The England/UK League side

[Knight87]

For those who have been around long enough to know this: How would you compare the Great Britain/England sides from 1994 Kangaroos Tour/1995 World Cup to today's side? How would you rate players like Shaun Edwards, Jason Robinson, Bobbie Goulding, Lee Jackson, Barrie McDermott etc. from that era to today's players?

To the England/UK supporters: Do you want to see the extended tours return (Australia in Uk, Uk in Australia etc.)? When league seasons were played over two years before Super League, when did it go from (like, from what month to what month)? In terms of the rugby league quality and performances, what has been the differences between playing during the Summer Months and playing when the comp use to be in Winter over in England (have you ever played in snow, or below 0 temperatures)?

Finally, how long do you think it will be before test matches go back to the large venues, like Wembley, Old Trafford etc.? Did any of you go to the 1992 or '95 WC Finals (and if so, what did you think of the game and crowd atmosphere as a whole)?

 

[Fairleigh Good!]

For those who have been around long enough to know this: How would you compare the Great Britain/England sides from 1994 Kangaroos Tour/1995 World Cup to today's side? How would you rate players like Shaun Edwards, Jason Robinson, Bobbie Goulding, Lee Jackson, Barrie McDermott etc. from that era to today's players?

To the England/UK supporters: Do you want to see the extended tours return (Australia in Uk, Uk in Australia etc.)? When league seasons were played over two years before Super League, when did it go from (like, from what month to what month)? In terms of the rugby league quality and performances, what has been the differences between playing during the Summer Months and playing when the comp use to be in Winter over in England (have you ever played in snow, or below 0 temperatures)?

Finally, how long do you think it will be before test matches go back to the large venues, like Wembley, Old Trafford etc.? Did any of you go to the 1992 or '95 WC Finals (and if so, what did you think of the game and crowd atmosphere as a whole)?

Individual players are better in some positions now and some then. For example Keiron Cunningham has been head and shoulders above any British hooker I've ever seen.

Obviously we've not had a proper scrum half since Goulding retired and bar the odd youngster knocking around like Eastmond and Lee we don't seem to be any closer to getting one. Fielden was better than the likes of those mentioned above before he lost his mind and signed for Wigan. He has been appologetic ever since, probably due to him not taking his Mothers death well and having to carry players at Wigan.

GB has never lacked quality international players. There are always several players in Super League who could literally walk into ANY NRL side. But the problem is that there aren't enough of them. We don't have quality players in every position and there is no depth to what quality we do have.

It all boils down to participation. We don't have anywhere near the number playing the game as Australia does, and even then the ones entering the British game are usually the runts on the litter, the scrawny kids from poor families in the North, in one of the few towns with a team. If a kid has any athletic ability they are off trying to be Wayne Rooney. My Dad always said that the reason we never beat Australia is because our Darren Lockyer's , Andrew Johns' and Gordon Tallis' are busy playing Sunday League football blissfully unaware they are potentially the best British league players ever.

As for the Super League impact bit, there was a thread on that very question on here a while back, try searching for that. Basically Super League coincided with the introduction of the salary cap and playing in better, dryer conditions. This obviously meant a more level, competitive competition and better quality matches as the conditions are now not reguarly an issue. I've watched and played in temperatures less than 0. I remember it being -7 one year and we were playing on an ice laded field. No one cared though, you just get on with it. Playing in snow used to be great fun and the first Saints-Salford game of this season was played in a blizzard with snow covering the field.

I don't think International league will ever take off. I think a highly competitive and popular Tri Nations between GB, Aus and NZ is the best we can hope for and we are still some way off that. GB just aren't good enough consistently enough to make regular tours a success. We can steal one off games at times, but at full strength in ideal conditions for both sides we are still going to come up short 99 times out of 100.

I was at the 95 (I think) World Cup Final where Aus beat NZ at Old Trafford. There were 44,000 there from my memory and the atmopshere was great whilst NZ were competitive in the game, 40,000 adopted Kiwis screaming on the underdogs. It died out a little when Australia pulled away though.

 

[bartman]

As for the Super League impact bit, there was a thread on that very question on here a while back, try searching for that.

I think JT may have started that thread too a while back?

I have great memories as a kid in Australia of the Kangaroo tours of England, and of a few select Australian players spending their off-season (when the competitions were on at opposite times of the year) with English clubs for the experience and to learn - not just the money, but it was a different era.

Something a lot of younger Australian fans might not realise is that there were periods through history where GB would dominate Australia. It was the true hub of the game in terms of playing skill and coaching tactics, and Australia had to catch-up to be and stay competitive. Now the shoe's on the other foot but these things go in waves.

The timing of the seasons means that a tour would now only happen as an add on, so not being right in the heart of a season in the home territory where interest and match fitness were at their peak. I'd love for the tours to be possible again, but with the full-time professionalism of the game, the costs are probably so much higher for running something as extensive as that. And the way the game is now getting the income back would be more based around broadcast rights than ticket sales, which will actually serve to reduce ticket sales compared with those pre-Super League touring days.

When league seasons were played over two years before Super League, when did it go from (like, from what month to what month)?

You're looking at 30 rounds or 26 rounds - was always longer than the Aussie seasons at the time. And that doesn't include weekends set aside for cup matches, or for any matches on the extended touring years. Playing over the two years was just playing over the one winter (that spread across Xmas/New Year), so I think starting in October and ending in April, with the Challenge Cup Final to end in April or May.

 

[Knight87]

Individual players are better in some positions now and some then. For example Keiron Cunningham has been head and shoulders above any British hooker I've ever seen.

Obviously we've not had a proper scrum half since Goulding retired and bar the odd youngster knocking around like Eastmond and Lee we don't seem to be any closer to getting one. Fielden was better than the likes of those mentioned above before he lost his mind and signed for Wigan. He has been appologetic ever since, probably due to him not taking his Mothers death well and having to carry players at Wigan.

GB has never lacked quality international players. There are always several players in Super League who could literally walk into ANY NRL side. But the problem is that there aren't enough of them. We don't have quality players in every position and there is no depth to what quality we do have.

It all boils down to participation. We don't have anywhere near the number playing the game as Australia does, and even then the ones entering the British game are usually the runts on the litter, the scrawny kids from poor families in the North, in one of the few towns with a team. If a kid has any athletic ability they are off trying to be Wayne Rooney. My Dad always said that the reason we never beat Australia is because our Darren Lockyer's , Andrew Johns' and Gordon Tallis' are busy playing Sunday League football blissfully unaware they are potentially the best British league players ever.

As for the Super League impact bit, there was a thread on that very question on here a while back, try searching for that. Basically Super League coincided with the introduction of the salary cap and playing in better, dryer conditions. This obviously meant a more level, competitive competition and better quality matches as the conditions are now not reguarly an issue. I've watched and played in temperatures less than 0. I remember it being -7 one year and we were playing on an ice laded field. No one cared though, you just get on with it. Playing in snow used to be great fun and the first Saints-Salford game of this season was played in a blizzard with snow covering the field.

I don't think International league will ever take off. I think a highly competitive and popular Tri Nations between GB, Aus and NZ is the best we can hope for and we are still some way off that. GB just aren't good enough consistently enough to make regular tours a success. We can steal one off games at times, but at full strength in ideal conditions for both sides we are still going to come up short 99 times out of 100.

I was at the 95 (I think) World Cup Final where Aus beat NZ at Old Trafford. There were 44,000 there from my memory and the atmopshere was great whilst NZ were competitive in the game, 40,000 adopted Kiwis screaming on the underdogs. It died out a little when Australia pulled away though.

That is the 2000 World Cup Final youre talking about. Us Aussie beat NZ 40-12.

I was also wandering: why is Rugby League in England only constrained to the North? Why isn't London a success area? Like, I hear all this stuff about Harlequins getting crap crowds etc., but yet they can draw big crowds at Wembley for the Challenge Cup Final.

Also, what are your favourite League grounds in the UK? What was Old Trafford like as a ground before it got extended to its current capacity of 76,000 (I saw some highlights of the '94 Kangaroos test at Old Trafford when the capacity was about 44,000 and it looked quite good).

Finally, do you think (in the Super League) that the season should be shortened (28 rds is a lot to play)? Do you think that all finals games should be played at Old Trafford and Wembley to maximise crowd attendances? Would a Grand Final at Wembley work?

 

[bartman]

I was also wandering: why is Rugby League in England only constrained to the North? Why isn't London a success area? Like, I hear all this stuff about Harlequins getting crap crowds etc., but yet they can draw big crowds at Wembley for the Challenge Cup Final.

It's more historical, in the same way how league wasn't played in say Adelaide or Perth when it started in Australia? Only difference is London is the biggest city, whereas in Australia rugby legaue happened to start in Sydney/Brisbane.

The start of rugby league was the Northern Union, where 27 (?) clubs broke away from the then existing rugby union, gradually changed the rules of the game. From the name you can guess these were rugby clubs located in the North, and the main issue of the split was broken time payments (ie paying players compensation for their working hours lost by travelling and playing games). Most of the players in North needed this (working classes) whereas the Union clubs of the South were largely gentlemen that didn't need to work and resisted this notion.

Football was the code that for some reason was adopted across areas with equal passion, while there were two versions of the smaller sport of rugby - one in the north (league) and one in the south (union). The South includes London, so there is no lasting tradition of league to build on there, no to mention difficulty in getting coverage above football and union in national (London-based) media. Union couldn't draw a crowd to save itself in the North really either, maybe with the exception of Sale and Newcastle? I guess you could see the switch to playing in Summer with Super League as an attempt to find space in the sporting market which through winter is dominanted by football, and maybe to try and get around the Union coverage in papers that comes from the Southern/London traditions and assumptions.

For Wembley (or anywhere the CUp final is held) it draws a bit crowd, because supporters will travel for the experience and weekend. While Wembley was being built it drew big crowds in Edinburgh and Cardiff too. It's great being in a town for the weekend when you know 80,000+ league fans are descending and take over the place... it's a real occasion on game day with meeting points and drinking stops and fans dressing up in costume, or proudly wearing their own club gear even if they're not playing.

Some really good (and detailed) books I can recommend are by Tony Collins, called Rugby;s Great Split and Rugby League In Twentieth Centruy Britain. Probably hard to get in Australia and might be costly through Amazon etc.

 

[bartman]

Never saw Old Trafford until the last few years, so can't comment.

Finally, do you think (in the Super League) that the season should be shortened (28 rds is a lot to play)? Do you think that all finals games should be played at Old Trafford and Wembley to maximise crowd attendances? Would a Grand Final at Wembley work?

The trouble with shortening the season is that clubs rely on the gate takings to help them in their operations. Only three clubs (I think) make a profit, and a club's salary cap is actually tied to it's revenue/takings rather than being a flat salary cap that every club can afford the maximum of. That's why over the last twenty years only four different teams have won the title - they're the clubs able to spend the maximum and generally have more depth.

With the move to 14 teams in 2009, it's an opportunity to have a simple home and away draw of 26 rounds (this season dropped from 27 to 26). To make this not hurt for clubs the league need to be careful, so clubs can plan for it in advance. Having a weekend off in the middle for some international/rep match(es) and the five weeks off for the Challenge Cup rounds/finals really means in the future this will be 26 + 5 + 1 + 4 (finals) = 36 possible games for a player which is way long enough, presuming there'll be some (4?) international matches at seasons end.

Moving other finals to big grounds would not work crowd wise... home and away play-offs are where the people are, and clubs earn that advantage during the season. Fans will generally make weekends of the Grand Final in Manchester, and the Cup Final wherever, but to make people to spend money on transport (trains can be very expensive over here) and accomodation, and tickets for games leading up to the Grand Final would cause a revolt. It'd be like NRL deciding to play all semis in Canberra, or Port Macquarie and expecting all fans to make their way there.

Only half as many people were willing - or able - to come down to Cardiff for the round of matches (Round 13) this year, as ususally attend the Grand Final and Cup Final these days for example. The game has to stay in touch with the people who support it, and expand a bit slowly and sensibly rather than in a rush, and not take their loyal fans for granted.

 

[Knight87]

Ok Bartman. I've never been to England. I know Soccer (aka Football) is the number 1 sport there and most dominate the media like crazy. However, how would you compare Rugby League to Rugby Union (in terms of media coverage, articles in news/newspapers etc.) in England? What about cricket in comparison to League (as they're both played in Summer)? Would you say cricket is also bigger than Soccer, even though theyre played in different seasons?

 

[bartman]

No worries, I had no idea about England once upon a time too, it is a bit strange to get used to until you can get used to the place names and transport systems and distances, population centres, and regional differences.

Union tends to get more coverage than league (more Cup competition and finals games shown on free-to-air), and more of a run in the newspapers as well about it's domestic competition when it's on. It's been a sore point for fans for years, and books even written about it I believe? Internationally as well more focus is given to Union with it's Four/Five Six Nations annual tournament in Europe, and obviously with the World Cup after Engalnd's 2003 win and with that tournament soon to be hosted here this year.

In comparison to cricket, it also receives more newspaper coverage than league, for internationals as well as the domestic (county) season I'd say? But nothing, nothing is as big as the coverage for soccer ("the national obsession"), during season especially, but even in the off-season with transfer rumours etc - they often get priority over any league news, even though in summer other sports (tennis, motor racing, golf, horse racing) can take over the headline news - all of which get in the national/London coverage more than rugby league.

It's all part of why when coming here I knew I had to live in the North, where you get a bit more local coverage of league, on localised TV shows and in local papers and radio etc. If I'd been living in London I'd imagine it would be like being a league fan in Adelaide or Perth, or maybe Melbourne but that may be slightly improving? But in Melbourne - like London and the South, and like Wales - league will never command majority attention like it is capable of during the season in the North (the M62 motorway corridor and Cumbria).

 

[nadera78]

he GB team of the eraly to mid 1990's (when i started watching RL) had bugger all in the forwards. We were always pushed around by the aussies, but we had excellent halves and backs, who could carve teams up on the rare occassions we could physically match the aussies.

Bear in mind at this point tgg was almost entirely part-time here at that point, everyone had jobs. Now, we have a better pack than the aussies but can just about field 5 decent backs and struggle to find decent halves.


For the other questions. Union and cricket get disproportionate amounts of media coverage. Cricket gets big crowds for tests, but the county game is often watched by a couple of hundred people. Internationals fund the domestic game. Union support has grown at club level, but again the internationals fund the clubs, without that money and media awareness they'd be buggered.

RL is bigger than both sports at club level, but we get ignored by the media because we're unfashionable. The guys who set the tone for the media (journalists, editors, TV producers) were virtually all educated at private schools where they played union, cricket and buggery.

Interesting to note that whenever a test/cup final is played outside the north (London, Cardiff, Ediburgh) a good % of the tickets are sold locally. In london it would be something like 25%, but there are a miriad of reasons why that support isn't tranlsated to the Harlequins.

 

[MarionMorrison]

Perhaps someone could also confirm something for me? When I lived over in England, I was of the understanding that junior sport of the 'big' sports i.e. soccer, union, cricket and tennis were funded by the proceeds of the lotto ore something similiar and then recently league was added to this list for the first time. Could anyone confirm?

 

[nadera78]

Some of the proceeds from the lottery go into 'good causes', one of which is a fund for sport. There are all sorts of ways to get that funding, sometimes it's for elite performances, or for local amateur clubs to build facilities, or employing junior development officers, or various other things.

When it first started RL was very very slow to get involved. As always, we just stood back and watched while other sports got stuck in. Eventually we started to get involved and the RFL is now pretty good at it. Funding is available for the national team (which is one reason for the change to England in the near future, because the funding bodies are home nations not GB) and they offer assistance to clubs wanting to access funding because it can be quite complicated dealing with local government.

RL is now listed as one of the big sports over here, along with football, cricket and union. However, we still get less funding than the others.

I would argue that sports like football, with such isane amounts of money washing through the game (each EPL club will get £50million this year) should not get any public funding. They should be paying for it all themselves.

 

[Evil Homer]

Nothing compares to the soccer coverage over here, I'd say it gets probably the same amount as every other sport combined, if not more. RL is, considering it's popularity, completely neglected by the media - a double page spread in the national newspapers a few times a season is as good as it gets. It varies though - some papers seem to have RL as an afterthought alongside the horse riding and badminton news, whereas others regularly have a full page spread or more if there's a big game. RL is increasingly being featured on the sports news on national radio, but it's never much more than a quick read of the day's fixtures or scorelines from Super League. There are occasionally RL adverts on Sky channels, but not normally during prime-time shows, and the BBC give next to no promotion of their Challenge Cup games. Considering viewing figures, RL is neglected by both Sky but especially by the BBC, who often have shoddy, amatuerish production values for their RL coverage. The BBC Super League Show is still only shown regionally in the North of England, despite drawing numerous times the figures that the other regional programmes at the same time draw, and is again often a fairly shoddy production. The BBC's neglect of RL is probably due to the fact that it is run by ex-public-school-boys from the South, typical Union men.

Having said that, there's plenty of RL coverage if you know where to look, and there is now more junior RL played in London than any other district in the UK I believe, so hopefully when these kids grow up RL will get a fair crack nationally as well as locally.

 

[nadera78]

Having said that, there's plenty of RL coverage if you know where to look, and there is now more junior RL played in London than any other district in the UK I believe, so hopefully when these kids grow up RL will get a fair crack nationally as well as locally.

Not quite, but the RFL has the UK broken down into geographical 'service areas' and I'm pretty certain that London is the 4th biggest in terms of junior players, behind Wigan/Leigh, Leeds and Hull. Which is one hell of an achievement given that ten years ago, when I was at school, there were maybe 2 or 3 school sides and no junior clubs.

Given time, these lads will become adults with their own kids and RL will be a natural part of their lives, not an oddity, and then a clear progression of players to the top flight (which we are already starting to see the begginings of) and of fans to the pro clubs will follow. We just have to stick it out for a little while yet.

 

[Evil Homer]

That's the one - service area with the biggest increase in participation numbers over the last 10 years or something similar.

 

[Kurt Angle]

That is the 2000 World Cup Final youre talking about. Us Aussie beat NZ 40-12.

No, he's talking about the 1995 WC semi final.

44,000 watched the smie-final, where an ARL side played a full Strength NZ team.

I believe the final score was 25-24.

Ridge missed a last minute conversion attempt to win the game for NZ.

 

[Knight87]

Um, the Australia vs NZ game at Old Trafford with 44,000 ppl was the 2000WC Final. The game you are referring to is the 1995 Semi that went into extra time was held at Huddersfield, and score was 30-20 (Terry Hill scoring the matchwinner). Crowd was approx. 17,000