For instance, when a spectator threw a coin at a linesman at St Helens recently, the television pictures clearly showed spectators pointing out the miscreant to the police. People watch and play rugby league because it is part of their birthright, and are bred to feel a fierce pride in the game, their game. Its resistance to market forces and sporting fashions (although the trend towards new, garish strips has, shamefully, been embraced) has meant that, among other qualities, discipline on and off the field is envied by many other sports. Whatever else, we Northerners are stubborn buggers who don’t, in the normal course of events, react positively to change.This, if only it were recognised and nourished, is one of the strengths of the game. Clubs who have sold their ancestral home to move to a green-field site with tip-up seats and franchised hamburger bars have lost spectators. But they are companionable places, where you can be easy with your neighbour, and this is a more precious thing.” And how many people have stopped going to watch their local team because the seats aren’t comfortable enough? Indeed, there is evidence to suggest the contrary.
As Geoffrey Moorhouse said in his book At the George: “For the most part, the grounds are not obviously the abode of super-stardom and glitzy success, big television deals and players strong-arming everyone in sight with their lawyers in tow; and some will see this as a deficiency in our game. Yet all these grounds, now under the threat of the wrecker’s ball, have their own charm and history. Anyone who has walked along the cobbled alley behind what Salford laughably call the main stand, or who has risked exposure on a visit to Watersheddings, the dilapidated home of Oldham, or who can still recognise Wakefield’s ground as the backdrop for the 1963 film This Sporting Life is not left with a positive impression of the sport. Whatever you may have been told, this is another example of packaging sport for viewers rather than spectators.Sure, many of the grounds are ramshackle two-up, two downs beside the modern stadiums that football’s Premiership has spawned. Featherstone folk want to see the representatives of their community engaged in what is still one of the purest, most honest and most thrilling of professional sports; what they do not crave is “top- class action beamed live and exclusive to your living-room”. She closed their pits; he will destroy the most potent badge of their identity.It is no coincidence that Featherstone, a town of 11,000 people characterised as a set of traffic lights on the A645 but whose rugby team have won the Challenge Cup three times in the past 30 years, is in the frontline of the battle against the Super League and, specifically, the proposal that they should merge with their rivals Castleford and Wakefield Trinity to form one club. The death threats were piling up on his desk the following day..
“WHAT would Fev be without rugby? Or Cas, or Leigh or anywhere? Small grey towns that had their day, that were born from coal and died with it, like so many in the North …”
When Push Comes to Shove, 1993
THESE WORDS, spoken by a Featherstone man, have a prescient and eerie ring this weekend. It is now his game, born from economic necessity, that will die because of it when Rupert Murdoch does to many of these northern communities what Margaret Thatcher failed to do. The worst-case scenario, he said, was one where the new “super” clubs would become all-powerful, Wigan would fall behind and, in order to survive, would be forced to merge with St Helens. If Wigan were a machine, we’d never get caught.”But at least the future presents a new challenge. Betts is already talking of returning early from Auckland in order to be part of it. The fans are embracing it, too, though talk of trips to Paris and Toulouse were cut short on Monday when Jack Robinson gave them a glimpse of the future being forced on other clubs. “And why should Hull and Hull KR get any better? They’re both really second division teams, so they’ll just be pooling second division players.”It’s up to Wigan.
They will only be caught if they lose the structure,” said Goodway. “That,” added Jack Robinson, the club chairman, “is a very intelligent assessment. “Top-line players will still want to go to Wigan,” said Goodway. All the other teams are dead limbs, they’re hanging off of the tree -which is the game -and are pulling it down. There are people out there who have been pinching a living off rugby league for a long time.”So will the new, healthy Super League bring an end to Wigan’s dominance? The £75m package sounds huge, but the clubs will receive little more than £1m a year, and given that much of it is intended for stadium development, it does not make for a great outlay on new players. “Everyone is saying that we’re ripping out the roots of the game,” said Betts, “but I don’t agree.