There are some very good points here but I will take Brian to task on a couple of points (sorry if this sounds a one brain celled reply by the way).
To say that Rugby Yawnion was an amateur sport in 1995 is a little bit of a joke when our very own Keith Fileding said many years ago that he was paid via a brown envelope in his blazor pocket when he played for England in the early 70's. The sport may well have looked down it's nose at it's flat capped, whippet walking cousins whilst trying to hold the moral high ground of amateurism but it has always been clear that the best players have been paid for a long time.
Secondly, I'm sure there are things we can learn from many other sports but to suggest that internationally we are worse than our Yawnion counterparts is ludicrous. Apart from Ireland the home nations have just beeen blown away again by the southern hemisphere teams so I think we're pretty much on level terms in performance.
Marketing of Yawnion is better but that is easy with a press who are biased towards them. Not to mention the fact that traditionally the sport is frequented by the landed gentry who went to public school and have plenty of disposable income to attend games no matter what the quality of entertainment.
One area of the interview where I think he could have really developed was when he said about SL not being able to put 14 teams of suffiecient quality together.
I fully agree with him here and I believe this is down to having far too many sub standard over seas players in our league and a salary cap that at best doesn't work and at worst is deliberately flouted without fear of any real punishment. Our salary cap does not give a level playing field and does not encourage players to stay at clubs like Salford because they get offered large sums to go elsewhere at clubs who don't care if they break the rules.
Is that response biggoted enough for you
Must go now the whippet needs it's walk before I have my lard butty and brown ale
