Some of the "dyed in the wool" northern RL journalists got their knickers in a twist last night after the BBC1 piece, I thought George Riley did it well, truth often hurts, one made a fool of himself saying that it was a typical BBC job to destroy the launch of Super League, why did they not do it on football, but he said football had more serious problems, but that was of their own fault often with wages. Wages have gone up a lot in RL but it is more with the running if the same lack of major sponsors, bad marketing etc.

generally very good ideas smashy.

In modern times, are there any cases of a succesful merger in any sport?

Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC - now second in the SPL, formed of Inverness Caledonian and Inverness Thistle then both tiny clubs in the Highland League!

Think it was back in the 70s when the NFL came into being with the merger of two whole leagues.

merge Castleford and Wakefield...if it doesn't work, no problem, as neither would be a major loss

Havant and Waterlooville FC in non league football have made a surprisingly good job post merger given they used to be deadly rivals.

Great piece on Wigan TV about the state of the game. My he is a good talker, almost had me believing it. I mean Wigan to finish in the top three, really!

The stench of death has been hanging around the London pro side for several years now. To be fair, though, there's more than a few rotting corpses along the M62 as well.

It's very hard to see where a recovery starts. The whole sport can't even find a sponsor for its heavily televised national competition, so it seems unlikely a white knight is about to ride out and replace DH. But unless something fairly major changes - leadership, funding, location, publicity... then I think the club's beginning to run out of chambers in this particular game of Russian Roulette.

I hope a good start to the season on the field brings in more optimism and more returning bodies. But that'll only take the cllub so far. Anyone know any Kuwaiti millionaires ?

I recently met up with the co owners of the Warriors Mad Butcher (Sir Peter Leitch) and Owen Glenn in Auckland.....bent both their ears about how a 20 million pound investment in London Broncos over 8 years would make the club self sufficient and do wonders for the global reach of the game....Mr Glenn said he'd be in London later this year, so I have emailed him our fixture list.......you never know!

St George Illawara

Sheffied/Hudds
Gateshead/Hull
Manly/Norths