A lot of the NRL clubs offer ‘carnet’ type memberships of three and six game tickets across a season. It’s a good way of attracting new fans and reattaching to lapsed fans or those who can’t commit to a whole season ticket/live away from town etc.
St Helens Rugby League Football Club
Yes, you're probably correct regarding ticketing between the 2 competitions. No point even discussing it with the RFL in it's present state, they'll only cock it in some way, even though it would be perfectly easy for the clubs and RFL to sort out. I was having a think about this last night and it could be done on a sliding scale.
Cat' A games: W***n, Wire, Leeds, Hull - £25
Cat B: All other SL games/All SL cup games - £20
Cat C: Cup games against lower league opposition - £15
Personally, I'd probably stick £200 on my card and see how far that gets me, if that carries on to the next season then fine, if I need to top up, also fine.
As for Rotterdam, I've not been for nearly 2 years, I used to get over a few times a year and have lived there or nearby a few times over the years. At one point I was considering making it permanent and to be honest, I've been thinking it more and more of late but probably the wrong time at the moment. It reminds me very much of Liverpool (without the annoying accent). An expat mate of mine has been a Feyenoord season ticket holder for a good few years now, cracking day out although I wouldn't want to spend much time around there normally. Interesting you mention Ajax as a lot of Rotterdammers refer to them as 020 (Amsterdam phone code) or just "the other city". Fingers crossed I can get over days at some point this year.
Moved the new posts about crowds being back from May into a new thread just to keep this for the ongoing issues chats. Thanks.
Gray, evidence of the incompetence that's plagued RL needs to be clear and documented. There is a persistent theme of bad decisions and zero accountability.
I give you this: https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/nort...d-cup#comments
The most damning for me: “Licensing was meant to provide stability, but lost its fragile credibility when Celtic Crusaders pulled out the day they were due to be approved for the second wave of licences, while many clubs struggled to develop more secure commercial incomes.”
Thanks. You forget some of the complete nonsense that has been spouted to mark each fresh dawn. The Super 8s would mark a new dawn were loads of teams would win the Grand Final. It didn't, and why would anyone running the league care who wins it as long as the game is in good health. This obsession that SL and Sky have about the same teams winning it every year is weird. Hemmings always used to blather on about it being great if a team from 8th won it and Carney called Leeds 'undeniably the best team this season' after they won it from 5th. How is that good for the game, and what message does it send to the likes of Saints who do the business and get everything right but then hear the bosses of the league saying that it's boring if the best team wins the thing? Does the PL care because Burnley or Palace have no chance of winning it?. The Super 8s was also supposed to make the crowds rocket, it didn't, and it was killed off after a few years so we could revert back to the very system we started with in 1998!
And all that rubbish about the RUWC being great for RL. I couldn't do a days work in London without RU fans asking me non-stop about Owen Farrell and Kyle Eastmond's RL background, and when they all started coming in after the RUWC with Saints and Wigan shirts on I was amazed! The last bit is the best, when it's revealed that we had the GF at OT on the same day England played a RUWC game at the Etihad. Long term planning at it's finest.
Last edited by Gray77; 23rd February 2021 at 15:06.
St Helens Rugby League Football Club
Imagine if the Premier League turned round and said that there was now a salary cap of £75m, for example (total payments to PL clubs from TV and other revenue from premier league divided by 20 clubs), so that clubs don’t have to fund wage bills from outside anything they can afford from TV rights. Then tell them it’s to bring the standard of the bottom 6 up to the standard of the top 6 and make it more competitive. There’d be uproar and PL clubs would lose a tonne of quality players and academy prospects abroad (a bit like losing them to the NRL or Union). It’s laughable but also the exact situation we’re in.
Forwards win games. The backs decide by how much.
This is spot on! We don't need to keep reinventing the sport, tinkering with rule changes and the structure of the play offs. These things only serve to confuse folk, never mind newcomers to the game. Each new fad is launched upon us with a fanfare and then slowly sinks in to obscurity as some new hare brained scheme comes along to trump the last one. We need to have a strong leadership at the RL, high profile figures appearing on the maistream media, SKY needs to get its act togtether and promote our sport for what it is, not alongside netball! In fact I was pleased to see the latest SKY trailer advertising what's on in March, I think S.L. was the second sport in the advert, which is a step up, since we often don't even get a mention! We need a weekly magazine programme about the sport to keep interest growing between games. We need better promotion all round. The sport is a great one it deserves a wider audience, I don't want it to be the north of Englands (and Catalans) best kept secret!
Absolutely spot on as has been mentioned time and time again. Stop ••••ing about with the game, let us get on with what we do best instead of handicapping better teams at every turn. To be honest, I don't care if Hull KR went down and there were no Hull derbies because they're one of those teams that bring very little to the game apart from sitting there smugly knowing they've dogded relegation yet again. There's plenty of others too who are similar. That said, I'm really not sure if there's any real interest outside the heartlands.
I honestly don't care if we never grow outside of the heartlands really. What I want us to do is punch our weight in the heartlands, be the 2nd sport up here that we should be. Football lives in it's own universe and stuff like the England cricket and RU team will always be a big deal and get big headlines at various times in the year, but week to week there is no reason why what happens in the top flight in RL shouldn't be the second biggest news story across Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cumbria. If we can achieve that we'll be a viable and popular sport.
Leeds and Wigan should be averaging 15-16k (easily done many times before), us, Hull and Wire should be averaging 12-13k a game, etc. No reason why the biggest 5 clubs in the sport can't all punch their weight and be big enough to command attention for the game as a whole, much like the 5-6 biggest RU club sides do. Nobody cares that their biggest clubs play inside a relatively small triangle in the South West and another relatively small triangle in the midlands, so we should be relatively confident in the fact that our 5 biggest clubs span the entire breadth of the north of England.
I don't myself and I don't know what the fixation with it is. We are what we are, and the sooner we accept that and start working on, and promoting the many good points of our game the better. Yet again though, we've fell down through arrogant, idiotic and incompetent leadership. We've been trying for years to expand and it's not happened so it's time to stop pushing it. If it happens organically then great but we really need to concentrate on what we have for the time being.
I’ve got no issue with the game being big in its own circles, I’ve never quite got the fascination with growing the sport nationally and then people sticking pins in maps and starting teams in these places, like Toronto and Ottawa, if they ever get off the ground. I’d be more than happy to concentrate on the heartlands, improving standards across the board and slightly extending the “heartlands” if York and Newcastle continue in the same vein they’ve been. I also see France, specifically that South West part as an extension of the heartlands and I’d like to see Toulouse in Super League with a plan to grow the International game so that England have a proper international game that provides something of a test instead of going down the Exiles route.
St Helens Rugby League Football Club
The fact that there is a 'new dawn' every few years exemplifies how poorly the sport is run. There is no coherent and sustainable strategy to promote better playing standards, to improve the commercial profile of the game or to spread it to new audiences. These should be on any agenda but the sport seems incapable of doing it, we can't even agree a proper League structure!
The game feels domineered by what SKY want. Their influence has been all too pervasive and harms the sport. Instead of trying to raise standards we've lowered them to sate SKY's wanton desire for artificial appeal - every game matters and all that tripe. It's led to the consequent changes to the play-offs, the changes to the League structure (Top, Middle 8's) and even silly gimmicks like 'club call.' If this had led to growth then the sport could argue this is justified but it seems to have created cynicism at best, alienation at worst, not least because if every game really did 'matter' why would anyone in the right mind want a set of play offs at the end!
That is bad enough but these changes have also allowed underachievers to take the sport in the wrong direction; the salary cap remains as static as a Japanese interest rate and panders to the likes of Hull FC / KR etc who can't even be arsed to run proper academies. Does the sport not understand that when Thompson, Williams, Burgess etc go to the NRL we are losing our marketable stars and lowering the standard of the sport? As AD says, could you imagine Burnley and Sheff U telling Man United, Liverpool etc that we need a say a 10 team play off to ensure 'every game matters.'
We've sucked up to SKY for too long - I've lost count of the times people say SKY money when what they mean is 'broadcasting money.' We act as if its 1995 when the sport is over 25 years down the line and seems totally blind to other media opportunities. Mind you the sport is still presented as if its 1995 - the embarrassing hard sell; Hemmings and latterly Arthur boasting how this season will be 'the biggest yet,' that utterly cringeworthy try music, silly stunts like 'club call' and so on and so on.
But it would be wrong to blame SKY here for all the maladies of RL. That would ignore that we don't seem to have any sort of understanding on how to ensure the right teams are in the top League's in the first place nor any idea of credible corporate governance . If we need a fresh start so frequently what does that say about the relative success of previous innovations? Why is no-one ever accountable for their failure?
Can you imagine any self respecting PLC tolerating mismanagement on the scale of the way the Celtic Crusaders were handled? How can the sport be taken seriously when it was about to approve a licence for a side that did'nt have a penny to rub together, never mind trusting someone as dubious as Leighton Samuels. That's bad enough but Blake Solly was then allowed to carry on as if nothing happened.
As Saints fans we're a bit naïve as to the impact this has on the sport because we know we are'nt in any danger of losing a licence anytime soon but imagine if you were a fan of one of the lower clubs and read that. How could those fans have any faith in the sport?
The sport is an absolute basket case - it can't manage the game in both traditional let alone expansion areas. Its whole raison d' etre has become to firefight - knee-jerk reactions to maintain the gravy train for the likes of Wood and Rimmer.
To do so has relied on constant restructure to placate the underachievers - important because these stakeholders have as much a say as the well run teams whereas on the other there is a neurotic and hair brained approach to expansion areas to keep SKY fooled. I recall a brilliant passage by DD along the lines of 'if much bigger, better run sports like NFL can't crack London' why on earth would you ever trust the RFL to. Its sheer and utter madness. As they succeeded in maintaining their power the sport has continued to dwindle.
Last edited by eddiewaringsflatcap; 24th February 2021 at 17:17.
The difference between us and the NFL is they have had a proper long-term strategy in place for a London based franchise for some time now and the staging of games in London has been a big part of that, whereas we, as a sport, are taken in by the latest bloke with relatively deep pockets who has stuck a pin in a map and let them start up a team without a proper business plan set out between the club, the various governing bodies here and in cases like Toronto etc, the relevant international bodies. We throw teams in and let them sink or swim and then within a few years when they’ve sunk, we all act shocked that this particular club sunk.
I’ve no problems with Toulouse and France being a focus point for the game here but had they been promoted, it would have just been the same old story and when they inevitably sunk, be it in the form of relegation or the money men pulling out, nothing would be different there than at the many other clubs we’ve admitted prematurely.
St Helens Rugby League Football Club
Does anyone remember that game that one of the players wore a camera in the first half and it was suppossed to be worn again in the second half but it wasnt?.
https://youtu.be/UzYV8lNVoKA
Kurt Gidley for Wire again Leigh.
Its a shame that the below link doesn’t have the radio segment available anymore. It was an opinion piece on the best and worst of ideas brought to rugby league.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04v9p3y
The difference is the NFL is a sporting behemoth with a sizeable UK (not just London) fan base. It is also debatable whether a Franchise team based here will actually work long term as many fans already follow their own teams and it will lose that "big event" feel watching a London based team get hammered 8 times a year. Add the schedule/travel/broadcasting issues and having to persuade players to move to the UK to the mix and it gets more complicated.
The NFL games are huge attraction based events, a franchise based over here may not be.
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Plenty of sports are Salary capped and there are arguments that the Premier League should be subjected to one as well. This current financial boom on the back of massive TV contracts won't last forever and I doubt many clubs will contigency plans for when the cost cutting comes. Look at the mess Barcelona are in at the moment.
While the RL Salary Cap is way too low and has been for way too long how much more than the 2.1m (and exemptions) could Saints afford to spend? Could we spend 4m a year on wages without putting the clubs financial sustainability at risk?? Could Wigan, Leeds or Wire??? Are wealthy benefactors going to flock to the game because we can pay a player 200k rather than 100k. Is it going to be a return of the early 90s with 1 club spending money they don't have and nearly going to the wall with others nearly going bust to play catch up??
There isn't enough money in the game for us to scrap the cap unfortunatly, even for the bigger teams.
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I dont think a salary cap of around £3million is unreasonable or unmanageable, after all that's what it would roughly be if it would have followed the rate of inflation since the salary cap came in. Personally, i think an increase to around that figure, plus a bigger rebate for producing your own players through your academy systems is the way to go, it rewards those clubs who put time and effort in to their systems and gives them greater financial flexibility to retain them.