Out of interest can you give an example of when top flight crowds were at a higher level than they were over the past few seasons?

The idea of Rugby League, unilaterally amongst all professional sports, somehow being able to reject pay TV millions is laughable.

Quite. The RFL/SL can bear-pit all the other rabid TV bidders, whilst considering the exact same situation for radio-only rights.

Its WELL over. I have a friend who was a professional RL player in this country. He played for Warrington but had a contract offer from the club he was loaned to last year.
He is now making MORE MONEY playing SEMI PRO in Australia. He therefore has time for another job (but doesnt need to) and has enough money to keep his girlfriend without her needing to work.

To me that shows just how far our game has sunk that he can make more money part time than full time here.

Unless there is radical change in a number of areas, the only future for SL is a semi-professional game played at a similar standard to the French domestic league. Most SL clubs struggle to pay players 1.6m in total per season. The SL has gone backwards financially while other sports, the NRL and employers generally have increased wages significantly. After more than a decade of SL players are paid significantly less in real terms than they were at the start.

The mismanagement and financial failings of the RFL and SL clubs and the game's failed structures have been painfully obvious for years (though at times you'd never have guessed it if you visited this board, which has far too often been clogged up with morons arguing that everything is fine and that critics of the status quo wanted a return to the days of Wigan "buying everyone" .)

I think the head of the RFL shold be voted for by the fans

Every 4 years there are candidates who propose what they mean to do e.g.

If I was a candidate I'd say bring back the Ashes, GB and GB tours to Aus, reduce the teams in SL to raise the standard and spread the money around, bring back promotion and relegation, league winners win the SL (not have to then win it via GF)and have top 3 teams play top 3 teams from aus in a proper WCC

Sorry "Post" don't agree.
The Chairman of the RFL should not be voted on by the fans.
He/She should be selected on ability not elected on popularity. I'd rather have IL, McManus, Moran, Pearson etc selecting the new chief than us lot voting for someone.

GB will return but not with full tours, maybe a mini tour.
Leave the clubs in SL at 14, or 13 if Salford go. We have increased the number of British players in SL by over 75% in the last five years and we need to keep that going to raise the standard.
Pro/Rel from Full Time to P Time can't work and does not work. We proved that hence licencing brought in. Licencing needs improving I know but going backwards to Pro/Rel will be to repeat the mistakes of the past.

League Winner to get a Trophy and Prize Money.
Top three play off, League winner to the GF with 2nd and 3rd playing off for the other GF place.
WCC to be expanded to 3 clubs from each hemisphere.
This last improvement will give SKY nine extra games which will allow us to reduce the play off games which no one watches. Reduce the C Cup games whereby SL clubs enter at last 16 and that be where the Magic weekend should be.

If "Them" want "Us" to watch more rugby and put more money into the game they have to provide "Us" with more matches that people will pay to watch and reduce the number of games which are poorly attended.

Can't disagree with much of this although I'd go back to the top five play-off system that provided a cleare reward to higher placed teams and with Wigan, Warrington, Saints, Leeds, Catalans and Hull all having realistic aims at silverware at least one "contender" will not even qualify for the play-offs.

In respect to the WCC I'd look to alternate that with an international tournament as an end of season competition with the teams competing being the Grand Final winners and league leaders from that season and the previous year (when the international tournament was held) or if a team wins both them dropping down in league places. Could also consider NZ Warriors and Catalans getting automatic qualification for greater international presence.

By reducing the teams then we spread the Sky money out more which would be a temporary fix to the quality of SL by paying players more and only having SL standard players, for instance look at the Widnes team, this shows there aren't enough quality players in the UK to have 14 teams as now with the strength of the Aus Dollar plus the Aus salary cap being raised we really are getting Reserve grade rejects, there is absolutly no quality players coming over from Aus in fact all our best players are going to the NRL.

We can't bury our heads in the sand saying 'our clubs are being run well, we have more British players playing in SL, TV figures are up' that's all well and good but at the end of the day we use the NRL at the benchmark and judging by that we really need to shake things up or we will be a feeder league/sport.

One of the things I'd do is bin off London, if Richard Branson can't make it work what chance have the RFL?

PY I'm with you on this.
The top five was the best reward system.

The WCC is a difficult one, but I would go with three teams, the two Grand Finalists and the Challenge Cup Winners, although I'm not sure how the Aussies would chose their third team.

You could also use a top four system, straight knockout 1 v 4, 2 v 3.

The hard part is getting the Aussies to buy into it. It would need a very big sponsor.

It's so obvious that this is true.

This is something we should really try to throw our weight behind. It's one of the few flagship events RL has, and one that Union would really struggle to match, especially if we expanded it the way you suggest.

But you're right about the Aussies. As long as they continue to pay nothing more than lip-service to the game's international dimension, we'll never get this thing moving.

The game is dying, the way things are going we are going to move back to being a semi professional sport with only maybe one or two clubs being able to be full time professional like in the late 80s and early 90s and I am sure none of us want to go back and repeat that dismal era for the sport.

That has the added benefit of making decent players in SL actually consider Catalans as a serious option, i couldn't believe Pryce was the first to go over and it took as long as it did.

What does surprise me considering Australia's appetite for rugby is that they don't actually outbid Sky and buy the rights to SL.

The Qantas Superleague or such like, possibly attach themselves to a club similar to all the SL clubs linking up with Championship clubs.

If Sky wanted to they could double or treble what they pay for SL without even noticing. It's peanuts compared to what they spend on football and RL is their 2nd most watched sport isn't it? If they want to keep that audience paying their overpriced sports subscriptions to subsidise the cost of screening football then they need to support the sport better. It's clearly not in their interests to let SL go right downhill, I just hope they wake up to that soon.