The game is going to get worse with all the money that the NRL is set to receive from their new TV deal. The best players in SL will leave for the $$$ and we'd be left with 2nd rate Brits.

Could end up like the French and Dutch football teams. Decent at international level, but rubbish domestic league.

Poptarts got it more or less on the nail football have to pander to the sponsors and how many clubs are in the black.Heavens above its only a few years ago that Leeds UTD were the 20th richest club and they had millions of pounds of debt.Some of the Union clubs are in debt and you only have to look at Wakey RU club no longer in the game because they could not make enough money to go on and thats not a life time ago.

Agree, tbh the doom and gloom around RL has gone way over board for me but it's always been this way for some people. Like you say all team sports in this country are in a very similar boat, from cricket to Union to Football, in as far as debt is the name of the game and finding a sugar daddy is most clubs ambition.
Obviously things can be run better and should be but as a sport we love to beat our own product up and then we wonder why we can't attract big sponsors.

The Bulls fiasco has highlighted just how corrupt the RFL are. Pity the Independent hasn't run an in depth piece on that!

My issue is with the critiscism of "the sport". Maybe I'm too broad in my definition but a sport for me is not defined by its governing body.
I'd applaud an article on the ineptitude of Woods et al and the way they badly undersell a fantastic product. I'd also support an article talking of the bulls fiasco and how there's a clear double standard in protecting some teams and not others. But to suggest the sport is decieving the public, or that the actions of the executives taints the whole sport from elite professionals to kids playing on a weekend is ridiculous.
The stobart sponsorship deal was a farce - but thats why its been dumped.
The particpation figures quoted here don't match the figures I've found today which say 100, 000 participants are now registered. He also ignores junior participation and the record number of schools ( 25000 + ) playing the sport as well as figures showing those who play MORE than once a week. Also deceptive, considering that the 2000+ professionals can technically only play once a week if theres only one club fixture a week.
We are subservient to our sky paymasters - so is any other sport on sky. Including football who also formed their own breakaway top flight division when Sky offered them a huge pile of cash. Why the implication that its only us ?
The Bulls plight has been badly managed. But in football, Portsmouth went into high profile administration as did Liverpool before the Fenway takeover. There were no stories claiming that football was "living a lie".
Jamie Peacock's suggestion is slightly OTT for me, especially in a time of recession, but he is a former national captain, understandably would talk up the game and its promotion and I don't feel in this case is trying to 'lie' to the public.
£29 million pounds is wasted ON ANY SPORT when we have failings in the NHS and education. Its no more grotesque than the millions pumped into archery and basketball for the olympics or a single penny thrown at GB footballers, whose sport is already saturated with cash yet still had public investment to inflict their unnecessary appearance at the London games.
As for being prisoners of the M62 corridor, I believe the Catalans are doing well. Allegedly, there's a franchise in London and at amateur level the sport is being played all over the country.

The sport is badly sold and administered by a few suits at the top. But the sport itself, on the pitch, in the community, its ideals, values, heritage, is a fantastic product, especially considering the disadvantages of exposure and media profile its suffers ona purely geographic level. I find it slightly spiteful than considering the Bulls and sponsorship angles could be run at any time in the last month, they choose to run it the day after the succesful, national showcasing of the sports cup final, with the ( in my opinion ) false implication that its a failing sport, that nobody wants to play, or sponsor and which is conning the public out of their money.

We should remember that the clubs turned down the cash sponsorship deal with a gambling firm, but then it doesn't fit in with having a good whinge about everything.

What if an article on the Bulls situation said the RFL were not to blame? Would people believe it, or wait for one to be written which suited their point of view?

it hits the nail on the head the game is a mess below SL its a disaster as for SL how many clubs could stand alone without a sugar daddy

Most of what he says is true and probably applies to the majority of professional sports; it does seem rather churlish to run the article the day after the CC final, but I guess that's what they do.

It might not be all bad - I've long held the view that the reason the RFL can repeatedly get away with incompetence, raging nepotism and rank amateurism is that no one outside the game actually cares; if there was more scrutiny on how the game was run, perhaps the best people for the job would emerge, start taking decisions for the good of the sport and make sure that the public money it does receive was better spent.

The big problem with our game, is its a small game, played in a small part of a small country in Europe !

The British press are not interested in the NRL, or any other overseas RL success, just domestic sport, and we are a very poor product in their eyes to Union, even though its a complete bag of crap. The other problem is that with the exception of the onfield product, Union is better in every other aspect of the game, from media, sponsorship, profile, International, Euro cup comps, and management, the fact that the game is pants is irrelevent.

Great point. The GUARANTEE that does come from the Bradford debacle is that the franchise system is now completely comprimised and any team that isnt awarded a licence would quite rightly have a legal case to pursue. The fantastic news for every right minded RL supporter is that promotion and relegation will inevitably come back.

Excellent analysis Rumour13. Does anyone know the guys pedigree ? Has he written this article because he is genuinely concerned for the direction in which our game is going?
Or is he ,as I suspect, yet another media guy jumping on the popular bandwagon of putting the boot into the game I love so much?

rlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Calvinrl

Seems he's an experienced and respected sports journalist. He helped set up the English Institute of sport and has been a consultant to various sports funding bodies. However, he is a 'southerner' and a soccerball fan, so he probably has an issue with wasting funding on such a minority sport in which he has no interest.

This is the kind of journalist we should be selling our game to and getting him on side.

Thanks for that Coco.
Yeh seems to be well respected.
Always suspicious as I have spent much of my time attempting to convince people with deaf ears about The Greatest Game.
Seems he is one who of those who we need on our side if we are to progress the cause of RL.

If we are to progress the cause of RL it's probably less about getting people in side and more about getting shot of people who are clearly seen to be holding it back.

cant fault em R.L controled by muppets it as bent as 9 .bob note
bet its fixed to keep Bradford in top 8.