Quote ="Halfdan of t'wide embrace"That was intentional by Eric. He and the RFL discussed how to work the early fixtures. It was no fluke they got Skolars first away and Oxford first at home.
Eric wanted to get fixtures against the known names in early. People in Canada are more likely to have heard of Oxford than, say, Hunslet and will have no idea that Hunslet are a traditional team, Oxford newbies. He felt it would be easiest to market geographic names not the fact that Hunslet used to be top notch.
I'd expect the same to happen if New York, or whoever, enter. It wasn't a north / south thing though. York were one of the teams he put forward as a candidate for the key early games.
Quite right too, the RFL did a lot of damage to Quin's RL by putting them up against Saints first home game.'"
And yet by having Saints as the first home game we got a gate of over 8k. Can't imagine we'd have got anything like those numbers with,I dunno Wakey or Hudds.
20/20 hindsight is a marvellous thing
