Let's see how many column inches and broadcast time is set aside for one of this countries greatest sporting spectacles, you know, the one on Saturday.

behave .....Sam Burgess ISNT playing for England on the Same day....England are sure to be world Class again and play like a rugby equivalent of the Harlem globetrotters on Supersize bags of whizz.... it'll be all over the news.....

League will jolly well get a column next to Chinese ladies baseball and be thankful for it....

No doubt the Royal diaries will already be full when the RL internationals come around.

parochial
synonyms: narrow-minded, small-minded, provincial, insular, narrow, small-town, inward-looking, limited, restricted, localist, conservative, conventional, short-sighted, petty, close-minded, blinkered, myopic,

Sounds about right for the RFL.

many years ago when i was a kid, there was a massive problem for league playing lads at my school.

My high school (lymm) didnt play rugby league.. the welsh PE teachers hated it infact.... There was a strong core of lads in my year that played rugby league. We all played for Grappenhall & woolston at the time. There were 6 of us... anyway we went to the warrington schools trials and all got in. Then when we were selected, it was town teams games on a saturday and Grappenhall games on a sunday.

The school blocked us playing league on a saturday for "warrington schools" saying that Lymm high school doesnt play league, so we had to play union for the school on a saturday... We were the best 6 union players in the school team had... 5 of us were forwards.. we were basically their pack... with us in the team it didnt lose in 3 years.. without us it won maybe twice... Basically the team was 6 very good league players, 1 or 2 union players and a bunch of lads that were scared of the ball and wanted to stand on the wing.

Kevin Tamati had to come into our school and try to reason with them to let us play rugby league... it was a right mess.

Even at junior level, Union is trying to put a spanner in the works.

It was reported on national news programmes earlier this year that the plan of the RFU was to establish their game in every school in the land.

The "plan" of the RFL is probably to do that as well. It doesn't mean it's going to happen.

Tickets for the mighty RU World Cup going for £2.50. Smoke and mirrors.

This is accurate, as is Lefty's analysis. We do have a genuine chance to capture interest with GOOD international matches, though, if they are seen on terrestrial TV. Several non-RL friends down here watched the England v NZ semi at the RL world Cup and were blown away. One said to me : 'who are these heroes?' He'd simply never seen RL as a sport that represents the country until that match. We won't grow as big as Union internationally but we can continue to improve. There's another reason, to Lefty's points, that folks go to Union internationals. There is a genuine 'sense of occasion' at them. I went to a few games ( corporate entertainment of clients ) last time the RU WC was in UK, including the final. It's like the old joke: 80 minutes of thrilling atmosphere and entertainment - then the match kicked off. The NZ series next month is a GREAT chance to pick up where the WC left off.

Some well connected marketing & media men wouldn't go amiss at the RFL.

That's a fair comment too, and is the same for every other minority sport. RL fans always compare the coverage it gets with RU - and some advocates of either code even compare them to football which is another stratosphere altogether - but it does okay compared to other minority sports. England RL is seen as representing English RL fans, in the same way as the national hockey team for example would only be viewed by most people as representing fans of that sport.

The only way to change that is for it to become a much bigger contest. England football, RU and cricket teams are seen as representing the whole country because you don't need to be a regular viewer of any of those sports to enjoy the big international occasions. RL is seen as representing northerners and ultimately being won by Australia. The average armchair sports fan in Reading or Watford isn't going to connect with that in the same way the equivalent viewer in Hull or Leeds who has absolutely zero interest in their club Premiership probably can still connect with the England RU team at tournament time.

A competitive GB V Aus series would be bigger than the World Cup but I don't really see how it's going to happen so personally I'll stick to just enjoying Super League and let the more popular sports get on with it. Much as some would like to pretend it is, it really isn't rugby union's fault that rugby league isn't more popular!

Unfortunately, most sports on the world stage that UK international teams are involved in usually finish up with the same regular permutations of winners & not including the British sides. A masterstroke was pulled for the RLWC seemingly by employing the lady who was the mastermind behind the organisation & marketing of the competition. We could do worse than make her an offer she couldn't refuse to take Rugby League in general by the scruff of the neck & drag it as a business into the 21st century.

Love it or loathe it I've just watched the finest game of rugby of either code in the Scotland vs Samoa game

You must have missed the nrl grand final then? Wales and Australia back to the norm

]

Perfect

In 13 pages, I think we can sum the whole debate up in this one paragraph.

Let's not get a chip on our shoulder because the 3 point code gets a lot more people through the turnstiles, than our sport. Yes, I wish more people came and viewed the product, but, you can't press gang people into turning up. For some reason, International RL hasn't "

A competitive GB V Aus series would be bigger than the World Cup but I don't really see how it's going to happen so personally I'll stick to just enjoying Super League and let the more popular sports get on with it. Much as some would like to pretend it is, it really isn't rugby union's fault that rugby league isn't more popular!'"