The game is at a low ebb at the moment but we have to acknowledge a couple of truths before we get nostalgic about the past:
1. There was greater disparity between the games. Everybody remembers the big occasions like Wembley being packed out for the Kangaroos Tests and the 92 World Cup final, and the big club derby games. These days there are so many derbies they all sort of roll into one, Wigan-Saints; Hull FC-Hull KR aren't that big events any more unless they are in a knock out match. Pre-Super League and even in the early years of Super League the derbies were huge events. But a lot of the Wire games when I started watching at Wilderspool in the late 80s and early 90s were relative non-events in front of small crowds. I know some people say we should scrap the playoffs and go back to the league championship to make every game mean more but those early seasons I watched Wire until Jonathan Davies joined, we roamed between mid and lower mid table, we were never challenging Wigan and not really in relegation danger so league games were just meh, unless they were against Widnes or someone. These days there's more consistency in the attendances.
2. The game has always waxed and waned through stronger and weaker eras. In my time watching, the peak years of rugby league were 1990 to 1994 and 2000 to 2005. The early 90s was an era where the careers of lot of all-time greats who were also major characters all coincided at once, both in GB and Australia. When you look at the Test teams of 1990, 92 and 94 it's a who's-who of greats. Unfortunately, a lot of them all retired around the same time so they weren't around for the early years of summer rugby. We enjoyed the fall of the Wigan empire and the collapse into anonymity of Widnes but those were powerhouses of the game and the Saints, Bradford, Wigan and Leeds teams that filled the vacuum were not that strong in the first few years. Remember that Bradford team with Graham Bradley and Glen Tomlinson running away with the title in the last year it was a League Championship, and getting smashed by Auckland (who were bottom of the Aussie SL) in the WCC knock out stage. The game was making steps off the field to try and market itself better but the quality declined rapidly in the late 90s. By the early 2000s, those big four teams were pretty good, peaking in 2005 where you had 4 real strong teams (ok 3, Wigan had strangely collapsed) plus Kear's Hull and Cullen's Wire were at the peak of their mini revival too. A really strong SL with some teams that played expansive rugby and a lot of star players in the game again. SL remained fairly strong for a few years after that, there wasn't the collapse of the 90s but more of a steady decline which a lot of people were in denial about at first. I remember Jon Wilkin and Tony Smith were both criticised as being negative and bitter when they started to talk about it. By around 2014/15 the game was starting to be in trouble, with most of the real stars gone and once the Leeds team broke up it exposed a league with few stars or teams who played a style of rugby that could capture the imagination of the fans (credit to Daryl Powell for at least trying to provide the second on a small budget at Cas).
