Stephen Jones, brave soul that he is, provides this analysis of Rugby League in the serene knowledge that he won't be challenged - either by his editor or by his colleagues on The Sunday Times. As a so-called vehicle for the disinterested coverage of sport The Sunday Times gives no genuine coverage to Rugby League, despite the game still being the second most popular spectator sport in the country. As Martin Sadler has said: `There is no Rugby League writer for that newspaper who can put right the gross distortions that a writer like Jones inflicts upon a gullible readership'.
In the quality press, especially on Sundays, acres of space are devoted to Rugby Union, much of it testimony to our undying love affair with the mediocre and banal, to the celebration of players of extremely modest footballing ability, in contests which lollop along and provide the spectator with little more than interminable displays of line out jumping and aeriel ping pong. In many of the quality Sundays Orrell is bigger than Wigan, Wakefield Rugby Union club has always been bigger than Wakefield Trinity and Sale is bigger than St. Helens. In this respect Rugby League still, as it has done for generations, faces `the deeply ingrained prejudices of those people who control access to national newspaper columns'. 6
