Always comes down to the £££s. They've got RBS behind them, we've got Foxy fecking Bingo...

Im not up my own booty, did you read what I said? the game has the ball in play for 60% of the time...thats a joke. The basic skill set is poor also, half cant pass hit a gap and are poor defensivley. Thats bread and butter rugby in either code but they get away with it cos they can scrummage or jump up in a line out, thurst me I played both. Was never knackered after a game of RU and the season out RL team shifted over to RU we never lost with a full team out.

My lad went to a 3-day RFU training camp last week, at Sale Sharks training facility. it was run by Sales own junior team coaches which included former England six nations winning players. The coaching was professional and concentrated on skills, less on holiday fun, and the facilities were outstanding, beautiful pitches, new buildings & gymnasium. Compared to what you get offered at Wigan Warriors junior camps, run by bits of kids who I've never heard of, in an old school.

It really opened my eyes to the gap between the codes, there's some serious money in the other code- we are missing something somewhere.

That's because a figure like £3m profit from the RLWC is chickenfeed compared to what the RUWC will bring in (not to mention the 6N every year - £3m won't go a long way at all...

One of the reasons RU is the way is it is, is that it's got the "establishment" behind it. It came about (urban myth or not) in a public school in Rugby, is promoted above the "thuggish" soccer in the majority of existing public schools that coincidentally provide most of the movers & shakers in the current government & blue-chip companies in the land (if not the Commonwealth).

If anyone bothered to watch the 7s last weekend in Glasgow, you'd realise that they've got a very addictive format there that cannot fail to enthuse kids & will often lead to further interest in the 15s game. RL 9s was "demonstrated" before the games actually kicked off, but has anyone on here actually read or seen anything about it since?

Premiership RU is dire unless you subscribe to the "chess on grass" theory, in which case good luck to you. However, some of the games in the Celtic leagues (BBC2 Wales/Scotland/NI on a Friday night in the winter for anyone with FreeSat - I assume it's available on Sly too) are quite entertaining as they tend to run the ball instead of playing ping-pong & hoofing it up the field every five seconds.

The image of RL is still that of a bunch of fat blokes running around in a muddy field watched by two blokes in flat caps with a whippet or a ferret on a piece of string. I have this argument every time I have to visit any of our offices in London or (for my sins) Milton Keynes. The bigoted attitude of RU stalwarts who've never bothered to watch a league game is mind-boggling & akin to arguing that God doesn't exist with a Jehovah's Witness.

It's not that League is any better a game than Union or vice-versa: there will always be idiots who slag off one or the other without any evidence or first-hand knowledge.

The problem (one of them) is that we have a governing body that routinely sticks its head in the sand when confronted by their ineptitude to capitalise on events that should be a given. It's plain that the hype & interest generated by the WC last year has been squandered & we're back to squabbling about whether the new format is going to work (I think it will, so long as there's a concerted effort to get the lower leagues full-time & get some cash to them), and there are too many vested interests in Red Hall for truly effective governance.

Until we get rid of the cloth-cap & ferret image (actively, if covertly, promoted by Twickenham) & someone other than Andy Burnham takes up the call to arms, League is destined to be forever the "Northern League" - you could argue, we'd do worse than revert to the old name & stop trying to be something we can never be.

who are the elite if it doesn't include Wigan?! - good idea though, maybe the 6 clubs which voted against the new structure should threaten a break away league backed by another TV channel

Sorry by elite I mean the governing body. The people that IL criticised over thier running of the game at the start of this season.

Have often thought this would be a good move.... It would really shake things up....

I said half, does sound better to though to make things up...

Looks like we are both making stats up then.

Super League need to get Barry Hearn in as the top man.

Look at Darts and Snooker, he's increased revenues and prize money across the board, especially in the darts.

The top and bottom of it is that advertising costs, and no matter what some people might think the game can’t compete with RU while the top brass at the Beeb has a majority of old school ties pulling the strings and pushing RU down our throats at every opportunity, and although I thought the RL TV adverts have overall been quite a good attempt, the Eddie Stobart effort made a bit of a laughingstock of the game. As for the games relative entertainment factors, well everyone’s entitled to their own opinion and mine is that when it comes to real entertainment RU an RL are the mirror opposites of their places in advertising, RL is more forward thinking, or trying to be, while RU is quite happy with its place in the sporting world, its complacent with its product, and it shouldn’t be. I once had a friendly argument with a Welshman about each other’s respective sports attributes, and it finally came down to him saying, “RU is more of a game of skill and strategy, like chess” my reply to that was that the difference being, chess is a much faster game with more understandable rules. Those that may say I have a northern chip on my shoulder, you’re dead right! and I’ll put it alongside my northern steak n kidney pudding mushy peas and gravy. To be serious I’ve said it before, the fact is football and RU are seen by the wider public as being MORE FASHIONABLE. Football is one of a very few sports that is fashionable across all the classes, great trick if you can pull it off!