Super League has a lot to answer for.
Six clubs were "relegated" when the comp started and some new teams invented (sadly they didnt stay the distance)
Everything rugby league is now focused towards the end of season grand final and we managed to call the fifth placed team "champions" last season.
For the CC to prosper, some thought is needed regarding the scheduling of the rounds to build momentum and the competition deserves some better press
and media coverage.
The Beeb dont promote this competition very well at all. However, having said that, each clubs fans have to take responsibility themselves and be bothered enough to
turn up and cheer their team.
Shudds pretend that they are a big club but, less that 3000 spectators is a disgrace and yet if they make it to the finasl, the Fartown faithfull will no doubt be chanting "loyal supporters"
Wembley is the best RL spectacle that we have, supporters of all clubs going to the capital to witness a magnificent event and if only for the final the competition should remain, but is does
need some better promotion.

Does it need better promotion? Clearly it wouldn't harm, but the truth of it IMO is it has just been devalued by the emergence of SL.
If you're the supporter of a big club, you are chasing the Grand Final and it all consuming glory, if you're not then you're largely disenfranchised.
I still don't and never have seen what the SL licenced structure offers what we didn't have other than the power to draw in vast amounts of Sky money, which given thought could have happened for the old game.
The cup is on its arris, p and r is gone, soulless grounds and soulless clubs inhabit the league, one club vying for its existence against another, team GB is dead and with it any chance of international honours, young talent is still stifled by overseas mediocrity, county cups gone, premierships gone and replaced with a copycat competition that devalues the league winners glory.
And all this marketed as a success by the powers that be!!!

Sad but largely true.

I have to say that getting involved with junior rugby a couple of years ago has given me the most enjoyment I've had out of the game in many a year; it's easy to feel disillusioned by the shenanigans of SL, but there's nothing like seeing a group of young players develop, learn the game and have a great time playing with their mates.

I'm not sure what opportunities the few who have aspirations to play professionally will encounter as they get older, given the state of the game outside of half a dozen sugar-daddy owned clubs, but you live in hope.

It doesn't take much for the anti SL lobby to start sounding off does it. People make it sound like the involvement of Sky
has had a detrimental affect on our game. Immediately before Sky we had one team turning up and winning at Wembley every year, and the old game was dying a slow death.

Sky may well have a detrimental effect on Sky, however i didn't suggest that, merely that things have got worse IMO since the advent of SL for the listed reasons, here they are again:
"The cup is on its arris, p and r is gone, soulless grounds and soulless clubs inhabit the league, one club vying for its existence against another, team GB is dead and with it any chance of international honours, young talent is still stifled by overseas mediocrity, county cups gone, premierships gone and replaced with a copycat competition that devalues the league winners glory".
These IMO are all real declines in our game, not as a result of Sky (because nobody really knows the limit of Sky's involvement) but as a result of SL.
All of these could and should have been avoidable with a clear unbiased vision of the future from the leaders of the game, as could the domination of one club prior to SL.
For me the main influence (of the Wigan dominance and the way SL was carved up in its infancy) was one Maurice Lindsey, quite the most unscrupulous individual ever to fall out of another human being.
Am i a fan of SL? No not hugely for all the above reasons.
Do i blame Sky? No because i DONT KNOW how involved they are in the overall game.
Do i think SL could have served the game of RL better? You bet!!!
Sadly though, there has been too much water under the bridge and the Red Hall cupboards are full to bursting with skeletons, implicating all of the top table, so nothing is likely to change other than via a mass revolt from the clubs themselves, and as was shown with the formation of the SL, there are too many clubs with a vested interest in a remain in the status quo.

I fail to see the heinous crime Lindsay committed. As chairman of his club he made them the best team in the league then he helped drag our game up into the professional era. Are you angry at him because he was more forward thinking and more ahead of his time than other people in our game. I seem to remember that he was instrumental in pushing through the idea of SL , so perhaps this is the reason for your vitriol.

He monopolised the game through Wigan and had a strangle hold on the game and it almost died as a result, great of you're a Wigan fan only.
At the initiation of summer rugby and SL the game was carved up in the best interests of certain clubs that would benefit the league others such as ours were cast aside, all of that was fairly ruinous.
He may well have brought the proffesionality era to RL, wether or not RL clubs are sustainably proffesional has yet to be seen, all have tax issues possibly pending, many are reliant on benefactors and all are reliant on Sky Sports.
As a human being I find him lacking in charisma and as for the rules he helped bring into SL he spent much of his time at Wigan then trying to break them.
SL could have achieved so much, but in many ways we have gone backwards yet still manage to let the people running the game tell us otherwise.
Hardly vitriol though!!

Spot on Kinleycat. We were shafted over as were several others. We didn't want to be Calder!...My God imagine the mess that would have been. Extinct by now without a doubt. So we got shoved in Div 2 as refuseniks. Keighley et al...never forget this travesty it was a disgrace to sport in general and our sport in particular. I have lots of vitriol for Mr Lindsay and I'm not ashamed to say it.

SL is a glistening turd. When 4 to 6 clubs get bored with being the only competition we can await an SPL like implosion.

Word of the week - well played.

Quote: charlie63wildcat "SL is a glistening turd. When 4 to 6 clubs get bored with being the only competition we can await an SPL like implosion.'" That's a EDIT viewtopic.php?f=33&t=421878&tsmp=1337169198argument. When those 4 to six teams get bored where do they go and play? We have a salary cap in place to make the league fairer. Obviously teams with greater revenue will often finish nearer the top but a competitive league is in the interests of all and if we get our new ground and continue with our off-field improvements plus pick up on-field then we could make those top four or six take note.

Quote: charlie63wildcat "SL is a glistening turd. When 4 to 6 clubs get bored with being the only competition we can await an SPL like implosion.'" That's a EDIT viewtopic.php?f=33&t=421878&tsmp=1337169198argument. When those 4 to six teams get bored where do they go and play? We have a salary cap in place to make the league fairer. Obviously teams with greater revenue will often finish nearer the top but a competitive league is in the interests of all and if we get our new ground and continue with our off-field improvements plus pick up on-field then we could make those top four or six take note.

Thats a reasonable enough consideration, if you consider SL to be in any way fair.
Many don't i certainly don't, certain teams are in because of who they are and where they are, some are treat differently when they breach the salary cap.
Thats my answer, however you skewed my original post, which was that the game is in a worse situation because of SL than it was, i listed my reasons i have yet to see anyone disprove them, you included.

Maurice Lindsey had the vision of a geriatric mole. He bankrupted Wigan whilst seriously damaging the game, and he was simply the man on the end of the telephone when News International called to offer a large cheque for RL rights.
SL, however, is much more competitive than the old league. There was so little glamour in winning the league that everyone preferred the Cup. It's been the reversing of this that has caused the decline in the Cup, but the final is still a great occasion and most clubs still aspire to win it. I also don't get this 'plastic club/soulless ground stuff'. What's 'plastic' about Huddersfield or London? Try being a London fan to see what true dedication is, and if you think there are too few of them to merit consideration, just remember it wasn't so long ago that their crowds were better than those at Wakey or Salford, for instance. Also, whilst I love the 'old fashioned appeal' of Belle Vue, You surely don't want us to be continuing forever with rotting Victorian piles rather than playing at grounds like Langtree Park, the HJ or the KC?

Is SL 'fair'? It's a lot fairer than many sports with no spending ceiling at all. However, no sport is 'fair' in a pure sense. I also don't get your point about teams being treated unequally over the salary cap. The only incident I can think of that could have led you to claim this is when Wigan successfully appealed their sentence for breach and won the appeal - but this was, however regrettable, because SL had not ratified the new penalties at the time of Wigan's conviction. One up for the lawyers, it's true, but nothing Red Hall could do about it.