The sport is incredibly parochial even in the North, there are towns that are RL mad, where virtually everyone in the area follows a team, the local pubs are packed every week for the live games etc, and then 3 miles down the road in the next town the sport has no profile. There's no logical reason for this and I'm not sure why it is the case, I guess because RL in these kind of places is incredibly community-driven. There's certainly not blanket coverage in the North. Regarding Liverpool, there is some interest there, St Helens draw some support and have a few Scouse players, James Graham being the most notable, but interested parties have always had to leave the city to get involved. I live in Sheffield which is probably similar to Liverpool in many ways, it's one of the largest cities in the country and only half an hour's drive from some real RL heartlands, yet despite having a professional club and several strong amateur teams the sport flies completely under the radar and there's a sort of French Resistance-like mutual respect when you find that someone else you know is a RL fan. I assume the same goes for Manchester too. I think the biggest problem is the fact that all three cities have two very successful football teams, which maybe dilutes the sporting market a bit, RL is still probably the second biggest sport in all these cities but the dominance of football is so great that we don't really get a look in.