MASCORD: Can marquees stop rugby league being plundered?

I also meant to add that it is wonderful how much nonsense people fit inside one brain and how you can travel a long way just to end up on a UKIP website! "Deutschland, Deutschland ueber Alles ..."

Hello lost chord, One thing I do know is that NOT having a marquee won't stop RL being pludered!

Salary caps are a restraint of trade and should be wiped. How can you restrict a company from spending all its money then watch them miss the play offs does not make sense. It reeks of ccommunism as do the rules of the game, we have it for six then you have it for six.....

yeh, there are plenty of loopholes that need to be kinked out. There might need to be some limit on the amount of changes that can be made for the last couple of rounds like the FA do for EPL to FA Cup matches. Dual reg has also got to go, its a matter of time before a Dual Reg championship team are playing their Super League feeder. We already saw the problems it caused in the challenge cup, its only going to get worse when promotion and relegation are on the line. And the loopholes dual reg has made are pretty glaring. A Super League team might adopt a poorer championship team and feed them players toward the end of the year to ensure they make the middle 8 and then withdraw the players.

Geez, unless the game can really engage the rest of the country it's doomed. London Broncos were a failure, and really the future of the game relies on trying to capture part of the market to make the south of england viable and get the riches that come with it. Maybe focusing not so much on London, but suburbs of London would make it work better. I don't live there so it's hard for me to understand the problems the game has. Maybe doing an AFL in this country and buying exposure in the press. Ensure that each week in the major papers that you have 1-2 page write up of the games, and getting 1-2 games on free to air with no cash payable, just the tv station pays the cost would generate enough interest in the sport.

My only problem is that if you start out early losing the goal is then to throw games and rest players so when the next stage begins you are in a good position. It won't always work, but most times it will given the quality of squad and that you have been able to rest players. Its a big can of worms that had been opened up.

Mate you had better be careful with that type of radical thinking or you could end up being labelled logical. We should learn a lot from aus rugby and target a niche audience with no growth potential. Jokes aside as much as the ARU sometimes seem to try to make the wrong decision, the need for 5 sides from each conference has seen them laying down new foundations. While the super league ARL feud caused devasting chaos league is now doing great. Phil Gould's doubt in the NRL's ability to field new teams in Perth, NZ and Brisbane shows a meek confidence in the NRL not being able to achieve growth, even the basket case ARU accomplished expansion. I think the old ARL guard that will forever be remembered as the ones who held the game together in the toughest of times. However his involvement in this war surely hinders the clear and positive outlook necessary. The AFL's expansion is not accused of being a resounding success but they have expanded their market and in regions where their game is truely foreign. NZ's love of rugby and the similarity of the rugby codes has a second NZ team being assured of attracting more participation in local league. Perth would be a bigger success than rugby's force and a team should be established there for this reason allow. Brisbane is the most difficult decision because most bids seem to target specific regions which will produce another Titans but probably draw a bigger crowd. Brothers is the only bid capable of truely competing with the Broncos and it would have the least impact on them. The NRL would be wise to assist with the finding of suitable financial backing to the bid that can offer the most back to the NRL and this is clearly brothers. If we pick the bid that has the best immediate and short term business plan we will have Brisbane bombers (the weird cousin your parents made you take to parties in high school to bring them out of their shell). Or the western corridor (the new kid at school who will not stop talking about how much better his previous town was, You could always tell his stories were wild fabrications). Western corridor has merit for being a bid in years to come but lacks any positives for league fans from Ipswich who aren't already diehard Broncos fans.

Mate you had better be careful with that type of radical thinking or you could end up being labelled logical. We should learn a lot from aus rugby and target a niche audience with no growth potential. Jokes aside as much as the ARU sometimes seem to try to make the wrong decision, the need for 5 sides from each conference has seen them laying down new foundations. While the super league ARL feud caused devasting chaos league is now doing great. Phil Gould's doubt in the NRL's ability to field new teams in Perth, NZ and Brisbane shows a meek confidence in the NRL not being able to achieve growth, even the basket case ARU accomplished expansion. I think the old ARL guard that will forever be remembered as the ones who held the game together in the toughest of times. However his involvement in this war surely hinders the clear and positive outlook necessary. The AFL's expansion is not accused of being a resounding success but they have expanded their market and in regions where their game is truely foreign. NZ's love of rugby and the similarity of the rugby codes has a second NZ team being assured of attracting more participation in local league. Perth would be a bigger success than rugby's force and a team should be established there for this reason allow. Brisbane is the most difficult decision because most bids seem to target specific regions which will produce another Titans but probably draw a bigger crowd. Brothers is the only bid capable of truely competing with the Broncos and it would have the least impact on them. The NRL would be wise to assist with the finding of suitable financial backing to the bid that can offer the most back to the NRL and this is clearly brothers. If we pick the bid that has the best immediate and short term business plan we will have Brisbane bombers (the weird cousin your parents made you take to parties in high school to bring them out of their shell). Or the western corridor (the new kid at school who will not stop talking about how much better his previous town was, You could always tell his stories were wild fabrications). Western corridor has merit for being a bid in years to come but lacks any positives for league fans from Ipswich who aren't already diehard Broncos fans.

Rugby league blows siren on record billion dollar TV rights deal The Australian-18 hours ago Rugby league has blown the siren on a new record billion dollar TV rights deal, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/rugby-league-blows-siren-on-record-billion-dollar-tv-rights-deal/story-e6frg996-1227319341264 Doesn't make sense. Siren gets blown at halftime and fulltime.

I'm starting to think that the Super League may be better off cutting teams to eight and directing the league towards playing yearly tests against Australia and New Zealand.

Agree, Glenn - this is a point postulated many times. The migrants naturally play Soccer and this has led to the continued decline of RL in their traditional strongholds, especially as a large proportion of the migrants fill the traditional gritty working class roles that produced the cream of the glory years RL players and therefore, while affecting Rugby as well, the impact is not as great. Nice reference to the Kinks too.

Agree SA.Promote high profile contests such as RLWCs and tests in England.They receive more publicity than mere club games.

Whilst I totally agree with GI's assessment about the need to embrace the new culture emerging in England,particularly the Asian/Indian demographics,all is not lost. i cite the situation in NZ where the Asian/Indian community community have recently established the ethnic rugby league.A four team comp. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11346678 If it can be done in NZ,surely some of the ESL clubs with wealthy backers can put in a sterner effort to bring in these people to our wonderful game. With the new emphasis on speeding up the game,ridding the game of wrestling,the smaller players are becoming more into play.

Regular Tests against England and supporting the World Club Series is a step in the right direction.

Also I entirely agree with Steve, intergration into the Australian game is it's best chance, but will Australia plat ball? Australia refusing to tour this year because of player welfare concerns is not a good omen. Despite lip service I doubt the NRL have the slightest interest in the game beyond Australasia and will make no sacrafices to help the English game. England may have been the ones who first codefied the rules but Rugby League in the 21st century is an Australian game.We are the only wealthy country were the sport is mainstream, we are the only ones who have any money, we have most of the supporters and most of the participants so the the ball is in our court it's our responsibility to try and grow the international game because no one else is in a position to do it. A friend of mine recently said "but there is nothing we can do to help the English game" to which I replied "rubbish there is plenty we can do" Playing tests in England every second tear would be a good place to start but long term I am with Steve intergration at club level is a must if the English game is ever going to take the next step. The alternative is what we have seen for the last fifty years, a combination of soccer and local demographics slowly strangling English Rugby League to death.

Unless the game in England can start engaging interest from the migrant populations that have flooded it's catchment area over the last forty years the sport is doomed. In the early seventies Australia had about 13 million, forty years later we have 23 million.England still has about the same population it had during the second world war despite taking in an enormous number immigrants especially over the last twenty years.So where has everyone gone? Quite simply a combination of indigenous English migrating elsewhere and a very low fertility rate has meant there has been little population growth in absolute terms but huge demographic change..check out modern Bradford for eg. The one thing I note watching the English game is just how small the number of players of Asian or African background (almost invisible really.) there are and that seems to extend into the stands Unless the game in England can generate serious interest from the new migrant groups coming from the subcontinent Africa, and Eastern Europe the sport in England will fade away to a quaint museum piece, a reminder of a bygone era when the population was 99% white and people dug coal and milled wool for a living... .a kind of gritty version of the village green preservation society.

For ru internationals not club games Chuckie BTW.They sure are not packed out stadiums in club games . It is worth noting in France re ru ,Racing Metro,Stade Fracas,Castres lost a combined 19.7m Euros between the 3 of them for the 2013/4 season. Between the 30 top 14 and Pro D2 clubs the total deficit was 33.89m euros a record since the creation of the Ligue,of which only Toulon and Brive recorded a profit, A Tv deal increase next year will knock it down to 19m euros deficit. Its not all sugar and spice in the land of the croissants and frogs legs,and the reality may well come back to bite them in the backside in the not too distant future. Already the Welsh rugby union is alarmed at the decimating affect it is having on the game there. Worth noting rugby league players get to travel to more and more places and play their code,,and whilst a couple may take the French union bait,the code most affected is ru in NZ and Australia,the latter already coming up with a $6.3m deficit. The NRL in reality has to expand nationally,secure bigger Tv deals and thus provide better opportunities for their players ,than currently exist.Remember Gasnier went to France to top up ,and Willie Mason proved a failure at union there. When SBW went the NRL continued unabated and prospered.

i'm enjoying it at the moment, the changes have opened up the championship and given it some new life and i'll be really interested to see how the Super 8 stage goes. Its been a surprisingly equal season thus far, but I don't think you can really sustain this sort of parity without stunting the league. The ESL cap has been remaining stagnant while pretty much every other rugby competition has been increasing their cap and in turn the cost of quality players. The Quality of the competition has been suffering (the loss of their genuine superstars) and will continue to suffer unless the cap is raised. There are a lot of small town teams in England, and I think its better to try and bounce them off each other than to try and get them to credibly compete for the Super League trophy. I think its going to light a fire under the feet of the smaller Super League teams (the Widness', Castlefords and Wakefields) to know they are being actively hunted. Hopefully it brings about a change in mindset which takes into account to tiers, more focus on the tiered system and the position a club has within the system rather than just within their league. The new goal becomes to hold onto their spot in the big league rather than being put in a race to win the league against infinitely more capable opponents, a goal which is much more achievable for fringe teams and much more interesting for all observers.

A factor however here Steve is culture. There's a deep historical culture in British mainstream sports of seasons end promoting and relegation. This mentality and this kind of policy seriously undermines any form of salary cap. No club wants to be relegated and if the funds are available to improve a club teetering on a relegation brink due to some poor earlier recruiting decisions or due to a critical injury to a key player... well the whole salary cap idea certainly becomes a difficult justification for the mindset of clubs within those leagues. This described system is a partial salary cap compromise. Unfortunately they're light years away from a rugby league utopia in the UK so it's not all rainbows and butterflies.... and they brought back a promotion and relegation system of sorts. As a result investors at major clubs want to protect their investment, once you introduce a relegation system it becomes a capitalist system... i really don't think a salary cap in its near purest form can exist in a competition featuring promotion and relegation.

This is an interesting read. I know the Super 8s have yet to begin but what are your thoughts on how this year's Super League 'new era' structure has played out so far?