World Club Challenge

[Rose Madder]

Every year whesn the NRL team loses, they say it's because they give away a home advantage to the SL team. Every year the SL team says that they'll play it in Australia the next year to prove it was no fluke. I can't see it happening. Unless the SL team was Wigan and/or it was chock full of players whose names are known to Australians (and don't kid yourselves, no one here pays much attention to SL), they would struggle to raise a crowd. That and the Englishmen would die in 40 degree temps in Feb.

What rubbish , don't forget that the SL season is played in summer. .whilst the NRL comp is played in winter ,and please don't fall into the catergorie of the ignorant by thinking that it does not get hot in England . IT DOES
They sould have played that game in Melbourne in mid summer this weekend and would not have been much warmer than they were in Leeds in ,mid winter.
To say that there is little interest in SL in Australia is a tad narrow minded , I fully believe that if they played the WCC in Australia...God Forbid even in Melbourne they would fill the MCG , maybe there is no interest in QLD but we can't judge every thing on that. I don't think Hamstead is a strong enough ref for this kind of game , he did let quite a few things go , and Sonny Bill Williams..well..overated brat springs to mind.
I though that the Leeds crowd once again were awesome..what a noise they make , wouldn't you just love that reverberating around Olympic Park..fantastic

[TC]

...God Forbid even in Melbourne they would fill the MCG ,

They got about 25000 at the "G" for a game between (The Mighty) Storm and St George when Storm were reigning premiers, there's no chance they'd half fill the place.

Don't be taken in by the hokum that Melbourne is the sporting capital of Australia (much less the world) - it's not. The days when Melbournians would queue up to watch flies walking up a wall are long gone. The only 2 sports that are well supported here are AFL and cricket and even then a St Kilda v Adelaide game can't attract more than 35,000. From 4 NBL teams we now struggle to support one, baseball is all but dead and athletics draws crowds in the hundreds if they're lucky to a rat-eaten wind tunnel with appalling facilities known as OP. The Victorian Minister for AFL has no interest in sports outside his brief.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Unless we went to a superbowl type format where the ESL and NRL Grand Finals were played on the same weekend and the winners played off 2 weeks later, we're never going to get a truly representative result. And that is never going to happen, not least because the old NSWRL faction (Arko and Gould in the lead) will fight to the death to stop it. After all, that was one of the base premises of SuperLeague.

[Rose Madder]

I take it you were not at the G then when it was sold out for the SOO??? I have no illusions whatsoever about Melbourne being the sporting capital of the world , in fact I would go as far as to say it is pure bullshit , it has been proven over and over again , but I would think that if a game like this were to be staged at the MCG or any other big venue in Australia , then surely you would think that people would travel interstate to watch..I know I would if it were on in Sydney!!!! and as far as the game Storm V St George goes , reigning premiers or not , at that stage Melbourne were and still are fighting for credability in the NRL..we are not talking about an NRL match here, ,nor are we talking about Melbourne Storm , but any Australian team playing ANY British team will bring in the crowds , it would be an "us against "them" atmosphere , especially given the fors and against of the aussie teams winning this comp , so given the fact that they would be playing in Australia with, as a lot of people would like to argue..more of a chance to win , then people will come to watch them do it !!!!

[Fampa]

I like to think of myself as somewhat cognisant with the attitudes of the ordinary to somewhat fanatical league follower. Residing in the heart of league country and sitting with a group of people who each pay in excess of $300 a season to watch an ultimately unrewarding team run around, I like to think of this group as somewhat of a litmus test to the goings on of league fans. None of them bothered getting up to watch the WCC, even if the result could have been the panacea of that other equally expensive and unsatisfying trip to Sydney last October.

Now, had the game been held in Sydney last weekend, I would have driven down there, just to watch Marcus Bai run around, but then again I consider myself a bit more than your average footy fan. Maybe a friend or two would have come down on the invite of free fuel and travelling expenses. But other than that, there would have been about 20,000 Bulldog supporters, and very little else. (That usually in itself would have stopped other fans coming)

I think the WCC idea is great, don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of the international game, seen heaps of games from nations people didn't even know played league. But standing in the crowd at Lismore last weekend, I understood how little the ordinary punter knows about the game. Some even thought Nathan Hindmarsh was playing, and they were Parra fans. Now before this descends into a debate about the IQ level of Parra fans, we have all seen aspects of this at the games we have travelled to. We are dedicated to our game and our team, but most people do not share the level of passion and support for the game that we do. And unless someone like Ray Warren shoves some young kids name down out throat week after week, young players disappear into obscurity. Keeping in mind that SL games are only shown on pay TV, which the majority of league fans don't need in QLD and NSW due to the level of FTA broadcasting (sorry to rub it in), the normal league fan is going to have no idea who is playing for Leeds unless they are a former NRL player. I could guarantee you that Andy Farrell could walk down George Street in Sydney unmolested or sit at Lang Park and watch a game with very few passing glances.

It's a damn shame. But there it is.

[TC]

Rose, almost no-one in Australia cares about the English SuperLeague. Interest is generally reserved for Ex-pats and those Rugby League fanatics who can follow it on Foxtel. Popular opinion in Australia is that the 3 best League teams in the world are Australia, New South Wales and Queensland.

They can't fill a stadium in Sydney for a Kangaroos v Kiwis game - in 2003 the match got a crowd of barely 30,000 - and there's a much bigger rivalry there than against an English (let's not pretend it's Great Britain) side who are best remembered for having over 60 put past them last time they ventured out here. How much less interest do you think there would be to a club side in what Australians mostly perceive to be a second rate comp used as a retirement home by past it NRL players?

An Origin game might fill the MCG, but a (for example) Bulldogs v Rhinos game in the pre-season wouldn't fill OP unless you gave away free tickets.

It ain't right, but it's the way it is.

BTW, Sonny Bill is a brat, no doubt, but I do not think he's over-rated.

[Super Cronk]

LOL...see when the win was out of reach they resorted to fighted ...pfft.

glad leeds won tho...it shut a few doggie fans up

[Rose Madder]

Rose, almost no-one in Australia cares about the English SuperLeague. Interest is generally reserved for Ex-pats and those Rugby League fanatics who can follow it on Foxtel. Popular opinion in Australia is that the 3 best League teams in the world are Australia, New South Wales and Queensland.

They can't fill a stadium in Sydney for a Kangaroos v Kiwis game - in 2003 the match got a crowd of barely 30,000 - and there's a much bigger rivalry there than against an English (let's not pretend it's Great Britain) side who are best remembered for having over 60 put past them last time they ventured out here. How much less interest do you think there would be to a club side in what Australians mostly perceive to be a second rate comp used as a retirement home by past it NRL players?

An Origin game might fill the MCG, but a (for example) Bulldogs v Rhinos game in the pre-season wouldn't fill OP unless you gave away free tickets.

It ain't right, but it's the way it is.

BTW, Sonny Bill is a brat, no doubt, but I do not think he's over-rated.

Well I would go and we could probably agree to disagree on Sonny Bill

[Graham Las Darrington]

While I can see that the size of the crowd at the match and the attractiveness of the event to a TV audience is important, that only reflects the state of the game as it is now. If we want to share our great game with more and more people we need to develop more attractions within our game. If Australia does host the WCC game, what would matter initially is that it just gets a respectable crowd in a good venue BUT where the British club puts on a good show by either winning or being very competitive. This would mean further matches on Aussie soil would become more attractive to spectators and sponsors. This way the game expands in one more aspect.
The alternative is to say don't bother as it won't work.
I say go for it full tilt and give it maximum marketing effort. The respect for our game over here only grows when we put on good matches in a professional way. If we are defeatist, or even too realistic, we just stand still or go backwards.
Like all of us here I enjoy my rugby league and think it a shame that for too long over here it had a flat cap and whippet image (nothing wrong with either of the aforementioned items ). To survive we have to move forward and improve our sport. This international club competition is an opportunity for the game in Australia and NZ just as much as it is for us up here in GB.
Make a success of the first match in Australia and we're one more step forward.
(1.Haven't been on for a while as I've been away on holiday 2. I've followed a club all my life that some fans of other clubs refer to as the flatcappers (Featherstone Rovers)

I see Sonny Bill is playing the "I'm considering going to Rugby Union card" already before his contract is up at the end of the coming season. Wigan are set to lose Andy Farrell (sorry Rose) to England Rugby Union. A journalist asked if Wigan would spend the big money involved to buy in a big named prospect for example like Sonny Bill. The reply was not to rule the idea out. Maybe the thought that big money is available over here for him must be another ace in a strong hand Sonny Bill already holds.

[Christabella]

The World Club Challenge will never be a thoroughly fair contest unless it becomes a 2 match home and away series. If the games are one a piece then decide the winner through the better for and against.
With Australian teams having to leave 40+ February temperatures and play their first match of the year in freezing England winter and in front of a parochial English crowd more often than not they are going to struggle. The way it is currently staged makes it nothing more than a shot in the arm for the Super League competition.

[Graham Las Darrington]

Christabella :

The World Club Challenge will never be a thoroughly fair contest unless it becomes a 2 match home and away series

In principle I agree, but the first step is to agree to stage one match rotating the hemispheres.

Christabella:

With Australian teams having to leave 40+ February temperatures and play their first match of the year in freezing England winter and in front of a parochial English crowd more often than not they are going to struggle.

Not with you so much on that one. Just quibbling a bit but we've been having milder winters in recent years than you perhaps imagine. More importantly I think the fact that English clubs have had the upper hand more reflects the home venue and decent standard of club rugby here, the top clubs here having a fair few international players in them. Putting it another way I reckon Australia's national team could come here in February and beat our GB team... so I don't go with you on that one.

By the way the English crowds are fervent and patriotic but not parochial. After all they are the ones who want to travel and want to broaden the game's appeal by alternating the venue and pushing the WCC forward. At the same time this would counter the home crowd advantage/conditions argument.

My view is really: Where there's a will there's a way.