2013 Super League - The Greatest Game Of All

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NRLandMore
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2013 Super League - The Greatest Game Of All

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What better way to start this thread than with the top?

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Nigel Wood launches new Super League season
RFL Chief Executive Nigel Wood today set out his ambitions and aims for the forthcoming year at the launch of the 2013 Super League season at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester.
“The key message on sponsorship is that we will only do deals that are right for the sport and as a result of this the commercial revenues generated by the RFL and Super League in 2013 will be at levels never before seen by a sport which is in a very good place as the big kick off approaches this weekend.”
“We have announced Tetley’s as the new sponsors of the Challenge Cup and announced a new Super League partnership with Foxy Bingo, whose parent company also sponsor Manchester United and Real Madrid. World-leading brand Heinz have also signed up as a Super League partner for a second year and will elevate the profile of some of Super League’s biggest stars. “
Nigel Wood's 5 key ambitions for Rugby League’s biggest year since Super League began.
1. England to win the World Cup – if England can lift the World Cup on November 30 at Old Trafford then this would really light the blue touch paper for future development of the game. Nothing succeeds like success and, while rugby league fanatics will never tire of all the great games and contests with local rivals that the season always provides, the international stage has a unique ability to capture the national sporting psyche and there is no greater sporting rivalry than England versus Australia and New Zealand.
2. Closely following an England win would be the staging of the most successful Rugby League World Cup tournament ever. Our ambition is that England and Wales will host a first class event across twenty-one venues, presenting the very best of what the sport has to offer to the widest audience. We have made a good start with tickets on sale and going well, we are welcoming new partner’s like Marriott, who we have just announced, and we have sold the TV rights to IMG and expect an announcement on broadcast partners next month.
3. That 2013 produces another competitive and compelling Super League season, with even more clubs showing positive progress and a growing depth of contenders for honours, culminating in four different teams contesting the two major finals. A World Cup year always brings out the best in players and I fully expect the quality of competition to go up another gear and improve on the excellent standards we have come to expect.
4. The geographic footprint of the new-look Championships is wider than ever before and I hope we will see strong debut seasons for the new clubs, Hemel Stags, Gloucester All Golds and Oxford, who we are welcoming into the Championship One for the first time in 2013. They are great examples of how the game is developing into new areas and we believe all three clubs are now ready for the step-up they are making into the professional structures this season. Expanding the reach of the game is still very much on the agenda but it is being undertaken from a pragmatic and sensible bottom up approach.
5. To see Rugby League build on the success of 2012, the first full year of the new summer calendar, and reach out to more participants, coaches, volunteers, referees and players in 2013. We know that more people played the game in 2012 than ever before and the number of registered Rugby League participants has passed the 100,000 mark. The sport is played in every county in England at one level or another and over 23,000 students competed in the Champion Schools competition across the country, with the Wembley Under 11 winners coming from Leatherhead in Surrey. This is a great base to develop further in 2013.
January 2013 is a great time to be a Rugby League fan.
http://superleague.co.uk/article/26898/ ... -new-super

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dibo
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Re: 2013 Super League - The Greatest Game Of All

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SuperLeague is a good comp, with great atmosphere and passionate crowds, but it's struggling to pay the bills.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/ja ... cial-abyss
Super League clubs on brink of financial abyss, says finance expert
• Super League clubs have 'combined debts of £60m'
• Former England coach admits many are struggling

Press Association
The Guardian, Monday 28 January 2013 10.45 GMT

The 2013 Super League is being launched on Monday, alongside claims it is facing a 'financial abyss'. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian
Tony Smith, the former England coach, has expressed concern at a damning report that claims Super League clubs are on the edge of "a financial abyss".

The study, written by Rob Wilson, a sports finance specialist from Sheffield Hallam University, has revealed that 11 of the 14 top-flight clubs have combined debts of more than £60m.

The new season will start on Friday without a main sponsor and in the past six months two clubs, Bradford and Salford, have teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Wilson's report, which featured on Monday's BBC Inside Out programme, overshadowed the Super League XVIII launch held at Manchester's Etihad Stadium.

Wilson said: "You have three or four teams that are doing very well, three or four teams doing poorly and a group of teams that struggle to wash their face financially. The overall effect is that the league itself will struggle for finance."

Smith's employers, Warrington, are one of the clubs in rude health, but he accepts there are problems in the game. "I think it's fair enough for people to be critical of the game," he said. "It keeps people on their toes and makes sure that they are accountable. If questions need to be asked, that's how it should be. Just because I'm at a club that is stable and well supported, it doesn't make it any less concerning.

"I think anybody involved in the game and certainly anybody who earns a living out of the game cares about it. It's been my sport for all my life and I want it to be the best it can be. It hurts to see it going through difficult times but sometimes we need shake-ups and reality checks. Hopefully we've the people in charge to do those things."

Wilson added: "The biggest challenge for the Super League is that there are too many teams generating insufficient turnover and generating too much cumulative debt. And that alarms me as someone who looks at finance in an academic environment, so using a term like rugby league is staring at the financial abyss isn't too harsh a thing to say."

Gary Hetherington, the chief executive of the champions Leeds, says the Rhinos have made a profit in each of the past nine years but concedes that mismanagement has caused problems at other clubs. "We're becoming heavily dependent on television revenue and also historically on benevolence," Hetherington said. "Where you find a problem, it's generally down to poor management from the top and often the withdrawal of a benefactor.

"The more underlying issue is the management of professional sport. I think there is a tendency in all our sports where the management focus on things like buying new players, changing the manager, appeasing the fans and reacting to pressure from the media rather than having a clear focus on growth and creating a surplus which can be re-invested into the business.

"We have a salary cap which should enable clubs to be profitable or at least break even. Given that there is more money coming into the sport than at any other time, it ought to make us very sustainable.I think in most cases now, clubs will be looking towards being sustainable. There have been some casualties in recent years but I think the sport will certainly have learned some lessons from those and it's in a much stronger position now to go forward."

Leeds begin the defence of their title against Hull at Headingley on Friday, when last season's league leaders Wigan visit Salford, who are expected to be in new hands by then. Warrington, the bookmakers' title favourites, open their campaign against Castleford on Sunday.

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Re: 2013 Super League - The Greatest Game Of All

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Leeds Rhinos make profit for 9th year in a row
Hetherington responded to a report by sports finance specialist Rob Wilson, from Sheffield Hallam University, for the BBC Inside Out programme which claims Super League clubs are on the edge of "a financial abyss" with combined debts of more than £60million.

Hetherington, who founded Sheffield Eagles in the 1980s and was a leading force in the switch to summer rugby, says the Rhinos have made a profit in each of the last nine years but concedes that mismanagement has caused problems at other clubs.

"We're becoming heavily dependent on television revenue and also historically on benevolence," Hetherington told BBC Radio 5 Live. "Where you find a problem, it's generally down to poor management from the top and often the withdrawal of a benefactor. The more underlying issue is the management of professional sport.

"I think there is a tendency in all our sports where the management tend to focus on things like buying new players, changing the manager, appeasing the fans and reacting to pressure from the media rather than having a clear focus on growth and creating a surplus which can then be re-invested into the business.

"We have a salary cap which should enable clubs to be profitable or at least break even. Given that there is more money coming into the sport than at any other time, it ought to make us very sustainable.

"I think in most cases now, clubs will be looking towards being sustainable. There have been some casualties in recent years but I think the sport will certainly have learnt some lessons from those and it's in a much stronger position now to go forward."

Hetherington, who is also chief executive of rugby union championship club Leeds Carnegie, believes rugby league compares favourably with other professional sports.

"I don't know why the focus is just on rugby league," he added. "The more interesting debate would be to look at all professional sports in England.

"If you look at the 92 football clubs, the 30-odd rugby union clubs and even county cricket, almost all of them lose money and are very dependent on both benevolence and banks. So I think it is a real concern generally. How sustainable is it?"
http://au.eurosport.com/rugby-league/he ... tory.shtml

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All Sports in UK facing financial problems including Soccer and Rugby Union
Super League clubs are in debt. I'm sure I wasn't the only one surprised by this groundbreaking revelation that's set to be exposed by a BBC documentary tonight.

With four teams having gone in to administration in Super League in the past two years, who would have guessed?

The investigation concludes that too many teams are generating "insufficient turnover" and "too much cumulative debt", having looked at the balance sheets of 11 of the 14 Super League clubs.

Welcome to sport.

There are very few sports clubs in the UK free of debt - two of the biggest clubs in the world, let alone the UK, in Manchester United and Liverpool football club's have been saddled with debts in recent history.

Clubs in other sports regularly miss payments, re-form and enter administration, yet appear to have missed the wrath of a BBC documentary to date.

But of course, the Six Nations starts on Saturday. The jewel in the BBC's dwindling crown of sport (I still haven't seen the other half of the 2012 Formula 1 season).

So what better time to "bag" rugby league? Ahead of the new Super League season, and as a nice reminder to the Great British public that union is king.

At a time where rugby league needs all the help it can get, the RFL is forced to defend itself to one of its supposed major partners, just days before the start of the new season.

The RFL's Blake Solly said: "Rugby League's health compares favourably to every other major sport. Attendances were at an all-time high in 2012, more people saw the game on television than ever before and the RFL was able to make record levels of financial disbursements to clubs."

Owing to the lack of revenue opportunities in sport, unless you are a player or in football, this writer covered Sale Sharks against Scarlets in rugby union's LV Cup on Saturday. Sale, as it happens, are in a relegation dogfight with financial issues of their own (perhaps it's something in the water at the Salford City Stadium).

Last year, another union side Wasps were close to administration, reporting losses of more than £2m per year and requiring up to £8m just to stay in existence. A report from that time states "the majority of the Premiership clubs are still making a loss and relying on the contributions of financial benefactors to stay afloat."

Again, welcome to sport.

The only slight consolation is that, like most rugby league shows by the BBC, it's only being shown in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the north west (how many professional rugby union teams are there north of Birmingham again?).

But this isn't about having a dig at rugby union, a successful sport on and off the field in its own right. The point is, why has rugby league been targeted, when such an investigation could have incorporated several sports and struggling clubs?

All we're asking for is a fair crack of the whip. Read Nigel Wiskar's recent defence of the sport following an outburst from The Times' rugby (sic) correspondent Stephen Jones.

Rugby league beats itself up enough, without having to field blows from outside the ring.

With the RFL, very publicly, currently on the lookout for sponsors, it's an ideal time for the BBC to air the results of its investigation.

Bring on Friday, when the madness starts all over again.
http://loverugbyleague.com/blogpost_568 ... ot-in.html

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Leeds are a superclub. Of course they're doing OK. And football clubs' problems are well documented. And those with fewer structural problems with their budgets (and the associated tight purses) are shat on by their own fans for not keeping up with the Mancs and Chel$ki (*waves to any gooners on here*).

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Let's just hope the entire financial situation in Europe can turn itself around.

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dibo wrote:Leeds are a superclub. Of course they're doing OK. And football clubs' problems are well documented. And those with fewer structural problems with their budgets (and the associated tight purses) are shat on by their own fans for not keeping up with the Mancs and Chel$ki (*waves to any gooners on here*).
*waves back, sighs and goes back to thinking of the A-League*

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Superleague is a more entertaining brand of league compared to the NRL. It just seems with NRL that the meatheads get to 5 tackles and kick and that's it. In superleague they take the kick when they think they have an edge and just go all out.

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And the atmosphere is top notch as well. I'm at a loss why it doesn't have a more active following amongst Australian RL fans, especially considering the quality of the respective leagues is pretty close.

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Time difference and the only place to see the games is on Eurosport.

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dibo
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Simmo79 wrote:And the atmosphere is top notch as well. I'm at a loss why it doesn't have a more active following amongst Australian RL fans, especially considering the quality of the respective leagues is pretty close.
And why oh why oh why do they not look at the SL grounds as the model for grounds here. Warrington's ground is a gorgeous little thing, and would be bloody brilliant for pretty well any NRL club.

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Halliwell Jones Stadium is indeed a beautiful little stadium.

However, with a capacity of only 15,200 it would not be practical for an NRL club. Some clubs may average lower than this but every club has blockbusters matches that pull in over this capacity. If those blockbusters were limited to 15,200 for any club, crowd averages will take a hit.

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dibo
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So scale it up! 25k would do the vast majority, and standing areas are great for atmosphere.

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Apart from Hills, I'm not sure whether or not Australian Rugby League fans would take to English style standing areas.

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Terraces sh*t on hills from a great height. Standing people create more noise than someone sitting in a chair let alone sitting, stretched out on the grass. It's science*. May also be more efficient uses of space as well.


* Physiology to be exact. Your diaphragm is constricted when sitting and unconstricted when standing. It's why all types of singers stand for their performances.

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