Thanks to those Reds sat near me who made the weekend so enjoyable.
Thanks to all RL fans for showing how the Rugby League family works.
Thanks to Edinburgh - a fine town with excellent pubs.
Thanks to RL - trying out experiments to show what we have to offer.

A success as we moved away from the M62 (heresy) and showed entertaining games (anathema) featuring colourful fans enjoying themselves (blasphemy) in a national venue (evil).

Apologies to the frequent posters on here as I am not being negative in the post. I understand that this is difficult for many of you but ...
you can give up moaning, belittling, and carping.

As I mentioned on Saturday, during a Scotland union game on TV some while ago the commentator, discussing an Edinburgh player making his Scotland debut, said words to the effect of "he'll be used to the Murrayfield pitch, but not playing in front of anyone."

Having said that, if my Sunday sat on the pan is anything to go by, they may well have had 60,000 fans in the past with the 58,000 of them killed by dodgy hotdogs.

Please refer to individual post. I did say that I'm sure those that went had a great time and as a rugby league fan if I could have afforded it I probably would have done too. However I was actually trying to start an intelligent debate as to whether or not the weekend was a success or failure. If the idea behind it was for a bunch of rugby league fans to go and have a weekend away and watch some rugby that they would have watched anywayn then ok it was a success. If however, the more likely idea was to market and expand the game then I feel it was a failure. Don't feel like this is moaning or carping. I reserve the right to have my opinion. If you want to join the debate then fine but to say we had a great time so the debate does not stand is ridiculous.

So was mine a serious post.

Look - we have potentially the finest sports-audience watching event in the world. Yet it is limited to one huge city in Aus, one small area in NZ, a tiny part of the UK, and a small area of France. Yes we're massive in Papua New Guinea. Yes we have a Lebanon/Tunisia/Moscow league. So what?

Knock it or support it. We show the world what we can do. The Aussies should be doing the same in the state of Victoria (soccer is gaining ground on the "Sydney" game).

I believe that Rugby League is the greatest sport in the world both in participation and watching. I remember the efforts in Oldham to support the league in Dublin. I remember the last efforts in South Wales. Let's keep on trying because if we do not, we disappear. So any effort to rid us of the M62 image, I support.

Failure - NO.

And you know my commitment here.

Yes but once again we appear to have a them and us situation here.
You went and good on you.
But if you think it was a success then you are deluded.
Next year I can arrange a few games on the field outside my house, organise a barby and have loads of beer laid on.
I can even arrange hotels if you wish.
Scotland will never be a Rugby League area, End of.

Before you can make a definate call on the success of anything you have to define how you are going to measure it. Measured by fun in the sun and a great weekends entertainment with rugby and beer then a success it was. Measured by a serious long standing benefit for the game of Rugby League and a seriously effective way of expanding the game in a non rugby league area..debatable.

Nice idea, just doesn't work.

"Next year I can arrange a few games on the field outside my house, organise a barby and have loads of beer laid on.
I can even arrange hotels if you wish.
Scotland will never be a Rugby League area, End of"

[sizeOK do it - [/size
with international media interest
with every SL team sending supporters who dress up and enjoy themselves
with all the buzz and flair that speccies expect in the 21st century.
with a fine stadium and hotels around you.

Fulham are to support the soccer craze in Australia this summer - do they expect Broncos to become 11 man teams overnight? No.

Scotland is only an excuse - to be fair we should be in Morocco or Lebanon or Moscow.
If you want, I'll dig out my cloth cap, black pudding butties and think of Alex Murphy ... no not the last. Then we can be side-lined.


If anyone here thinks the main aim was a SL team in Scotland by 2010, they have been sucked in.Read beyond the marketing hype. It was taking the finest team game in the world to the world. We go to Manchester(OK Trafford), London and ... now Edinburgh. Perhaps 2012 will be Dublin.

Fair enough. What points then make you feel it was a failure?

In your last point I don't think anyone has actually said that?

The only measuring factor of whether it was a success or not will be next year. If the scottish take up on tickets improves then surely you would have to say yes?

I think this is one of the main sticking points. How can the RFL make it more appealing to get people to stay for more than their own game? Free tickets wouldn't work. The only thing I can really think of is much cheaper food and drink stalls

Better still all the supporters of the winning mascot get to punch him in the face

maybe locking fans in will keep the numbers up

Perhaps to pique the Yorkshire fans' interest we could have a parade of attractive cousins at half time?

In answer to the origonal question i got to say it was a sucess.

I went and had a gr8 time. Really enjoyed the festival feel of the place. Has some gr8 chats with people i wouldn't otherwise have chatted to and got to se some games i would normally never have been able to se.

It's true that it didn't seem to expand the game much but all the scotts i chatted to (only 3 i admit) seemed to prefer league that union (inside and outside the ground) but didn't come because they were watching football!
According the the anouncement there were over 6000 locals there. I would guess that about half of those were new to the game.

I will def be there next year (if it's at murryfield again).