Re: How we grow the England brand : Sun Dec 03, 2017 9:46 am  

Muggins wrote:

Why should they reduce SOO when it's such a success? That's a nonsense idea.

How about we set up our own origin series to match what they have. Lancashire v Yorkshire? East v West? We can't expect the Kangaroos and Kiwis to come over all the time.

It depends if they ever want the game to be truly global and not just strong in one country. If they're not arsed (and clearly they're not) then they'll stick with their 3 game series that keeps the game in aus thriving. One day I'd like to think their powers that be will have a greater vision. It's not a nonsense idea if the wider goal is growing global interest.

Re: How we grow the England brand : Sun Dec 03, 2017 1:13 pm  

State of Origin is always going to exist as a 3 match series. This could provide an opportunity for international Rugby League IMO. If State of Origin is played on standalone weekends, with the NRL and Super League taking a break. I know one of these is planned for the 2018 season, if all 3 were, England, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, PNG, Lebanon and France could all play 3 mid season international games.

Re: How we grow the England brand : Sun Dec 03, 2017 1:47 pm  

Call Me God wrote:

Spot on. Central Contracts could be funded from ticket/tv revenue of a mid season tour, but the sticking point would be the Aussies reluctance to either break their season up or dare I say it, reduce the SoO to 1 game a year......
...you'd have to show the NRL the money to get them to release players mid season, but the potential is there. Look at the number of players Eddie Jones used in the November internationals.....3 games and 240,000 fans would have easily covered the wage bill for the 36 players involved and if the Kangaroos came to play in say July/August we should have no problem selling 100,000 tickets if not more at 25 quid upwards, delivering 2.5 million to cover the costs of 2 squads at 50 grand a man...then there's the TV money etc....not clashing with the football season or Union internationals.....perfect time for a touring side

It's ok saying there should be central contracts etc, which would be a decent solution as far as England are concerned BUT, the Aussies just wouldn't get on board with this.
SOO is huge over there and this would be severely affected (unless they had a major overhaul of their domestic season).
THe underlying issue with international RL is the lack of genuine RL playing nations and the gulf between the tier 1 nations and the rest (I know that Tonga had a decent run and Fiji to a lesser extent but, really they arent up with England and Australia right now and if NZ get their house in order, we revert to the "big 3".

What does make sense, although funding may be an issue, it to have the "lesser" nations playing each other whilst SOO and England NZ are playing.
A Wales - Ireland or, Scotland - France curtain raiser, to the England v NZ games would be a start.

Re: How we grow the England brand : Sun Dec 03, 2017 4:29 pm  

Muggins wrote: Why should they reduce SOO when it's such a success? That's a nonsense idea. How about we set up our own origin series to match what they have. Lancashire v Yorkshire? East v West? We can't expect the Kangaroos and Kiwis to come over all the time. Because historically and I am talking way back in the day, Lancashire Vs Yorkshire has never been a big draw. It will flop just like the exile series did. Just look at gates. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_L ... _the_Roses

Muggins wrote: Why should they reduce SOO when it's such a success? That's a nonsense idea. How about we set up our own origin series to match what they have. Lancashire v Yorkshire? East v West? We can't expect the Kangaroos and Kiwis to come over all the time. Because historically and I am talking way back in the day, Lancashire Vs Yorkshire has never been a big draw. It will flop just like the exile series did. Just look at gates. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_L ... _the_Roses

Re: How we grow the England brand : Sun Dec 03, 2017 5:45 pm  

kobashi wrote: Because historically and I am talking way back in the day, Lancashire Vs Yorkshire has never been a big draw. It will flop just like the exile series did. Just look at gates. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_L ... _the_Roses I suppose so. No different to attendances for Wales, Scotland and Ireland matches though. Mind you those teams could probably be scrapped too.

kobashi wrote: Because historically and I am talking way back in the day, Lancashire Vs Yorkshire has never been a big draw. It will flop just like the exile series did. Just look at gates. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_L ... _the_Roses I suppose so. No different to attendances for Wales, Scotland and Ireland matches though. Mind you those teams could probably be scrapped too.

Re: How we grow the England brand : Sun Dec 03, 2017 10:05 pm  

wrencat1873 wrote:

It's ok saying there should be central contracts etc, which would be a decent solution as far as England are concerned BUT, the Aussies just wouldn't get on board with this.
SOO is huge over there and this would be severely affected (unless they had a major overhaul of their domestic season).
THe underlying issue with international RL is the lack of genuine RL playing nations and the gulf between the tier 1 nations and the rest (I know that Tonga had a decent run and Fiji to a lesser extent but, really they arent up with England and Australia right now and if NZ get their house in order, we revert to the "big 3".

What does make sense, although funding may be an issue, it to have the "lesser" nations playing each other whilst SOO and England NZ are playing.
A Wales - Ireland or, Scotland - France curtain raiser, to the England v NZ games would be a start.

Whilst SoO is a big deal down here with the players picking up good money for playing, I still believe that if the ARL were to offer to cover 30% of the wages of the top 25 players in return for 4 or 5 weekends, the NRL clubs would be fools not to look into it.
If the salary cap is $9 million, then the worst case scenario would be that the 25 man elite squad would be on a combined $20 TO $25 million.....costing ARL $7 to $8 Million a year.....then you look to sell the TV rights and fill stadiums to cover the costs.

4 or 5 games needing to generate $2 million each on the door and on TV......it might take a couple of years but Origin wasn't big at the start....

...I know it's a pain, but if you look at Union and their model, they understand that creating the event is #1 and the spectacle is somewhere down the pecking order.....Twickenham was full 3 times in November....close to 250,000 people delivering close to 12.5 million sterling and the England players get half their income from the RFU for about 11 games a year........30% for 5 games would tempt the NRL!

Re: How we grow the England brand : Sun Dec 03, 2017 11:05 pm  

"fill stadiums"? They couldn't even sell out for the world cup final which takes place in their country once every ten years or so.

People need to stop looking at RU for answers. Trying to emulate RU just leads to RL overstretching itself. Also, there seems to be this myth that people who go to Twickenham no nothing about rugby union and only go for the 'occasion'. Maybe believing that makes people feel better about RL, but it really isn't true. Yes, there might be some people attending on a corporate jolly, but most of the crowd are knowledgeable about and interested in rugby union. Maybe not to the point of having an in-depth knowledge of who plays front row for Harlequins, but enough to know the basic rules and follow the six nations and world cup, etc.

If it was just about the event/occasion/spectacle then logically any sport could do the same as rugby union and be a success. Clearly it's not that simple.

Re: How we grow the England brand : Mon Dec 04, 2017 1:32 pm  

Call Me God wrote:

Whilst SoO is a big deal down here with the players picking up good money for playing, I still believe that if the ARL were to offer to cover 30% of the wages of the top 25 players in return for 4 or 5 weekends, the NRL clubs would be fools not to look into it.
If the salary cap is $9 million, then the worst case scenario would be that the 25 man elite squad would be on a combined $20 TO $25 million.....costing ARL $7 to $8 Million a year.....then you look to sell the TV rights and fill stadiums to cover the costs.

4 or 5 games needing to generate $2 million each on the door and on TV......it might take a couple of years but Origin wasn't big at the start....

...I know it's a pain, but if you look at Union and their model, they understand that creating the event is #1 and the spectacle is somewhere down the pecking order.....Twickenham was full 3 times in November....close to 250,000 people delivering close to 12.5 million sterling and the England players get half their income from the RFU for about 11 games a year........30% for 5 games would tempt the NRL!

Considering Cameron Smith and other players are screaming for there to be less games I can pretty much guarantee that the Australian players would want know part of this.

Re: How we grow the England brand : Mon Dec 04, 2017 2:07 pm  

We have the advantage of being a minority sport which means that most people don't know if we'd be playing our best team or a weakened team

For me, I'd have an international series on the BBC where we field a slightly weakened England team in a four nations event against Scotland/wales/Ireland. The weakened team would mean that we'd have competitive games which will attract people to the game. We need exposure, and international games give exposure, especially close games

Re: How we grow the England brand : Mon Dec 04, 2017 5:33 pm  

Egg Banjo wrote:

We have the advantage of being a minority sport which means that most people don't know if we'd be playing our best team or a weakened team

For me, I'd have an international series on the BBC where we field a slightly weakened England team in a four nations event against Scotland/wales/Ireland. The weakened team would mean that we'd have competitive games which will attract people to the game. We need exposure, and international games give exposure, especially close games

But it's kinda disrespectful to the other nations. Ireland already came out a few weeks ago saying they have no interest in playing England B.

Also we struggle to get media attention as it is. England B against the above will be totally ignored.

Then let's talk about the fans. People are not gonna buy tickets to watch England B.