I have to say the quality of broadcast is getting worse watching SL on Sky Sports. The Thursday night opener had pixelated graphics throughout and don’t get me started on Sky Sports +!!!
Still only able to watch ‘live’ and not record, sound issues, picture goes off and I’d have had a better experience watching on an old dial up modem than the quality the Catalan game showed.
I paused the Hull/Bulls game last night to give my son a lift out - came back around half hour later and pressed play - it immediately went to the ‘live’ game and spoiled the score. WTF?
Penny pinching. You’d never see this for the EFL championship.
Poor all round really.
Yes I agree, it’s terrible coverage, and 5/7 matches this week were on the red button.
What is even more stupid was that on Sky Mix last night, at the same time as the 2 live matches were on the red button, they were showing a repeat of Fridays warrington match followed by a repeat of a HKR documentary.
They did the same thing quite a few times last season, I emailed them telling them how stupid it was and got a reply, saying they would pass my comments on to the person in charge. In other words nothing would happen.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I read last year, that they would be introducing new technology soon, were you could record programmes on the red button. Hope so.
Not sure about the technical quality of the RL coverage on Sky, but presenters still continue to pour out drivel about the game.
The game of rugby league in the UK originated in 1895, not 1996 with the advent of the so called Super League. Rugby League is a great game but is on the brink of collapse due to the long term mismanagement of the game.
I lost count of the number of times mention was made of the great addition to SL were the three "big city" teams. This idea of growing the game by ditching the teams in the RL heartland has been around since Maurice Lindsay promoted the idea in the 90's. I recollect that he thought merging Widnes with Warrington was a good idea!!
Will York, Bradford and Toulouse add more to the SL than if Widnes had been given the nod? Much was made of the sell-out at York, but I am sure that Widnes would have attracted a similar, if not bigger crowd, for their first game, if they had returned to SL.
With London all but guaranteed a place in SL in 2027, that will mean just 5 UK city based teams teams in SL - London, Leeds, Wakefield, York, Bradford. I exclude Catalans and Toulouse because I believe that at some stage, they will return to an expanding French league. Does that mean we can look forward to SL promoting city based teams in Coventry, Doncaster, Sheffield and Salford at the expense of Warrington, Leigh, Huddersfield, Castleford, St Helens and Wigan? Will it see RL pushing for the merger of the two Hull teams, Wigan and Leigh and others to form a Manchester team, St Helens and Widnes to form a Liverpool team? Castleford merged with Wakefield?
You know what, why can't those running the game take their heads out of the clouds? The game is a minority sport in the UK, but a game enjoyed by the fans mostly across its heartlands around the M62 corridor. I believe that the last 30 years of SL have been wasted on vanity projects like Toronto and dreams of developing a major world game, whilst forgetting the game's routes.
I really hope that York do well in SL. I am not too sure about Bradford, because I cannot help think that they were given unfair assistance in their promotion bid that was not available to others.
A future long-term strategy for the game has been published in the last week - a 42 page document an excited Sky presenter announced. I hope that it is a realistic strategy and looks to promote and develop the game at all levels. Can the game continue to see Clubs running up annual debts of £1m plus and reliant on local benefactors to bail them out? Can teams survive at a professional level on crowds of less than a 1000 and little or no central funding? Can the RFL continue to pay salaries of £300,000 plus to executives?
I have watched and loved the game of rugby league for almost 70 years, watching Widnes through the Club's ups and downs. I really do want to see the game survive and grow, but have never been so pessimistic about the future of the game.
Up the Chemics!!!
Well said Frank, you have perfectly summed up the present state of the game.