My love hate relationship with Rugby League
On Saturday night I went to watch Fiji play Australia at Headingley. This was completely impromptu. I decided that afternoon after watching England beat Samoa. It was the first time in a long while I have been enthused by Rugby League in this country. I am trying to feel positive about a home World Cup, but as always with Rugby League, there is always the nonsense with that comes with the positives.
For as long as I can remember I have played, followed and enjoyed Rugby League. For a time, I entirely lived for it! The game itself, in my opinion is the greatest sport in the world to watch. But in the last few years I have fallen out of love with the game slightly. There have been various reasons why I haven’t attended as many games, from being over worked and tired, moving further away, to a general lethargy towards the game. For me, the way the game is run in this country leaves me with many questions, and none of them are ever answered.
The most recent public example being Ralph Rimmer the Chief Executive Officer of the Rugby Football League receiving no meaningful sanction after stating publicly at an awards dinner that “Fiji have already arrived. We don’t think anybody has been arrested yet, do we? No, we’re all right, so we are going pretty well then”. This was before the start of the 2021 Rugby League World Cup, one that has been dubbed as a “game changer” and the “most inclusive ever”. Yet he escaped without punishment for this. So thus I went into Saturday nervous.
My nerves were right, there were hiccups. Things still felt very much like English Rugby League normally does. As things started to get going at St James’ Park, the power went out, leaving Ricky Wilson of the Kaiser Chiefs running up and down the touchline to gee up the crowd. Along with this, the 6 people holding the three trophies up for grabs over the next few weeks, were left stood around looking, and I’m sure feeling, confused.
However, England had put in an impressive performance to comfortably beat a much-fancied Samoan team. Things were positive! England played well and on the whole things were shining. England won, and established some potential new stars with Dom Young shining, and others like Welsby continued their form from the club season.
At the start of the day, I had thought it was a double header in Newcastle, however I realised that the Australia Fiji game was being played in Leeds. I live on the outskirts of Leeds, and I’m a huge Rugby League fan, and I hadn’t realised the game was being played close by, or potentially it hadn’t been promoted. So, at half time of the England game, I jumped on the Rugby League World Cup 2021 website, by jumped I mean I tried five times before it worked, to book tickets for the evening game. Seated tickets were £45, or £25 to stand, as a proud Yorkshireman the prospect of paying £45 for a seat was far too unappealing, so I opted for the £25 standing. As I was checking out, I was being charged an additional £4 processing fee. When clicking the symbol next to this price, it told me that this price was for the upkeep of the website, and a 50p donation the “charity” of the RLWC 2021. To charge an additional £4 on top seems a bit cheeky to me — yes, I chose those words carefully.
I chose to just attend the game, and buy a ticket at the ground, so I saved myself £4, the Yorkshireman inside me was happy. At the game there was a good atmosphere and everyone was in good spirits. Because I’d arrived early to get my ticket, I decided I would look to see what merchandise was available, and this was yet again where I had that all too familiar sinking feeling. The only thing available was joint scarves or a £6 programme. There was nowhere I could find a Fiji or Australia jersey or anything. As a game, we always say we need more money in the game, and merchandise is a great way of doing that. Just a very basic idea would be 50% of the profits from it are centralised and distributed to each nation in an equal share, so divided by 16. The other 50% should go to the nation themselves that produced the shirts/designs. It seems to make some sense at least. Not only does it get more money in the game, it also promotes the game and the teams.
After this, I made my way to the South Stand — I did feel like an imposter as almost every other time I have been to Headingley I have been in the away end. There was a decent amount of people in there, and it started to fill up as kick off approached, the £45 seats did not fill up quite as well. I ended up stood next to an Australian couple, and we struck up a conversation about how it was odd that it was the same price to stand in the South Stand as it was to stand in the West Terrace where those poor souls were currently getting soaked due to the lack of a roof — I feeling I knew only too well from my experiences mentioned at the start of this paragraph.
Things were building towards kick off, the teams came out and there was excitement. We readied ourselves for the anthems. But a decision had been taken to play only the instrumental versions, so to those of us who didn’t know the words to “Meda Dau Doka” or “God Bless Fiji” this felt like a strange choice. I’ve watched Australia enough times to know the basis of “Advance Australia Fair”, but it still felt odd to be hearing an instrumental version. It detracted from the spectacle, and you could also see the players looking confused as to what was going on. Not a good look. But our spirits were lifted again when Fiji sang their “Noqu Masu” hymn, which translates as “This is my prayer”. I am not in the slightest bit religious but it was a spine tingling, moving moment.
The game was great, there was only likely to be one winner but that didn’t matter, the atmosphere was a friendly one, the Leeds crowd favoured the underdog Fijian side, with the loudest moments being when the Fijians scored. It was a great atmosphere, and despite the cold October night air, I felt warm and like I was loving Rugby again. At the end of the game, after bashing each other for 80 minutes, both teams came together in a circle, with Fiji again leading them in a hymn. The impact of this moment of collective worship, reverence and togetherness was diminished by the insistence of which ever member of the Headingley staff decided to blast “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics over the PA system.
The players then spent time moving around of the edge of the stadium, greeting fans old and young. They all took selfies with everyone who wanted them. Signed whatever they wanted. And talked and interacted with all of the fans. This is some of the biggest stars in world rugby, James Tedesco took a selfie with everyone. Latrell Mitchell spent a good few minute’s speaking to a group of fans, the rest of the Australian squad all did the same. The Fijians made it their missions to speak to every person who had a Fiji flag, hat or shirt, and everyone who didn’t! The players were special and wanted to make everyone’s night special as well.
After this I went home, buoyed by Rugby League, and embracing fully my love for the game.
Sunday featured three World Cup games, what a day to be had.
Italy impressed early doors against Scotland in front of a small crowd but it was a small stadium and we always knew it wouldn’t post huge numbers.
Next came Ireland against tournament debutants Jamaica! A potential to draw in new audiences, and get lots of people to Headingley for a cracking atmosphere. In Leeds there are large numbers of people from Irish and Jamaican heritage. So those promoting the game will have pulled out all the stops, right? Wrong.
Instead of ensuring a big crowd through lower ticket prices and maybe even giving away some tickets to local amateur teams and schools, the powers that be decided to do none off that. Instead, they opted for a disappointingly low 6320 people. In a cost-of-living crisis, asking people to spend £20 to watch a game where one of the teams is largely part time players, where the result is likely to be obvious, is frankly ridiculous. If you had charged £10, I think more people would have attended. Could you have potentially doubled the numbers? Maybe. Could you have got more so it looks better? Absolutely. Could tickets have been offered for free to clubs in the area to make it look better? Definitely. Would those people have potentially bought merchandise (had it been available) thus increasing revenue further? Potentially.
The problem with poor attendances is, on a simple level, it looks bad. A near empty stadium for a world cup game is not a good look to audiences or sponsors. Sponsors wanting to come into a sport want to see that their brand is going to be showcased to a wide audience, that in turn will then bring more money into the sport. It is little surprise that if we look at the sponsors of the England national team, they have gone from Gillette to now being sponsored by apparently the only company willing to sponsor rugby league in England, Betfred. The same is true for kit providers, they have moved from Puma to Oxen, who from a quick google do not appear to have a website and are sold through third parties, and when you click on the link on Wikipedia, it quite literally takes you to a page about Oxen, did you know that “oxen are thought to have first been harnessed and put to work around 4000 BC”? This is not a slight on Oxen, I am sure their products are great, but it doesn’t really say “big time”!
The other problem with low attendances is that in order to host a game, you have to assume that it will sell out. That means you need stewards and all the other staff. Whether you have 2 or 20,000 people the running costs are the same. So why as a sport to do they insist on overcharging and always under delivering?
There was a repeat of this same thing in Warrington in the evening. 5453 people went out to watch New Zealand play Lebanon. The same questions asked in the earlier paragraph could be asked here. The organisers promised this would be bigger and better than ever but so far it seems like we are being let down again by poor decisions from the top.
We are living through a cost-of-living crisis, with most of the games being held in northern towns and cities, and we all know that the north is always the hardest hit. Disposable income is at a low point. The organisers have known this for months, they have seen the ticket sales, and they have done seemingly nothing to counteract this — I am happy to be correct on this.
While this could be an incredibly positive world cup for England, does anyone really feel that those in charge will be able to capitalise on this and build the game? The majority of the games are in the areas where the sport is already established. If Ireland, Italy, or anyone else carry on their early tournament form will there be plans in place to build on this? Or will we fall back to how things were? Jamaica, have built the sport there purely off their own back, with very little central support. Their progress has been huge, but it feels like it has been in spite of the governing bodies, not because of them.
I do want to feel positive about the sport I love. And maybe the fact I love it, is why I also hate it at times. I feel like Rugby League is genuinely the best sport in the world. But too often it is let down by those who run it. There are points made, every time the sport in England is criticised similar to “If you keep talking it down you won’t attract new people”. That may be true. But I would also argue that if we continue to pretend everything is great when it isn’t, things will never change. Also, when the former FA chairman said something racist, he resigned. When the head of the RFL did similar, he was found to not be a problem.
I want to be excited by Dom Young and the other potential stars. I hope England can do well. I hope throughout the tournament there are surprises and a potentially unexpected team beat the odds to progress further than anyone thought possible. That’s the magic of international sport and of world cups.
I just hope that those in charge capitalise on what could be a great tournament — see I have tried to leave it on a positive note!
If you like Rugby League, how do you feel about it currently? Have you had similar feelings? Let me know!
If you have never heard of Rugby League before, why read this much? Thank you though! Check out the sport, the world cup is on BBC in the UK, despite how it’s run, the sport is amazing!
