garyhulsefan wrote:
I think Kingy might have meant the clubs groundsharing rather than merging? Could be wrong. There'll never be a merger (nor should there be), but a groundshare really should happen given the proximity. It'd be like there being a Super League club in Stockton Heath and them having a 15k stadium just a few miles away from the HJ.
Just listened to the interview then, which is very interesting by the way, and he definitely meant that they should merge. The problem is that Aussies had a spate of mergers not so long ago, and probably don't fully understand the sporting culture over here.
The analogy with a hypothetical Stockton Heath team doesn't really make sense. Looking at the map it's 8 miles from Wheldon Road to Belle Vue. This is about the same as the HJ to Langtree Park, and further than the distance from our ground to the Stobart Stadium. There is no way we would want to share a ground with either of those teams, so why should two fierce Yorkshire rivals have to do so?
I agree with Matt King though that something needs to be done about the league. Reduce it back down to 12 teams for a start and bring back promotion and relegation. If two teams had to go tomorrow, I would choose Salford and one other. Playing in Sale's new stadium seems to have done nothing to improve their crowds, they hardly produce any young players and their squad for next season is Championship standard anyway.
He also made a point that there's players in SL who shouldn't really be operating at this level. These are the ones who probably wouldn't have made it as a professional player in any other sport, but are there because of the minimal numbers who play the game at junior level. I won't name names, but we've had a number of those throughout the years I've been watching Wire. If you took away money considerations and just wanted to play any sport professionally, then I reckon RL would be among the easiest to get into, just because of the simple probability involved.
On a more positive note, it was great to hear him talk so positively about the fans over here. It seems that the two games at Wembley were among the highlights of what has been a fairly illustrious career. We might not see Antipodeans of his ability coming over too often from now on, but he was a great player for our club.
