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.

I'm not convinced of that. he's faster, yeah, but that's about all. I think he'd have been another Kevin Penny or Shaun Ainscough if he'd stayed in League.

For the money being offered by Northampton at the time - no.

Ashton was a RL player with an attitude problem and suspect defence.

Ashton is now a RU player with an attitude problem and suspect defence.

It would be a horrible sport to watch unless they combined the free flowing proper rugby from league and introduced line-outs to keep the union fans happy.... it all sounds silly and when I think about it, I would hate for it to happen but if people want RL to be huge then its the only way.

Why would you take those clubs away? I'm pretty sure they would do even better in this kind of league.

It wouldn't be my personal choice, more a case that the administration would inevitably be RFU-biased and as such they'd have a preference to retaining their own teams and cherry-picking one or two Super League clubs.

If there was to be a merged code then it would have to be a split down the middle, any other clubs would have to earn the right to play in the top flight.... otherwise it would need to be half and half. On the whole they are the 14 biggest clubs you could pick really. The league clubs would do really well IMO.

A lot of players who have crossed the divide have failed - paul, farrell, hape, harris, vainakolo and a few others. Eastmond is an injury prone player who has been offered a large wedge to leave League and it is a big gamble from the lad. The problem isnt that rah rah are poaching our players, its the fact the sport is much much bigger and continues to grow, the RFL needs to promote the game outside the heartlands if we wan't to stop our decline to a minor sport