I agree with pretty much all those points.

The difficulty is that the biggest RL playing nation couldn't give two rabbits tods about the international game.

Super League salary cap = £1.65m

Rugby Union premiership salary cap = £4.0m

That's a massive gap but even then only takes account of club rugby. England internationals like Ashton earn money beyond the wildest dreams of any Rugby League player.

If Union want any of our top players there is little we can do to stop them.

Our best hope, sadly, is that they go to the NRL, which should soon be wealthier.

Remember Union requires much bigger squads and many of their clubs are struggling. So are some of ours too, of course.

They also play a huge number of international games to keep the whole thing afloat - would we stand for SL being devalued by playing fixtures while the best players were off playing... well that is the other problem, isn't it?

12-a-side? Doubt the Australians would help us out. 15-a-side with line-outs and collapsi... I mean competitive scrums? If you can't beat 'em

Anyway we won the professionalism argument, even if it took 100 years. This is our reward

I'm in two minds over the whole international / expansion arguement.

For me its at what cost. If it means a multi leagued system with promotion and relegation with teams from all over the british isles playing in front of big crowds then bring it on. Sadly what it seems to mean is that the RFL want this to spring up instantly,so if it was possible they would set up 14 clubs in 14 major cities in the uk, all would have new football stadia and would be branded as the London raiders, Birmingham bulldogs, Glasgow eels etc... They would then play in these football stadia at a 1/4 full at best and wonder why the people aren't watching.

The growth needed would need to grow organically over many years with teams being allowed to grow and gain promotion on merit, thus allowing fans to experience highs and lows and grow to love a club and feel attached. Creating a franchise system wouldn't work in a country like England as its so small its always easy to watch something else.

I may come across as small minded but I'd rather admit we watch a minority (2nd tier) sport that is based around the M62 and has a really good entertaining league then throw the baby out with the bath water trying to catch the uncatchable dream of being as big as international RU.

Yup, and then the French RU i believe operate without a salary cap. There was a big arguement about the Heineken cup previous years whereby there was an uneven playing field due to some countries having a cap and others not.

Ultimately in a limited career time wise players cant be faulted for chasing the cash to support their families etc. Just a shame for RL that we are a northern working class sport without the big bucks to keep the top players if they choose to look elsewhere.

The only positive from an international game perspective is that the OZ RL team seem to get their players taken as much as ours. Our main negative is our lack of strenght in depth vs the Aussies.

Quite right and the fact is Australia RL has a very high profile. You have to ask yourself apart from the money thing, is the attraction the fact that as a Union international you play competitive games against several nations in front of massive crowds whereas as a Kangaroo you play NZ! This was the point I made about Ashton, look at the profile he's got now.

and no matter how much RL tries to spread the international game we need to understand that RL will never be as successful having the international spread as union. There's no way for example that we will end up with quality RL teams in Argentina, South Africa, Italy, Ireland, Scotland (made up of scots not Aussies) etc

Part of me is thinking that the RFL should stop concentrating on expansion of the game in the UK and focus on what it knows works. On the back of the world RL should maybe stop concentrating on growth and just focus again on what works.

Sadly there's no answer to keeping good young players. We have to ackonwledge that in the next 10-15 years the shift may even go further meaning RL becomes more a feeder competition for RU.

If that happens you have to think it is over as a full-time sport. Clubs would either operate as Championship clubs do now or jump ship to RU. Heart says the former, head says it'd be a slow death.

Depends really. Clubs jumping ship would be an interesting one.

I'd be more inclined to think that due to the loyal fan base RL has in its northern heartland we may be sustainable as a sport but just with slightly lesser players playing the game. If the level of the players drops slightly across the board theoretically it would all be relative and the competition should still be competetive enough to keep the fans interested. Does mean imo that the RFL will have to shift their mindset though away from growth to survival.

Would Sky pay anything like what they do now for a feeder sport? Union has its attrative-to-advertisers demographic and successful International competitions at least.

Union is not without its issues and they mirror League's in some respects.

This interview with Ian McGeechan highlights some of their issues and a few will look familiar to RL fans (if back to front on North-South).

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/aug/31/bath-ian-mcgeechan[/url

I'm not sure of the exact figures but i'd guess Union gets far more sponsorship from Sky than RL does already?

It's also interesting as you say that Union can attract sponsors of the size of Aviva. Just further highlights our inability to compete in the future.

Sky and Setanta paid £54 million for 3 seasons of GP:


[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/11/sky-setanta-guinness-premiership-rugby[/url


When Setanta went belly-up ESPN stepped in.

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/14/espn-guinness-premiership-rugby[/url

That's £18 million per season between 12 clubs, which is £1.5 million per club. SL clubs get £1.2 million from Sky iirc. The big difference will be in revenues earned and distributed by the RFU from the international game. Our television revenue covers 75% of our cap, theirs covers 37.5%.

That £4 million cap is high too for most GP clubs which might be why Leicester and Wasps have won 12 of the 14 professional championships. There has been talk of lowering it and enforcing it properly - a team that plays about 300 metres from where I'm sitting is regarded with suspicion by their rivals, I belief. And I can't see much potential for growth tbh. The silver lining to having a crap int'l game is the potential for improvement. Don't think I'd ever want it to dominate the sport though - I'm unashamedely club-first.

Interesting thanks for that. (just to be a pedant its now the AP)

RL in England won't die, nor will it become a feeder competition for RU. People have been suggesting that since RU went professional in 1995 (or whenever it was), yet RL attendances and TV audiences have been on the up ever since. Next season I believe attendances will increase even further. A sport that is averaging >10K per game over the season is not dying, and should be able to support a full-time structure.

Looking back over the players that we've lost to RU, how many of them do we really miss? Apart from Robinson, and maybe Ashton and Vainikolo, I can't think of any that have had a detrimental impact to the international game. RL and RU are just too different to justify massive player shifts between the codes.

Our biggest problem is Englands lack of competitiveness against NZ and Aus. We can put this down to crap imports/coaching/player development/dodgy refs

, but not RU poaching players from RL.

Dont think RL will die, but our success may decrease based on a number of factors. The one thing not touched upon is the youth setups. With more and more money in RU it may well be that they start to pick up top RL kids from the junior sides for their academies. That to me is one of the changes that i think is likely to happen that will have a far bigger impact then picking up a handful of established 1st teamers. I know for example that Ionians have a lot of good local RL kids playing for them. I also know that as part of the Aviva sponsorship deal an element will be spent on skills schools around the north of the country attracting kids to RU from RL backgrounds. We cant stop that either.

RL may not die but the development of RL will plateu if the anticipated changes start to happen.

Couldn't agree more, as a strategy the RFL need to look at what is acheivable and focus on that. Expansion world wide of the game is a nice thought but in reality it's not going to happen so why waste money, time and effort over chasing the end of the rainbow.

I believe the countries love affair with football is waning and people are looking for an alternative to prancing primadonnas driving ferraris and treating the paying public like thick peasants. RU will benefit from this and I believe that if we market and improve our domestic comp that too can benefit. The product we have is already a pretty good one, has decent viewing figures and as long as we walk before we run it can be a profitable venture. There is just a fear that if we carry on looking for world domination we could ruin what we already have.

Major think that can help world wide would be over the big pond. They hardly have a league set up (if at all) and 1 during the NFL off season could be a goldmine.

The biggest problem I'd see with this is that anyone even half good enough to play RL will be snapped up by an NFL team where the money is huge. If football has struggled to get a foothold (mainly a girls sport) over there I would think RL will rerally struggle.

But not everyone can play NFL full time, just an elite few hundred out of the whole of the US. plus if its in the off season many will get onboard, especially the fans.

Think further expansion like this would weaken our game further using the examples earlier in this thread about Union. We need to do our best imo to get the game back to it's heartland rather than expanding and we also need to focus on how we are going to stop Union pinching our good kids, never mind opening it up for the NFL to pinch our good kids too. IMO.

i Dont mean the RFL, i mean Rugby league as a whole, if it stays in just the heartlands it will slowly demise into nothing.

By focussing on growth it's not exactly expanding successfully is it? Internationally are we more competetive now compared to 20 years ago? Do we lose more RL players to RU now than we did 20 years ago?

Wudnt say Catalans expansion is a bad thing or been unsuccessful. Quins is questionable, Cru is still developing but not at a good rate - went to wrexham for our game and they we enjoyed it and the fans up there seem to have really taken to the club so things could happen there.

So the big question for debate is:
Would we have a better competition if the likes of Widnes and Halifax were in the league instead of Quins and Crusaders.

I agree, the Catalans expansion has worked because to some extent it's an extension of the M62 in the way that the Perpignan region is rugby league heartland.

Still doesnt solve the problem of wealthier sports stealing our talent at both youth and senior levels.

I think the next few years will be hard on League, Union has a genuine national spread throughout Britain thier games is improving on the field & thier club crowds are better than we get & International crowds make us look like a sunday pub league. Another thing to remember is that Union has a long established presence in League heart lands (there are more clubs with more teams playing union in Yorkshire than League) we are only slowly pushing into thier traditional areas (London & the south,Wales, Universaties & the forces). I dont belive that all is lost as atracting union players (all be it at a low skill level) with a short summer season gets the game known to kids & thier parents. It will just be very slow & is the reason we should stick with London & Wales even at the expense of our home area clubs.
As for the internationals it is the Aussies who need to make up there minds if they are serious about it. Maybe we league fans are more fickle than Union fans? the Scots turn up year after year to watch thier team yet they have never beaten the all blacks in thier history they have very little chance of ever wining the six nations & nobody watches the club game up there, no one cares that Italy are poor they still turn up, Argentina for years were terrible but Union stuck with them & they are now serious threats to even the all blacks. We will just have to ride out the next few years & hope that the latest crop of young players develop into a genuine threat to Australia & NZ.