GH was the major sponsor and supporter of Nigel Wood - no one can seriously suggest Mr Wood took the game forward in any way. In fact the game went backwards so I am unsure as to you comment about sustainability

You have little time for Leneghan - his club produce as man youngsters for his own club and the wider game as a whole. If we consider participation/quality of the player pool to be one of the biggest challenges of the sport then Wigan have/are done/doing a pretty good job.


If the game is going to get a new boss man it needs to be from outside of the sport e.g. Richard Lewis who comes without affliations and is left to get on with the job without interference from the likes of Leneghan or Hetherington. Sadly I suspect Ralf Rimmer - a failure at club level and part of the Wood mafia that failed the sport.


There are two issues for me - The game as a whole has two real challenges - how do you increase participation and how do we get more money into the game. The RFL can deal with the first challenge but the elite competition is what is going to drive the second. Both parties should be left to persue their own strategies seperately. The premier league in soccer shows what is possible financially when you seperate the elite competition from the game's governing body

Agreed - RU's style is becoming like RL but with significantly more money to back it up

Nines has the potential to be to RL what T20 is to cricket - an exciting concept that lets the flair players show off their skills and appeals to a brand new audience that isn't necessarily interested in the hard graft and the nuances of forward play that the purists enjoy. If I were Elstone, some kind of Nines event would be one of the first things I'd be looking at introducing. Create the event, hype it and sell it to whatever city is willing to bid for it.

But knowing RL, we'd host it on a Tuesday night in Leigh, pack the teams with academy players and then dismiss the idea as a failure.

I had in mind ditching the loop games and the Magic weekend and having a series of weekend knock out competitions at different venues in a separate NINES championship so that SL players could be available.

As you say this could like T20 in cricket and I believe it would catch on with the public, TV and sponsors for the overall good of the game.

It would be a great opportunity for youngster and could bring back the smaller faster backs with skills who would also play alongside the better SL players who would relish playing on TV in front of large crowds. In turn it could improve the standard of SL

Using 9s as a replacement for Loop fixtures is a good shout (although I'd keep MW). Host almost a second league, with rounds inserted at various points in the season, played at a football venue (say, six rounds, each team plays two games on Sat and two on Sun?). It would need a serious prize money incentive for the clubs to buy into it though.

Yes this is the sort of thing I had in mind and it would soon draw in the crowds and money from TV and sponsorship.

With SL dying before our eyes the game needs some out of the box thinking and I believe that in Nines we have a better product than the very successful 7s in Union. So some serious investment and promotion is required and like T20 in cricket it could go International as countries like PNG and Figi and dare I say England who could compete on equal terms with the Ossies.