Rugby League in the UK will always sadly be regarded as the poorer relation of Rugby Union.

Unless you live somewhere near Leeds, Manchester or Hull there is a very real chance you will probably have hardly ever heard of the game.

Every time it's on the TV (unless its a big game like Wigan v St Helens) you are greeted with rows and rows of empty seats and less atmosphere than you find in outer space. It looks shocking on TV.. god knows how bad it must be to actually pay and experience it 'live'.

The Crusaders v Catalans game is on TV right now. If you added up all the players and all the Police that seem to be in the ground they would out number the crowd.

Yesterdays offering was Warrington v Huddersfield. Slightly more fans but still a very sp crowd.

Harlequins v Saints. I shudder to think how many have gone along.


Bath v Leeds Carnegie was on yesterday on telly. Massive crowd, great atmosphere.


Barry McKenzie thinks England/GB need to win a major trophy.

AND FAST.

Unless the game of Rugby League can do something to increase the general publics perception of it then surely the game is doomed.

Look at the interest in cricket after England won the Ashes.

Or athletics and other Olympic sports after GB did well at the Beijing Olympics.


The one small problem regarding England/GB winning a major trophy in footy is the standard of the opposition.

The ANZAC test the other night plus the NRL that is now thankfully being broadcast over here shows that the gulf between northern hemisphere RL and Southern is as wide as it ever has been.

I don't think England winning the four nations or even the world cup will made a massive difference to RL in the UK. Crowds to the internationals would certainly increase, but club crowds are largely dictated by the clubs themselves.

Everyone loves it when their country wins a major trophy though.

If GB/England won the World cup it would do more for footy in this country than trying to set up clubs in Wales and London ever will achieve.

Wrong and not just for your pretentious use of the third person instead of I.

There's a few home truths about RL that we all need to admit to and I'm going to be the unpopular one who points them out.

You say RL is treated like a poor relation. Do you hear the alarm ringing? Time to wake up. We ARE a poor relation in this country. Unlike Australia, our heartland in this country has to compete with the Premier League and football in general. So massive crowds are just not on the agenda right now. Especially as the world cup is this summer.

You pick Crus and Les Cats as an example of a poor crowd. Hello? You've a club that's still building it's fan base playing at home against a team that has to come from several thousand miles away. You can't expect the crowds for a home game against them to be massive as the average people in this world don't have money for 17 plane flights and hotels every year. Anyone with half a brain could spot that one.

You also mention the Leeds union game. That would be a game which had a result which would determine play-off spots in union's league. Slightly more important than who wins goes into the next stage of a cup competition. Yes, that's my second home truth, the challenge cup is just not that important to fans any more. The final is a different matter, but the actual road to Wembley for RL fans? Not a particularly interesting one. If you doubt me, check the crowds. Personally I think this is a shame as we only have 2 major trophies on offer in this country and it'd be nice if the cup's importance was enhanced.

As for international RL, England/GB winning something will not gain any sustained interest.
You mention cricket after england won the ashes, people only care while the ashes are being played.
Or the Olympics, yes that generated so much interest in those sports we won the gold medals in (what were those again?)

Going on to the ANZAC test and the NRL, I refer back to my earlier comment regarding the Premiership. Football in this country takes the majority of young lads who might have made decent RL players. Young lads are given players like Rooney or Gerard to idolise and it's not just their skills, it's the £100k a week wages. RL can't afford to compete with the sort of money that football has.

The best thing that can be done is for the RFL to go in at a grassroots level. And by that I mean that we push the game in the heart lands. Everyone decries the fact that the game is based round the M62 corridor, but no-one seems to mention that along that corridor lives a LARGE majority of the people in this country.
If the RFL went round and offered schools in the heartland areas grants and free equipment as well as the occasional appearance of a couple of SL stars then we'd have a chance of hooking kids into the game at an early age. If you can hook in the kids, then you get the parents who have to take the kids to the games, you get the siblings who go along as well. And from that you can grow fan bases and hopefully make those sustainable fan bases.

Personally, I see international RL as it stands as only a tacted on extra at the end of the season and it should not be a focus until SL clubs can be brought up to a good standard. There's countless threads on here about this club's crowds and the club's crowds. Crowds and their growth should be a priority for SL and the RFL, but it shouldn't be a case of "this club can't get big enough crowds, we should kick them out the league" . It should be "this club can't get big enough crowds, what can be done to help them improve this situation?" There's no reason that I can see why, with the right marketing strategy, SL clubs can't manage average of 10k crowds.

Yes the crowds are greater in Aus but how an "Aussie" complain when the majority of NRL games are played in front of masses of empty seats?

If England did win a trophy there still wouldn't be the media coverage that would get a mass increase in people following the game.

I noticed the third person things. In some sentences its I, and in others its Barry McKenzie. Make up your mind will you.

But only Wigan and Hull have PL football to directly compete with, 5 months of the SL season there is no PL football.

"You pick Crus and Les Cats as an example of a poor crowd. Hello? You've a club that's still building it's fan base playing at home against a team that has to come from several thousand miles away. You can't expect the crowds for a home game against them to be massive as the average people in this world don't have money for 17 plane flights and hotels every year. Anyone with half a brain could spot that one."

Last time I checked Perpignan was less than 1000 miles from Wrexham, added to that the UK has a higher french population than any city in France with the exception of Paris. The bigger driver for poor Catalan travelling attendence is to how tickets are distributed for home games and the fact they do not like to travel. As for Crusaders since their first game their attendences have dive bombed, despite performing far better on the pitch than last season. Despite all the people getting excited about the first home game their attendences are going to be not much more than when they were in Bridgend.



So a place in the play offs[would have been a very big shock if they did not make the playoffs], is greatly more important than a place in the quarter finals of the longest running pro RL competition in the world ? Bath would have got the same crowd for a meaningless mid table fixture with nothing at stake.




The only city of importance where RL has a strong presence is Leeds [Hull is not of much importance], Manchester and Liverpool it hardly registers. Greater London alone would account for more people than the heartlands.



If that was true Quins crowds would be ballooning right now, if anything they are decreasing; so looks like that approach would not work.

The thing about Catalan is they're not french. I know we call them that, but it's like calling an irishman and a scotsman.

Yes, Leeds is the only major city with an RL presence, however Manchester, Liverpool, Blackburn and Bolton are all have premier league football sides, some more than 1, and all those sides have fans living in the heartlands and all those heartland clubs have to compete with premier league teams in terms of attracting fans

I did say the right marketing strategy. Clearly quins don't seem to have any strategy to get new fans/converts from union beyond sharing a stadium and colours with a union club

and as for population, the m62 corridor has approx 6.2 million people living along it where as greater london has round about 7 million. not a huge difference

The RFL don't do anything to promote the international game, they are only interested in the domestic game.
They always seem to go out of there way to give the impression that the Professional Rugby Clubs are run by an Amateur Administration Body.
Its as though when the clubs went full professional for Superleague, the RFL remained static and didn't move forward.

Excellent comments mate,totally agree with you,the RFL should get stuck into the heartlands and maybe say10-20 years time we will see some improvement not just in the crowds but also the standard of play.Don't get me wrong i am totally for expansion,but get your own house in order first.

Not true mate,here in St.Helens rugby is pretty big but a lot of kids(inc adults)love football as well,esp Liverpool and Man Utd.

firstly rugby, be it league or union in the uk is very much a secondary sport to football. not a primary sport as it is in AUS

secondly bath v leeds had 11700 there, a good crowd but hardly massive and certainly nothing that does not happen in superleague every week.

thirdly apart from being very embarrassing (given the much bigger emphasis on RL over there) for the aussies to lose to england. in the same way it was a few years ago when they beat us at football. not a great deal would change. fleet street would not be camped on adrian morleys doorstep trying to snap a picture for the front pages.

this is a football mad island. and RL is only popular in small pockets up and down the country. it might be everything to us but on the whole the nation could not give a monkeys.

Big Graeme will be along with a FFS shortly. Don't you know promoting the game in the heartlands is down to the clubs, but promoting expansion is down to the RFL even though clubs have failed in London and Wales before.

And Leeds who are competing with a club with premier league attendances.

though look at the corollary, the three biggest teams by attendance all are in the same city as a large football team. Its naive to say that football takes away attendances, it doesnt really, what it takes is a lot of players

They have had only 4 home games, averaging just under 7k. Admittedly attendances have been falling, but i would expect that marketing has been wound down a little for the last month, and probably for the next month and attendances will probably even out until probably mid june, then hopefully there will be a marketing blitz to capitilize on 7 of the last 10 games being home games, including 4 of the last 5 which could decide if they can sneak a play off spot.

and it would still be less than the average for 3 SL teams, and nothing more than a decent attendance for about 4 more. Its hardly the stuff dreams are made of

im not sure you can say liverpool is important but Hull isnt, they of similar size. And yes Leeds is probably the only big city where league is king, but in the big cities of the north the GP doesnt really register

true, it needs to be a two pronged approach with both the amateur and the pro game pushed

When England won the Rugby World Cup, there was a significant and measurable increase in interest in Rugby Union, both through an increase in participation, in media interest and viewer interest. Club crowds have grown incrementally with help from the World Cup win. From wiki 's entry rlEnglish Rugby Union's popularityrlRugby's recent success is in part due to England's recent 2003 Rugby World Cup success. In terms of average attendance, the Guinness Premiership is the third best attended club competition in England behind The Premiership and The Championship.

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Historically rugby union was a participatory sport rather than a spectator sport in England and attendances at club games were low.

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Current trends
Following England Rugby's success with capturing the 2003 Rugby World Cup, popularity of rugby union in England practically doubled according to research that was conducted as part of MORI’s SportsTracker.[3]

Prior to the 2003 World Cup, research estimated that around 18 per cent of all British citizens had an interest in rugby union (conducted in January 2003), ranking the sport eighth in popularity in England. In December 2003, shortly after England's win at the World Cup, the percentage was revealed to be 27 per cent, pushing the sport to second in England.[3] A lot of the popularity was attributed to Jonny Wilkinson's famous drop goal in the latter stages of the final at the 2003 World Cup. A rise in match attendances, as well as interest in schools was noted.[3]'"