Quote phibes="phibes"I think the "news" is that club chairmen have been so openly critical of the RFL in recent months. The people funding several SL clubs are obviously as unhappy as we fans have been with the govering body - whether this will lead to any real change or not remains to be seen.
There are a range of issues about the development of the sport in the long term that need to be addressed now - I thought Phil Caplan raised some good points in the last Superleague Backchat programme ([urlhttp://www.skysports.com/video/inline/0,26691,12602_7679022,00.html[/url) - despite being shouted down by the Sky lot and Chris Irvine simply because he had a realistic take on the financial realities of what an elite competition should be about.'"
I agree that it's interesting that the club chairmen have been critical, but for me the fact that they've finally realised there is a problem so long into the SL era is laughable and I have no confidence whatsoever in their ability to find solutions.
We have a game which is a fantastic product on the field - in Sam Tomkins we have a player who could, if marketed properly, transcend the sport and lift the appeal of the game nationally and we have many exciting young players coming through. With the players in the NRL we even have a chance to be consistently competitive at international for the first time since the early 90s.
Many clubs have great facilities now and crowds are bigger than they have been for decades.
The TV audience for the sport is large.
The amateur game continues to grow across the country.
There are actually a lot of positives, but the leadership of RL at RFL and club level is nothing short of a disgrace.
The franchising system is a fiasco that makes the SC look like a competently designed and administered process.
The Stobart sponsorship deal has made the sport a laughing stock.
The disciplinary procedures in RL are a joke.
The refereeing has reached a comic nadir, with refs that can't count and send the wrong man off. Despite the Aussies moving to address the fact that the game is too fast for one ref to police our authorities do nothing.
I could go on but it is too depressing...
