considering the nzrl is run on an oily rag I'd say it's not doing badly, it's only a slightly fewer player number than NSWRL rugbyleague2013.nrl.com/PDF/NRL- ... e-2013.pdf

Quote: William Eve " RL in NZ is an afterthought which registers a mere 0.0000001 on the richter scale of interest.'" 2012: 35,721 registered players 1,869 teams 159 clubs Considering the nzrl is run on an oily rag I'd say it's not doing badly, it's only a slightly fewer player number than NSWRL rugbyleague2013.nrl.com/PDF/NRL- ... e-2013.pdf

Somewhat akin to your ramblings on this forum then.