Your arguement doesn't really stand, as football is seen as the god of sports, and i'm pretty sure you get 'lewd hand gestures' at football... unless you were specifically referring to the 'Yorkshire' part, in which case, as we already knew, the southern-centric media hates Northerners.

lighten up. nobody got hurt and as long as Wire fans don't embarrass us I couldn't care any less if it was leeds fans!
Like I said nobody got hurt. And the Castleford fans certainly got some entertainment judging by the amount of youtube videos they all have taken.

No-one got hurt? Tell that to the female that one Widnes fan sparked out with a punch.

I think it's obvious I haven't seen or read about it.
That is terrible.
I still didn't condone the event but some of the footage I found funny. Junior children running on to the pitch making airplanes with their arms still doesn't hurt nobody.
That idiot that punched deserves custody.

I laughed at one kid running about one yard onto the grass, slipping on his and then gingerly retreating back over the hoardings

Kids, who dont know any better, running onto the pitching and jumping infront of the cameras dont harm anybody agreed.

One spectator was injured. LSV stewards basically assaulted ....... the footage of the Widnes fan going up behind the steward and punching him in the kidneys.............know doubt mass claims of brutality had the steward defended him and elbows the d######d in the chin. (perhaps only the thickness of the coasts they were wearing stopped them getting hurt). Threatening behaviour to stewards and officials, let alone opposition fans. Throwing flares within their own supporters (not like they havent done that before!!). Have also heard of Widnes fans being struck on the head but signs pulled off the back wall of the stand and thrown within their own fans.

Whilst going on the pitch is actually illegal, I dont think to much would have been made of it if it had been the kids "being aeroplanes". It was all the rest of the behaviour that people find so deplorable. For me though, the worst thing is that some of these idiots will be sat at home, reading the paper.....well looking at the pictures anyway... going "hehe...thats me, I'm famous", without any comprehension of what they line they have not only stepped over, but which they have dragged along with them.

Whilst I dont necessary support blanket actions being taken against Widnes (but then again, its not the first time and I have seen Widnes take no actions at their own ground when bottles have been thrown at us), there is enough evidence of criminal activity here for the authorities to take court action that will allow blanket sport ground bans being placed on these idiots (Defying such bans is actually a criminal offence whereas Widnes simply banning them is a "civil" matter).

I was actually comparing the two codes and why one (Union) seemingly gets favourable treatment in the media.

Ultimately, sports have to sell their product, and RL will always have huge problems selling itself, when it appears to be followed by the poorer and less well behaved members of society - Compare with the crowds who turn up Twickers to watch the Union lot.... Middle class, well educated, well behaved, they are the British media's darlings because this is how the media see themselves and also see them as their target audience and so will always be pandered to, whereas the flatcap brigade who follow League can be patronised as the underclass.

As for football, if it wasn't such a huge product and followed by such a huge audience, then it too would be patronised similarly by our media - Indeed, whenever something negative happens in football, like disrespect to officials or poor international performance, you will normally find they will use Union as being the bastion of all that is good in sport and being the standard that other sports should aspire to.

Ditas Slot Meter is bang on right. It's cringeworthy sometimes reading the one-upmanship contests on rugby league forums about whose fans are more scum than others, and we all know we could have a 'scum fans' argument with Hull fans, Wigan fans, Salford fans, Saints fans, Leeds fans, and whilst we see ourselves no doubt as whiter than white, if you go on other clubs boards and see how they view our fans it is illuminating, you will read things like "the only ground I feel intimidated at is Wire".

The big problem is that despite rugby league's admirable push to become more of a family sport, it is still a sport played in a lot of towns/cities that have high levels of deprivation and youth unemployment, and with that you get a certain type of follower that will act like an idiot on a regular basis if given alcohol. And when RL has its showpiece occasions, the semi-connected fans turn out in their droves for the day out and booze up, and they are the worst of the lot.

This just doesn't happen in RU. Now I have managed to wangle invites to large RU games and been with guys on an RU booze up, and they are hardly teetotallers, but there is a difference. Boozed-up RU fans become more and more obnoxious the more they drink, and they are incredibly irritating company....but....they do not go in to running on the pitch, baiting other clubs' fans, fighting, causing criminal damage and so on.

Now to the game and sponsors this type of fan is golddust, because they have money, and will lavishly splash out the cash on expensive drinks and posh food, but they won't throw their champagne around like drunk RL fans throw beer. They don't pose a crowd control issue.

The football example is an interesting one, because football in the 1980s was very different from football in the 90s and onward, the Premier League era. Back in the 1980s it was a more menacing hooligan obsessed culture than RL has ever been, but something switched, probably around Italia '90, that got 'middle England' obsessed with football, the clubs switched rapidly to this type of money-rich well behaved fan, up went the prices, stadiums became all-seater, football in England exploded in a way that could not have been dreamt of pre-1990, and we now have the biggest and richest league in the world and the hooligans have been left behind.

RL has not had its "Pavarotti moment" like football did in the 1990 World Cup, where middle England has really got on board the sport. One extra difficulty here is a lot of RL fans have a real chip on their shoulder about class warfare and so on and would probably not be that welcoming of the prawn sandwich brigade gravitating to the 'working mans game'.

even for you that's a proper

At risk of going off topic, to suggest that Union's preferential treatment in the media is due to the relative behaviour of fans of the two codes in the 21st century shows a distinct lack of understanding of the history of rugby in this country.

And to omit any reference to Hillsborough in any discussion of the recent rise of soccer suggests an ignorance on that front too.

No I won't lighten up. The fact that nobody got seriously hurt is down to the patience and forbearance of the Castleford players, officials and supporters who did not react to the provocation. In particular I praise the players and the mascots led by Daryl Powell whose calm reaction in turn kept the Castleford crowd from reacting. If they had done so a mass brawl could easily have ensued in which innocent parties could have become embroiled and serious injury could have ensued.
I enjoy reading many of your comments but, now and then, you say, what in my opinion are, some stupid things which you then try to justify by some specious argument. I wish you would join the sensible people on this thread by condemning outright the loutish behaviour of fans of all clubs who behave in this manner. There is no place for it in Rugby League which prides itself on its sportsmanship and family values.

The queue's that long it stretches over the boarder into Warrington!

Sadly its unemployment or poor employment prospects that is really behind it. These people have nothing to lose.

When I mentioned the RU boozers before getting obnoxious, they are all accountants, lawyers, on £50k-£100k or whatever. They might enjoy getting jolly trollied at the company's expense in their corporate box, but they are careful not to do anything that will risk landing them in trouble with the police because it could lose them their job, and they have a lot to lose.

But if you have nothing to lose whats teh big deal? You get a bit of notoriety amongst your mates and can have a laugh about it and have a story to tell people about how you invaded the pitch.

I'll bet you that the vast majority of those idiots on Sunday were in full time work. It was a complete lack of control after a full day on the ale that did it.

It is the lack of proper sanctions that causes it. These people walked past the stewards as if they were not there and having caused mayhem how many were arrested? None as far as I can see.
When I was a kid the Warrington Borough coppers had a minimum height of 6' 0". Most were 6'4 or more and a couple of them would have sorted those morons who would have finished up in the cells and been summarily dealt with.
The forces of law and order have been emasculated and now we have little rotund bespectacled figures who look more like the seven dwarfs in visi jackets rather than the huge coppers of my childhood. Successive governments have been responsible for this process and we are seeing more and more of these public order situations where the police are ineffectual and, if they dare to bare their teeth, they ate vilified by all and sundry.
The Widnes club and the Rugby League authorities have issued the usual pious platitudes and declarations of intent but they will sit back and hope it does not happen again, but it will and it is only a matter of time before the wheels come off big time.
Neither the clubs nor the police are prepared to invest the resources either to deal with the morons at the time or to track them down and bring them to book so these people think, with just cause, that they are fireproof