pommieknight
I am Danny Weidler!!
Are you sitting comfortably with a coffee? Then I'll begin.....
I didn't watch this game ( I was still in bed tbh ), I heard the call on Triple M - but this leaves UK rugby league in a mess on the international stage.
OK, England were missing 4 first-choice halves and Kevin Sinfield but I didn't expect us to win this anyway.
The questions asked on Triple M were:-
The drop in standards of rugby league have coincided with the introduction of professional status into rugby union and the formation of football’s Premier League. The effects of these two activities can’t be underestimated.
Until 1995, rugby league was the only professional code of rugby played in the UK. It was able to attract high-profile sponsors and high-profile players who were fed up with having to retain their amateur status in union. Players like Frano Botica and Jonathon Davis were tempted to RL with the attraction of a wage/salary for playing the game. Now, that trend has reversed with high-profile RL players going the other way for the money on offer. Anyone who shows any promise in RL is scouted by RU clubs who have greater fiscal clout. The salary cap for Super League is £1.65m per club, per season - compare this with the £4m per club, per season available for Aviva Premiership clubs in England. Rugby union is attracting higher profile sponsors and higher profile players with a inferior product. This isn’t helped by the London-based press’s bias towards RU. The Times ( Murdoch’s broadsheet ) has recently sacked its RL correspondent - not a good sign.
While I’m on the subject of money, the second of the two coincidental events puts enormous pressure on all sports in the UK. The Premier League ( EPL as you call it ) was formed in the mid-1990s. The game alone gets gigantic amounts of money from multi-national sponsorships, billionaire owners, worldwide TV rights. This problem is compounded by the not-quite-so-gigantic-but-still-bloody-huge amounts of money individual players can attract from sponsors, media rights, etc. It was difficult for RL to compete with football prior to the Premier League, it’s impossible now with the sums of money involved. I’m not going to blind you with lots of figures but consider this, in 2010 the total wage bill of the Premier League ( not the game of football, just one league ) was £1.3 billion (A$2.1 billion) - yes, that’s right, BILLIONS of pounds in WAGES alone. Every kid wants to grow up to be a footballer ( soccer player ) because that’s where the money is, because that’s where the fame is.
In the UK, RL is seen, at best, as a minority national game - at worst, as a parochial hobby-sport played mainly in the North of England that no right thinking sports fan gives a damn about.
How do you reverse this? I don’t know. There is no overnight fix. The likelihood of huge gobs of cash suddenly being pumped into the game is slim. But the RFL has to look at increasing the salary cap. Not a huge increase in one go, but incremental increases so that it, at least, resembles that of RU in the not-too-distant future. Encourage proper household names to want to invest in the sport ( who the hell are Engage? Anyone? ). This may mean that less well-run, less well-off clubs go to the wall; that previously unthinkable consolidations of clubs have to happen ( e.g. Castleford/Wakefield merger ). The game of RL is very attractive. The set-up of the game in the UK isn’t so attractive. Wake up and smell the coffee or just let Australia and NZ get on with it.
I didn't watch this game ( I was still in bed tbh ), I heard the call on Triple M - but this leaves UK rugby league in a mess on the international stage.
OK, England were missing 4 first-choice halves and Kevin Sinfield but I didn't expect us to win this anyway.
The questions asked on Triple M were:-
- 1. What happened to the GB side after the mid-90s?
- 2. Where does this leave UK rugby league now?
The drop in standards of rugby league have coincided with the introduction of professional status into rugby union and the formation of football’s Premier League. The effects of these two activities can’t be underestimated.
Until 1995, rugby league was the only professional code of rugby played in the UK. It was able to attract high-profile sponsors and high-profile players who were fed up with having to retain their amateur status in union. Players like Frano Botica and Jonathon Davis were tempted to RL with the attraction of a wage/salary for playing the game. Now, that trend has reversed with high-profile RL players going the other way for the money on offer. Anyone who shows any promise in RL is scouted by RU clubs who have greater fiscal clout. The salary cap for Super League is £1.65m per club, per season - compare this with the £4m per club, per season available for Aviva Premiership clubs in England. Rugby union is attracting higher profile sponsors and higher profile players with a inferior product. This isn’t helped by the London-based press’s bias towards RU. The Times ( Murdoch’s broadsheet ) has recently sacked its RL correspondent - not a good sign.
While I’m on the subject of money, the second of the two coincidental events puts enormous pressure on all sports in the UK. The Premier League ( EPL as you call it ) was formed in the mid-1990s. The game alone gets gigantic amounts of money from multi-national sponsorships, billionaire owners, worldwide TV rights. This problem is compounded by the not-quite-so-gigantic-but-still-bloody-huge amounts of money individual players can attract from sponsors, media rights, etc. It was difficult for RL to compete with football prior to the Premier League, it’s impossible now with the sums of money involved. I’m not going to blind you with lots of figures but consider this, in 2010 the total wage bill of the Premier League ( not the game of football, just one league ) was £1.3 billion (A$2.1 billion) - yes, that’s right, BILLIONS of pounds in WAGES alone. Every kid wants to grow up to be a footballer ( soccer player ) because that’s where the money is, because that’s where the fame is.
In the UK, RL is seen, at best, as a minority national game - at worst, as a parochial hobby-sport played mainly in the North of England that no right thinking sports fan gives a damn about.
How do you reverse this? I don’t know. There is no overnight fix. The likelihood of huge gobs of cash suddenly being pumped into the game is slim. But the RFL has to look at increasing the salary cap. Not a huge increase in one go, but incremental increases so that it, at least, resembles that of RU in the not-too-distant future. Encourage proper household names to want to invest in the sport ( who the hell are Engage? Anyone? ). This may mean that less well-run, less well-off clubs go to the wall; that previously unthinkable consolidations of clubs have to happen ( e.g. Castleford/Wakefield merger ). The game of RL is very attractive. The set-up of the game in the UK isn’t so attractive. Wake up and smell the coffee or just let Australia and NZ get on with it.
