Maurice Watkins disagrees with you.


I have been a non-executive director of the Rugby Football League for some years, and I was honoured to be asked to become the governing body’s interim chairman in April, only a few months before I left the board of United .

Rugby league has continued to make progress both on and off the field and is currently riding the crest of a popularity wave'"

This season in particular had been a bore fest, particularly for us, with most of our games being over before half time. Even Eddie and Stevo havent been banging on about how great our game is, so it cant just be us!! I think the CC QF was a turning point for me, possibly the worst wigan saints derby i have ever seen for intensnity. Yet the game on friday has actually reignited my passion for the game, it had everything and even though we lost i left the game thinking how great rugby league can be.

To all the disillusioned on here. This is my suggestion. Get down and watch the U19's next year. I get as much pleasure from watching the emerging talent from the young sides as I do watching the first team.

Whilst I agree Brian (I also try to get down to Orrell as often as I can), quite a lot of the U20 fixtures are pointless one sided affairs with only Wire, Saints, Leeds matches being the exception.

Interesting to read so many views about this on here. For the first time in ten or more years I didn't get a season ticket this year, largely due to the feeling at a lot of games last season that the league increasingly doesn't matter in that the league leaders shield is belittled despite the difficulty there should be in winning it over any other trophy. This was pretty much compounded by a team that had played rotten rugby all year turning it on for a handful of games to get called 'champions' - the wrong title for something that took such relatively low effort - and be rewarded with the WCC.

I have watched in increasing bemusement as folk on social media get themselves worked up to a frenzy for certain regular season matches, especially the odd folk who set off ten hours before kick off to some away games like it's some kind of cup final, when you can see plainly that the points on offer are minimal in value and as I mentioned in another thread, part of 27 games simply jockeying for position to have a very slight advantage in a 3 week knockout competition. My concern about continuing to follow Wigan is that my little boy is at an age now where he wants to come to games genuinely, as opposed just to come as something to do and eat Haribo's whilst asking how longs left every 3 minutes, but I'm struggling to get the enthusiasm to take him. I will state point blank that I didn't take him to the Leeds game as I thought paying £14 to sit a 6 year old in the East Stand couldn't be justified.

Having been involved with an amateur club that has been under the RFL for a few years (as opposed to the recent switchers from BARLA) I have seen for a while that there is a huge 'jobs for the boys' culture within the organisation. There are a lot of people doing jobs there who would clearly not hold a position of similar responsibility within any other private or public business and after the first few instances when I was new to it going to them for help or guidance on matters, I realised very quickly that the best way to work with them was on a 'need to know' basis as they inevitably threw spanners into the works. I won't go into massive detail but examples like having a 10 week summer season followed by a 3 week break before a 2 week play off series last year or even with this season after dozens of new clubs joined, starting the season with a 5 week knockout comp which meant if you were knocked out in week 1 you had no game for a month after your big season opener. Both of these formats were planned centrally by the same group of individuals who produce the SL level play-off format. Reading that Maurice Watkins article makes me want to hit something!

The other point folk have touched on is sky. Not only the inane commentary (most annoying example in recent weeks was Eddie Hemmings belittling the Joining Jack kids singing pre-match v St Helens) but their dreadful picks of sub-standard games. The way they attempted to pump drama into the 'battle' for 8th place in the last few rounds was pathetic, subjecting us all to a load of end-of-season lower table error fests. I've always knocked SS off at the end of the SL season anyway but honestly don't think I'll bother re-connecting it next year. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many games I've enjoyed on there this year. Again it doesn't justify the monthly cost relative to the overall cost of a tv package if you're not a soccer fan, and I'm definitely not one of those and resent subsidising it. I'll echo some earlier posters and say go and watch some youth or amateur games, never mind the academy. What you get may not have a load of dancing girls and a half time mascots race but you will see players putting everything into games that matter to them.

It certainly is very frustrating! Rugby League as a product is one of the best there is and this is proven by the fact that friends I have introduced to the game have all loved it. However the more they start to understand the game the more they see its flaws and question why certain things are going on.

What opened my eyes to fact Super League is struggling, is since my involvement with the Coventry Bears, Wigan's games against Salford, Wakefield, Widnes just haven't been appealing. Even my girlfriend who has been a Wigan season ticket holder for years has enjoyed Coventry Bears games more, due to the closeness and intensity of them.

Something drastically needs to be done but we all know nothing is going to change with the current people in charge.

Sky gave us Widnes v Hull late this season which had sod all riding on it. We wakefield v Widnes late on as well before the farce of Salford v Wakefield at Leigh that also nothing riding on it by time it was played. A total joke!

When is the current Sky Deal up?

The emergence of WiganTV may help sway my decision too. If I can watch extended highlights on a Monday after the game, that will do me fine I think.

new deal takes it to the end of the 2015 season.

Will be interesting to see what happens when that deal comes to an end. I guess its much to hope for a huge bidding war seeing millions of £'s pumped into the Rugby League?

It will probably become the Sky Sports Super League with no money swapping hands for them to show games

not really surprised by some of the downbeat posts, as some of us seen it coming.

there is a lot of good things going on in the sport, i.e sport england and the money from the tv deals etc.

for ages i and others said that increasing to fourteen teams with a top eight system would not work, especially with no relegation. your playoff race has to be where finishing just one place higher with say two or three games left would benefit your team.

i would...

have 12 teams possible even 10, now that the ink is dry on the aussie tv deal.

top 5 playoff.

reward teams in some way who bring players through the youth system. even more so now with the tv deal down under.

get shut of wood and appoint someone from outside the game. people will start to see how good lewis was the longer we have wood in charge. as they say you don't miss them till they have gone.

get shut of cummins. the standard has nosedived since the aussie (forgot his name) left.

consistency in the handling of discipline in red hall.


i don't mind P&R as long as we don't end up with just another yo-yo effect.

they can pat each other on the back for things such as the increase in crowds (and rightly so) but the test will be to keep those fans and if the clubs keep taking the mick out of the fan by just needing to do enough then they only have themselves to blame when one day they ask where did they all go.