My apologies, I neglected to hang on your every word.



The problem with this is it limits the ticket buying public to people already in London and those prepared to book a hotel for the night before.

Reading some of these responses you'd think a sports competition having self-interest was the world's greatest sin.



State of Origin would be massive. It's the one rugby league event that people in the UK who don't even like or know much about rugby league will watch, despite some of the drivel posted in this thread suggesting otherwise. I'd go as far as saying that outside of world cups it probably draws more interest from casual sports fans than some international games do.



If international rugby league is truly the way forward and there is a market for it then where is the conflict here? From the sounds of some of you, Dunbar for example, you talk up internationals but sound petrified that origin would take attention away from them. If the UK care about international games and not origin then what are you worried about? If it's a failure then it's a failure for the NRL. So what. Stop whinging.

On a Wednesday morning. Put the SL grand final or rugby league world cup final on Sky on a wednesday morning and lets see how much better it rates.



You think Aus - NZ would have rated much better at 11am middle of the week when most the country are at work?

i would schedule the second game of the series in london - there will be something riding on it (and to be fair even after a 2 - 0 series lead the 3rd game would stilll mean something), but the chance for one of the teams to pull level or go and take the series would set it up nicely. also there may be some juicy hype arising out of game 1 that could be used to market it - even though i think it would be close to a sell out anyway.



SOO is always a bit imbalanced by having 2 games in either queensland or nsw - a game on neutral soil would balance it up

Most people I talk to that don't have much knowledge or interest in rugby league don't have a clue about State of Origin. They have no idea what it is.

They don't need to know anything about rugby league to back England against Australia or New Zealand.

Mine was a valid point.....the SL GF only drew 260k this year......you'll get maybe double that on SKY or possibly 1 million on BBC......SoO is a big thing to RL fans....it really is an irrelevance outside of that in regards of UK sports consciousness outside of RL fans.......



btw.......SoO is a Wednesday event........it's part of a 1 billion dollar TV deal in which the TV companies dictate KO times and dates........SoO rates better than either NRL or AFL grand finals because it is on a Wednesday........do you think Channel 9 are going to drop close to 1 million viewers to accommodate an experiment? Do you think NRL coaches will welcome the 2 weeks their stars will be missing for the sake of 1 game?

I don’t think anyone thinks SoO wouldn’t sell well but it isn’t our competition and doesn’t benefit our competition. It wont attract new fans, it wont attract lapsed fans to our competition, it wont make us any money. It doesn’t benefit our game over here in any way.



It simply takes attention away from our game and cements our position as number 2.

I can see the point of origin being used to spread the game, but South Africa would be the obvious place to try that, not the games heartland.

I have just asked the 8 people I work with, Do you know what state of origin is & would you watch it? Not very scientific but interesting. Only two know of it, one because her dad is a league fan the other is an Aussie from Melbourne & neither would go near rugby in any form. The other six had not heard of it & don't watch much sport of any kind & have never been to a live sports match of any kind except one who went to F1 once.

I have no doubt there may be enough to fill Wembley but would you get a TV audiance? I think we suffer on this forum by assuming every one else would be as crazy about the game as we are if we could get them through the gate to a game. As said before if the NRL clubs want to promote league great, but the dont they want to promote the NRL & for the simple disrespect they show our game in the UK they can clear off for me.

Gutters









......why do you find it so difficult...to post without......ellipsis?

I would love to go to Origin at wembley, as for suggestions for sending it elsewhere one of the reasons Wembley is suggested is the corporate hospitality and the reason the champions league final will be there every other year in the near future.

anybody who feels that the greatest rugby series, of either codes doesn't warrant a game at Wembley needs their head banging! the publicity the game will bring for the sport would be 10xs more than it would get normally!



nfl is not played world wide, probably played in less countries than league but it still doesn't stop neutrals from going and selling out Wembley for the occaision and the media hype around it goes into overdrive!

Seeing as though you have named me, I will address a couple of your points



Firstly, I think you significantly overestimate the awareness of State of Origin outside of Rugby League fans. We know all about it and we all look forward to the series every year but my question is why would a non-Rugby League fan have an awareness of an interstate competition on the other side of the world?



I am not petrified that Origin would take attention away from Internationals but I am concerned that it is not the right focus. Let’s take the recent World Cup match in Bristol as an example. It was a huge success with a crowd that far outstripped what most expected. This was primarily down to great work from people raising awareness of the event. As Rugby League fans, we know that the USA vs. Cook Islands would not be the best standard RL but I believe it would have been far easier to sell that game to the Bristol and South West public than NSW vs. Queensland would have been. Despite the fact we know that the SOO would be a wonderful game, the promotion was about the occasion and not the quality of the game



I am not in any way against the concept of a SOO game at Wembley and if it went ahead I would want it to be a huge success and, as I have said before, I would be there. But fundamentally, it is not the correct way to raise the profile of our sport. Despite the quality of the game, showcasing an Australian inter-state match as the pinnacle of our sport is actually quite a negative message



Anyway, this is my opinion and you may disagree. But, I would appreciate it if you didn’t categorises my passion for growing our game in the right way as whinging. Thanks