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The fourteenth year in a row. They must be doing something right.
http://www.loverugbyleague.com/news_22768-rfl-posts-profit.html
http://www.loverugbyleague.com/news_22768-rfl-posts-profit.html
Then there’s the issue of financial support for Scotland Rugby League, which is run on the smell of an oily rag, where the RFL cut their funding back in 2013. At the Four Nations they made history with their shock draw with New Zealand. In December last year Wood said: “International rugby league owes them a debt of gratitude for turning up and playing strongly and achieiving what they did. So we’ll be doing our best we can to help them."
What that ‘help’ actually entails, nobody knows. But we do know Scotland can’t exist on good intentions. Steve McCormack is a great coach, but he’s not that good.
Then there’s the issue of financial support for Wales Rugby League, who have already made two staff redundant in anticipation of their funding cut at the end of 2017. The RFL is supposed to be the governing body for the sport across all of the UK, not just England.
Any evidence for falling crowds and falling participation rates?
RL is a niche sport, always has been, always will be. It will never be rich, never be massive and never be national,at the top tier. It has a long history of hand to mouth existence, nothing much I can see has changed, people have been predicting its death since it began, and yet we kick off another new season in a few weeks.
Clubs have always mismanaged themselves, again nothing new there.
Why do you have this attitude for England but are insistent on Australian RL going national despite no indication of ever doing so (excepting a brief two years or so in the 90s)?
I would say it's slightly different. Can we see a London side being viable? It seems Perth would be totally viable with the added bonus it would actually add value to the NRL with new time slots for TV.
I have no idea where your from but the Rugby codes in England are very very divided by geography and class which are hard to overcome.
Melbourne was funded by News Corp. We don't have a News Corp in the UK who will do that.We have a successful side in Melbourne which was about as anti-Rugby as anywhere could be.
We're all excited about a Toronto side, a city with overall no clue about any kind of Rugby.
I can't believe that in a city of 8 million odd people with a decent Rugby culture, a couple of hours down the road from the heartlands, that it is impossible to find 10,000 people willing to show up to a RL match every couple of weeks. It will take work, investment, and on-field SL success over years, yes, but the attitude seems to be 'it's impossible' while holding Australian (and bloody Canadian) cities to far higher standards and expectations.
Does no one else think it's crazy we're talking about Canadian and US expansion before London and Paris?
Big difference between getting people to show up for an international in a big stadium and club matches on a regular basis. The issue is that there's nobody in London who is willing and has/had the clout to do it. The people involved in PSG and London Broncos could've done better but they had no f**king idea what they were doing, and there is nobody to replace them. Even if there was, it would be much harder than somewhere neutral like Toronto IMO because again, people in London don't just not know what RL is, they actively see it as irrelevant. And they're right TBH, a lot of Super League clubs are in places that I've never heard of outside of RL and I don't even live that far away from most of them. And when you're talking about London which considers relatively cosmopolitan RL places like Hull to be decrepit hell-holes then it's just a very hard sell. Again, it's just to do with the demographics and class divides in the UK, it's just a very difficult market for a sport like RL even though it's closer and seemingly more logical. Perez says as much here: http://www.skysports.com/rugby-leag...more-rl-clubs-will-spring-up-in-north-americaSo who were the 44,000 and 35,000 people who watched England play RL in London in 2015 and 2016? All northerners down for a day trip?
I'm not denying it's a fringe of a fringe sport, but in a city of that size you should be able to get a few thousand people to do basically anything.
Of course you don't have a News Corp (last thing we need is more involvement from them) but if we can attract an investor to launch a seemingly pie-in-the-sky club from Toronto then why not somewhere a bit closer to home?
Like I said, the issue is that RL is actively derided in a lot of these places due to class issues, historical oppression and RU influence. It's not that it can never succeed, but it needs to succeed in other, more relevant places before it can get there. "Come and play in the Mushy Peas league with Widnes and Featherstone and Leigh" isn't going to work. The sport's image literally could not be much worse than it currently is in the UK and it will take an outside injection to change that.I think generally there is a bit of a defeatist attitude in the UK when it comes to expansion. Places like Paris & Wales, there seems to be an ingrained attitude in most fans (definitely not all) that we have "tried that and it failed", so there is no point in ever trying again or even being open to the idea that if done differently next time it COULD succeed.
Take Paris for example was 20 years ago, who's to say with the right people in place it couldn't be a roaring success in today's environment?
Then there are RL clubs with small fan bases from cities/areas that "will never take to the game" i.e. London, Sheffield etc. Cut and Paste that line to Scotland & Ireland as well.
IMO the Wolfpack, Perez and Co. Have the potential to entirely change the way RL and potential expansion is percieved in the Northern Hemisphere. Let's not forget the Wolfpack virtually came from nowhere, an idea in somebody's head, if they can be proven to be a success than having a successful club in Paris, London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Dublin, Istanbul, Berlin or Moscow suddenly doesn't seem so far-fetched to fans, media and perhaps most importantly other men like Eric Perez.
Like I said, the issue is that RL is actively derided in a lot of these places due to class issues, historical oppression and RU influence. It's not that it can never succeed, but it needs to succeed in other, more relevant places before it can get there. "Come and play in the Mushy Peas league with Widnes and Featherstone and Leigh" isn't going to work. The sport's image literally could not be much worse than it currently is in the UK and it will take an outside injection to change that.