Just when crowds at RL are declining with or without Covid, what a brilliant job England Cricket has done with the introduction of the Hundred.

Healthy crowds, various channels showing it, mixed audiences at the ground, Big brand sponsors, music, excitement......... SL and Rimmer get to Old Trafford and take some notes & Stop looking for excuses.

Few points:

- Crowds are about as good as cricket's existing competition (T20 Blast) so it has not been a revelation that way.
- RL is more of a mixed sport than most.
- It's a franchise completion that has negatively affected existing clubs, do you want RL to become a franchise sport?
- It has been hugely bankrolled by the ECB. Money RL simply doesn't have.
- It currently has a novelty factor, which will wear away.

I agree RL needs a shake-up but the only good thing about The Hundred is putting the sport on free-to-air TV.

A lot of people are overreacting and declaring the Hundred a massive success. It seems to have done okay initially, but it remains to be seen what it'll do to the other forms of the game. I.e. the T20 Blast and domestic one day games. It's likely both of those will suffer as will the TV deals for other elements if it becomes the dominant form due to it's greater suitability for TV.

Cricket is also another elitist sport on the whole. Sure it's attracting a lot of drinkers, but they aren't there watching and enjoying the cricket, they're just having a night out on the razz and a lot won't even watch a single ball being bowled. That novelty will wear off after a year or two and people will find another fashionable activity to jump onto. Is the Hundred any better than T20? It's just had a lot of money thrown at it, it's been well marketed and those with FOMO are jumping on it. It's more an event than a sport, no one is going and saying 'wow, I was amazed by the cricket, the standard of bowling was off the scale, the batting so inventive'. The stories I've heard from people who've been were more 'I don't know who was playing mate, I was in the main bar with the MD of Travis Perkins and he was paying for everything, effectively free bar, I woke up at four in Piccadilly Gardens, it's amazing, you should go next time it's on'.

What people are also forgetting is that the Hundred still takes longer than a non-televised rugby league game does. It's averaging two and a half hours and given it's cricket the slightest speckle of rain and they're all sprinting for cover and it takes longer. So I don't see why people are throwing it up as a suggestion for rugby league to look at? What do you want to do with rugby league to jump on that kind of success? 8 a side games like Cas have proposed that are over in 30 minutes? If so, it then becomes too short and it's not worth driving more than 10 minutes to watch. You're not going to get people driving from Hull to St Helens for example for a game of Cas' Special Eights are you?

Magic Weekend is what they should be looking at for this. It's always been a stupid concept in terms of giving it a league fixture and league points. It's always disrupted the legitimacy of the league table, teams like Warrington have essentially been given a 2 point advantage for years because of it. That is where a reduced format would come in. Have Magic Weekend properly marketed, have it as a reduced format festival over two days and invite guest sides in. Get the Fiji 7s squad from Union, get a local side playing. get a Championship All Stars team to give them exposure etc. You can still incentivise it, have 2 league points given to the semi finalists and three to the finalists and 5 to the winners etc.

Maybe RL needs to bring back the Floodlit Trophy on a FTA channel......

Some issue that RL continues to have is that is governing body doesn't have endless coffers from a strong international calendar, to support the domestic game, as cricket & RU have.

It's been a very, very expensive thing to put out there for the ECB and there is very little evidence it is commercially viable. We'll see but it strikes me as the sort of thing which will quietly disappear after whatever contracts have been signed up for end.

do they really need to watch every ball as long as the crowd are getting enjoyment from the days event whether they have turned up just to be on the lash or to enjoy the cricket ;

obviously you don't like cricket

Free to air is the boost our game needs, unfortunately the game did a deal with the devil 26 years ago, with full time squads on full time wages we can’t rely on gate money alone & are tied to Sky until they grow tired of us. Flood light competition would be great but non of our clubs can carry the squad sizes we had in the part time era. I do think we need some leadership with a bit of vision but let’s hope someone has a flash of inspiration.

It’s been massively hyped by the broadcasters involved as well. They’ve chucked a load of money and propaganda at it, hoping the casual watcher believes the hype.

In sporting terms, It’s just a reworked T20 that wasn’t needed.

The hundred has been a running joke for the last 2 years in cricket. It was originally setup to get money off a particular broadcaster, I think it was the BBC, who then dropped out. The money injection has mainly gone to the counties as some sort of bribe to not have them involved. Leaving very little for the actual product. So it sounds like something the RFL would organise already.

It was also, and this is the big thing for RL fans to remember, setup for non cricket fans. Fans of cricket were told over and over again that this product wasn't intended for them and it was an attempt to appeal to new fans. This is something that RL fans, as well as cricket fans, struggled to accept. However the ECB just carried on and now they seem to be appealing to a wider audience, at least for the time being. This is something the RFL would never stick at as the usual suspects would complain and the RFL would flip flop.

If we want to copy the "Hundred Model" we need leadership in the sport that is willing to do things that are unpopular and is willing to stick to them. Appealing to a larger audience requires doing things a lot of the traditional fans won't like. If we want to grow the sport we have to stop pandering to certain groups in our game.

Another long winded waffle with a little dig at Warrington hidden in amongst it. Pretty sure we usually play Wigan at magic, plus we've played the mighty saints a few times as well. Although these days a game against saints is like being given 2 points