I think it'd be better to stop telling healthy people to self-isolate after a negative test.

And scrap the postponement rule. You either play, or forfeit the game.

How dare anyone suggest something as sensible as scrapping the pointless magic weekend, or even more sensible, using the dead space where the world cup would've been in November, to complete the outstanding fixtures. Of course the RFL won't go for this because it moves the final back a few weeks.

Yeah agreed. Unless a player starts to develop symptoms then do a test but at the minute clubs are testing 30 odd players and staff each week and then using that as an excuse to postpone games for their own advantage if one player tests positive. It shouldn’t be allowed and something has got to change.

Other sports have been and are still testing their players regularly, yet it’s not causing similar disruption to their fixtures.

Footballers literally travelled all over Europe for a month for the Euros and completed the tournament with little or no disruption, even though several players tested positive.

The issue isn’t the testing, the issue is the league format and governing body giving teams far too much leeway and little incentive to complete their fixtures.

How many games scheduled to be shown on sky have been called off due to this covid..only asking because do clubs get money from there game being on sky...e.g Hull been on sky twice recently Leeds and saints..play us and it's off...or is this me being synical

I have a confession. After 40+ years of watching RL and preaching the mantra that it is the greatest game, I find myself enjoying football as much, even more in some cases. I've been a Man Utd fan all my life, but football always came a distant second to RL in my affections, and for sheer excitement and awe - no more.

We can no longer pretend that our game is in anything other than significant decline in all areas if we want to.save professional RL.

The cap has drained the sport of star quality yet clubs still throw marquee money at overseas "stars"
The sanitised, sterility of the game with it left devoid of aggression has robbed it of much of its gladiatorial appeal
Standard of officials, at an all time low and that's quite a statement
Lack of direction, transparency, leadership and commercial acumen from the governing bodies
Constant tinkering with the rules

COVID has merely emphasised the glaring void in a sport bereft of a modern, forward thinking, dynamic leadership.

morrisey is correct.

RL always had a kind of amateurish element to it....go back 15 or 20 years and we were complaining about rubbish refs, RFL mismanagement, lack of marketing, there were always doomsday preachers telling us the game was going to die because RU would take all of our stars. But the one thing that was never in doubt was the quality of the sport. The frustration was that the games' administrators didn't have the ambition or ability to promote the game to a wider audience.

Now we have a different problem. The underlying product is crap. I'm not blaming the players. In a lot of ways the general standard (at least in terms of the quality 'floor') has improved. When I watch videos of games in the 90s and early 2000s I'm always surprised at how many handling errors there were back then, and how much crap defence there was, compared to now. But the attacking adventure, crowd atmosphere and general vibe of the competition back then was on a different level to where it is now.

It feels now like we have a sport going through the motions.

A full programme of (football) EFL games, across all 3 divisions, together with FA Cup Qualifying Rounds, were completed this weekend, with no games cancelled due to Covid - yet the top tier of RL gets hit again with ongoing cancellations.

There's something odd going on.....

One of the main problems is that the game has become too fast.
It needs to be slowed down to create excitement again for spectators and provide more tight games and not the runaway scores we now have.
Dont think we will ever go back to scrums but one thing that would help is a correct play the ball where you have to stand and play the ball with the foot instead of throwing through your legs.
The six again rule should also be axed.Too much hit and miss.Go back to penalties so teams have to improve on field discipline.

Part of me thinks that while there are many issues with the game, the ultimate killer is the playoffs system. It’s so hard to defend it to non-RL watching friends and it’s probably one of the biggest reasons as to why some games are now meaningless. Why pull your tripe out to finish third if you can coast a bit more to finish lower down but still get a crack at the big one? It’s a joke. Remember when the RFL tried to tell us that ‘every minute mattered’ the other year? Every minute really doesn’t matter and it shows in some matches. No urgency or desire from some teams, just look at how hot and cold we are from week to week!

And I agree with Morrissey’s sentiments. The constant changing of rules, mickey poor disciplinary, on and off the pitch, lack of quality play, increase of ‘sportsmanship’ as a legitimate tactic, lack of consistency from the refs and the promoters of the game mean it’s just dying. Case in point: the RLWC is called off, so the first call from some quarters is to set up blooming’ Yorkshire v Lancashire. Talk about thinking outside the box! It’s pathetic, a small time game run by even smaller time management. I can’t even say, anymore, hand on heart, that ‘we’ve got the best sport out there’ and it just needs promoting properly. If the powers that be cared, they’d not shoehorn fixtures between tired teams that make it look bad on tv, but they don’t seem to care. So why should we?

I know what you're saying but how do you explain the NRL (same rules broadly) that is wonderful to watch, the skill levels are phenomenal, it's fast but controlled, play the ball is tidy, they introduce things like captain's challenge and it all remains top class? It's not the sport, it's our version of it, at least at Super League level.

One game off tonight at Harrogate and there next couple of games are also off..but spot on with your comments..one club out of how many caught up with this covid thing where in super League there's games called off at the drop of a hat....does seem very odd

Whilst I'd agree that the NRL is currently more entertaining than Super League, the entertainment buzz doesn't nearly match that of Super league in the 2000s. We need to take the game back to the flashy attacking rugby we had back then. Admittedly, we don't have anywhere near the pool of talent we had back then as we have lost it to other sports, but we can encourage it and coach it and hopefully build ourselves back up. 80 minutes of defence with a few winger's tries is nothing compared to the off-the-cuff champagne stuff we used to see.

I said after our last 2 GF defeats that any half decent team from the mid 2000's SL would have won those games. I think our 2003 side would have beaten Wigan those 2 times

Am I missing something here. Couldn’t find one postponement out of the many soccer games played last weekend - full and part-timers. Don’t soccer players catch COVID.