Sale are already sniffing around for a very talented young winger we have.

You only need two hands to count our stars in total.

Thornley went to Sale before he ever got to be a 1st team player here and Eastmond is a young player as was Ashton. That tells you how RU are targeting their recruitment. People raved about Owen Farrell as a likely Wigan star and he will now probably never play the game. I am sure we see occasional reports on here of Sale sniffing round the most promising young players outside of the first team.

It's pretty easy to shrug ones shoulders at losing inexperienced players or players from the academy as it doesn't look like it is taking our star players. Even Ashton wasn't seem as a top player when he went and Eastmond has a way to go before being the finished article himself. The trouble is RU is targeting the players who most likely will become top players in the future.

We also have no idea how many young players never even come into RL now but go straigh to RU.

If people can't see this and don't try and do something about it the game will die on its feat as a top class sport.

If Wigan had an unlimited SC and cash would anyone have been wanting to keep Ashton when he signed for RU??

Tell them to do one.

The salary cap is a smokescreen, really - what our game has is an image problem. As long as we're still seen as an "Eddie Waring" sport, we won't attract the big sponsors like Guinness, Heineken, and RBS. There's also the problem that RU fans, in general, are better off financially than RU fans, which not only attracts bigger advertisers and sponsors, but allows higher gate prices to be set.


There are no easy answers, but one of them is that expansion out of the M62 corridor, especially in London, is crucial to changing our image. Quins are (finally) doing a superb job on the playing side with their youth development (their reserves beat Leeds with an almost entirely locally produced squad), and I just hope that success will eventually translate into bigger crowds.

Exhibit A being the BBC site with reference to the Kyle Eastmond signing assuming that 'Saints' meant Northampton RU and not St Helens RL!

We used to get crowds to rival RU internationals when we had the ambition to play games at Wembley and bigger stadia such as OLd Trafford and Elland Road. There is a distinct lack of ambition for the International game from those running the sport.

If you play internationals in small ground up north then our international game will be perceived as small beer.

I think the switch to summer and the consequent loss of proper tours from Aussie and NZ sides is a big factor in this. The Aussies would be here for weeks playing club sides in between three test matches. That gives you a lot of time to drum up interest and get the media involved. It seemed as logical to me back them to go down to Wembley to support GB as it would be to support Wigan in a CC final. I think many fans thought the same kind of thing. It's what you did when a tour was on and tours were really big deals.

These days the sport itself seems to treat Internationals as an inconvenience so you can hardly blame the fans for not turning up when the RFL prefer to spend resources on promoting Millenium Magic and calling it a success when it gets less of a crowd than a normal league round.

I suppose the worrying thing over the coming years is we'll never know. RL lads are getting scouted whilst on RL clubs scholarship schemes, so we may never know what we're missing.

Andy Farrell, on the face of it, wasn't a great signing for RU as a playuer but now they've got his coaching ability and his son. 2 things we never had but I think we could miss them.

This will never change..... Union will continue to get bigger.

We will stay where we are on the whole with a few new stadiums and some better crowds thrown in. Every 10 years we will beat the aussies and then sell-out the DW stadium the year after and then get tonked. But I love RL so it pains me to say.

I honestly wish there was a way the two codes could merge, in many, many parts of the world, this merged code could rival football. A cross code league in this country would be huge as there is large clubs in both codes but too many small ones.

Lets be honest a league of

Wigan
Leeds
St Helens
Warrington
Hull
Bradford
Hull KR
Harlequins
Leicester Tigers
Gloucester Rugby
Northampton Saints
London Wasps
London Irish
Saracens

That looks a much better league than what either has at the moment. It is spread much better geographically and I believe it would be huge. It will never happen though and its probably for the best as RL as a game would probably be ruined. Its a harsh truth though, if RL is ever going to become a big sport, this would have to be the route, I can't see it any other way.

Yes, me. He's a better winger than Goulding.

Might look a better league, but it'd be a bloody horrible sport to watch. And without wishing to sound paranoid, you can take St Helens, Warrington, Bradford and probably even the Hull clubs out of that. And the Harlequins and Leeds clubs would be from the RU incarnation rather than league.