Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 12:13 pm  

[quote="Exiled down south" If the game wants to be big t needs London end of.[/quote]

I'm not sure that you are right there.
RL does need to have far wider appeal, there is no question about that BUT, a successful London club wont solve RL's lack of profile.
Throwing a huge wedge at London, as Hughes has done already, wont suddenly attract masses to the game.
These days, we'd probable have more success if we could persuade some celebs to show their faces at certain games and try and show attending RL is the the place to be.
We need to work harder at creating/finding some RL "celebrities" and try and get some players to be household names.
This isnt so bad in the heartlands but, people outside the M62 corridor would struggle to name any RL players, with the possible exception of Sam Burgess and the vast majority dont even know the difference between RL and Union.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 1:06 pm  

Celebs like this you mean? http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XEkcHgd4bVM/TBJOTUZoYcI/AAAAAAAAAiA/lL1nJ1kGN84/s1600/0035.JPG

Celebs like this you mean? http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XEkcHgd4bVM/TBJOTUZoYcI/AAAAAAAAAiA/lL1nJ1kGN84/s1600/0035.JPG

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 7:08 pm  

f Lenegan thought that London was so important for the game why did he disappear back to Wigan as soon as he could?

Because it became available and he's a Wigan fan. He held on to London until the RFL made him release it.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 7:32 pm  

Mr Dog wrote:

If Lenegan thought that London was so important for the game why did he disappear back to Wigan as soon as he could?

Given the chance (and the money), I'd say getting to buy your home town club would turn 99.9% of our heads. He wanted to remain as a part owner at Quins RL as he had the vision, the buy in from the landlords and a really good working relationship with them......but narrow minded northern clubs wouldn't play ball, so he had to relinquish his shares........he still coached 4,000+ fans down to the Stoop the following year from Wigan at his expense as well as continued to "sponsor' the club through shirt deals for 2 of his companies.......he also took a game to London a couple of years back and Now Wigan play Skolars each year in the city of London.........there's a pattern here.

Mr Dog wrote:

And as for it all being The RFL's fault, I'm not exactly sure how they can make clubs spend money on marketing if they don't want to.

I never said it was all their fault, but they do bear some of the blame. If SKY cash was £1,000,000 a year at the start, then the other 10 clubs should have been given £950,000 and PSG & London £1,250,000 each for the first 5 years of the comp.....if the other 10 didn't like it, then goodbye and welcome to SL Keighley Cougars........what club would say nope to £950,000?
The kicker would have been that the extra £300,000 for the 2 expansion clubs would have to have been fully audited with all of it accounted for in a marketing capacity.
Instead we got a free for all with clubs like PSG, Oldham, Workington, Gateshead, Sheffield and to some extent Salford, Halifax, Leigh all struggling to keep up with the big boys.....whilst London and Paris believed that sticking posts in the ground was all they had to do.

If you build a house from the top down, it'll fall over. You build it from the bottom up, with foundations and the RFL/SL clubs are as much to blame for the shambles we had for 20+ years whilst other sports have kicked on......we needed to be ruthless at the start and "merge or die" ultimatums be given because we are bunched far too close to each other to be considered as nothing more than "local" by the media and general public.

As it is, we have Wakefield attracting 5k to games, Salford 4k, Huddersfield 5k and we whine about how we can't attract media attention or sponsors. There is neither the interest not the desire for people from Salford or Greater Manchester to attend Salford games when they can be at Warrington, St Helens, Wigan, Leigh or Widnes inside 30 minutes.....we are too bunched together (and yes, I know about football but that's a different sport altogether).......free tickets to Salford V Catalans and fewer than 5k bother........it's not just the product, it's the location and the "aspiration" to want to attend.....we don't know how to market ourselves to a new audience and after 22 years we are just "northern egg chasers" to the maority of sports fans and that "stigma" gets harder to wash off with each year

Mr Dog wrote:

The simple fact is not enough people are actually interested in the game, and that includes the 'heartlands'. Just because you, I and others believe that it's TGG doesn't make it so.

I agree with the sentiment, but you can't declare there isn't interest until you've tried to garner it! The example I gave above about Salford giving free entry isn't marketing.....it's desperation. £5 tickets for the visit of wire the year before isn't marketing, it's "lowering the value of what we offer"......there is no silver bullet, but as has been shown with attendances in the Capital, there is an interest in attending if you INVITE PEOPLE.........which dovetails nicely into the crux of the issue in London.

Hughes and the RFL/SL Chairmen were like a married couple arguing about what menu they should set for an upcoming dinner party.......and whilst they bickered back and forth, they forgot to send out the bloody invitations.........the reality is that if we want to be accepted as a national sport then we need a top flight side in London and that will cost the other clubs in the top flight. If SKY won't bankroll them like Melbourne in its infancy, then it is for the clubs to be brave, because believe me, a London club attracting 8 or 10k gates and challenging for honours will certainly interest other broadcasters in the UK and abroad........whilst it does strike me that Wakefield v Salford doesn't and therefore we get the scraps from SKY's table.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 8:18 pm  

Psychedelic Casual wrote:

44,393 fans watched England v New Zealand at the Olympic Stadium three years ago. From reading about the game there was said to be a lot of attenders from London and the South West there.

I was there as well, and my experience of the locals was that they were there to a) get pi$$ed, and b)... oh, there wasn't a b). I obviously can't comment on the full 44k+ attendees, but there were significant numbers of inebriated individuals where I was sitting, none with northern accents, who had little to zero interest in the game whatsoever.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 8:23 pm  

LOL, to be fair, it was the Wembley game against New Zealand in 2013 that I'm talking about, but the sentiments (and experience) remain the same.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Wed Mar 14, 2018 9:22 pm  

HXSparky wrote:

I was there as well, and my experience of the locals was that they were there to a) get pi$$ed, and b)... oh, there wasn't a b). I obviously can't comment on the full 44k+ attendees, but there were significant numbers of inebriated individuals where I was sitting, none with northern accents, who had little to zero interest in the game whatsoever.

I've witnessed many visits from SL sides in the capital where sections of the away following are in no condition to watch the game having spent their coach trip down on the sauce....we still counted them as attending.......

The Big Bash game 2013 was well populated with London bar staff on their days off to watch either NZ/AU......these bastions of ANZAC culture have no interest in attending Broncos games, but there were about 25,000 other southern based fans there that day and those are the ones that need to be targeted.

The issue with "London" is that Wigan, Saints, Leeds and Bradford were the 4 biggest drawcards when we were in SL and a great many of the fans of Wigan, Saints, Leeds and Bradford who attended games to watch their side play in the capital were ex-pat northerners, living in the capital.......there's your target market to start with........but their club is more important than the game to many folk and so you get apathy.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Thu Mar 15, 2018 8:06 pm  

HXSparky wrote:

I was there as well, and my experience of the locals was that they were there to a) get pi$$ed, and b)... oh, there wasn't a b). I obviously can't comment on the full 44k+ attendees, but there were significant numbers of inebriated individuals where I was sitting, none with northern accents, who had little to zero interest in the game whatsoever.

This is always the case at any big event. Be it Cricket, Boxing, Darts, Rugby 7’s, Six Nations or International Rugby League.

It’s a shame despite getting 44,000 against the Kiwis in London, all 3 tests are up north this year.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Thu Mar 15, 2018 9:07 pm  

I've been to a few international events over the years, and it was only at Wembley that time where I saw folk so inebriated that they couldn't stand up as well as being totally uninterested in the game from minute 1 to 80. I guess a fairly limited sample, but my main observation was that they had zero interest in the game. The drunkenness was embarrassing and certainly spoilt the experience for some more respectable attendees (who perhaps didn't appreciate the lager shampoo they received).

I enjoy a beer (or three) myself, but I never have more than a token pint when I go to games because I want to enjoy (and remember!) the experience.

Re: Cumbria Lakers? : Thu Mar 15, 2018 10:27 pm  

I remember travelling to the '85 CC final and some Hull fans on the (straight through) train had a carrier bag each full of cans. I was only 15 but a big lad and kept getting offered drinks which I declined. Last time I saw these gents they were knocking them back outside the turnstiles because they couldn't bring them in, whether they saw the match or not I dunno.

Similar thing at Doncaster for the semi-final against Wigan in 2016, Hull fans up and down for beer throughout the whole game, same thing at the magic weekend where it's basically a pee up with rugby as the side order.