Challenge Cup semi-final viewing figures reported as Wigan Warriors v St Helens hampered by major sporting event

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1. 

   Eric T Cat

   May 13, 2026 at 12:34 pm

   That people choose to watch women’s rugby union out of preference is a damning condemnation of the marketing of rugby league.

   When I got married I married a sport hating girl from down South, but she put up with me watching the games, then started asking if it was on. One afternoon Intook her kids to the park to run off some excess energy and for the youngest to fall face down in the only pile of dog mess in the entire giant park, she was like a guided missile with that trick. When they started complaining about being tired, not being able to walk back to the car, we went home. As I walked in she says to me “What’s wrong with this? It’s slow, boring, full of fat blokes like you, and they can’t pass the ball, all they do is stand about, kick the ball, or roll about squabbling on the floor, it’s awful!”, in her best posh Surrey accent, I looked, top flight Premiership rugby union, Bath vs Leicester. “ah, you’re watching a different sport love, that’s rugby union, it’s…erm…different”, she perks up, “oh, is this for old and fat people not good enough to play what you watch, I know you’re 42 but you could play this, where are all the nice sexy guys with good legs and sexy bums?”. When I stopped laughing, “No, this is actually the original sport, you are rgere are two types of rugby, what happened was…”, and she got a brief history lesson. We even went over to Huddersfield so she could see the George Hotel, plus she wanted to see what the town centre was like.

   Then after a few months of watching she wanted to go to a game, then she picked herself a team, although picking Leeds on the basis they were the best looking, when we lived in Bradford, and I’m a Hull KR fan, I thought was off, then she decides she’s getting a shirt to wear round the place, having gone from sport hating person to settling herself down to watch it on the telly when it was on, go to some games, and get herself all excited from just watching it with me, what the hell do the marketing people at the RFL and SuperbLeague actually do? I live in Hull, I never see any advertising for games, and we’re the world club champions! We have two top flight clubs, and you’d never know the sport was played in the city unless you had a deep interest or got dragged down to watch. The BBC do as little as humanly possible to promote the sport positively, the newest commentator has me turning off the sound. Sky, their interest has dwindled to nothing.

   I’m sorry but rugby union is boring, it’s slow, there’s no skill other than kicking and we’ve plenty who can do that. Union only draw is it’s the darling sport of the Establishment, but as a viewing spectacle it’s dire, last time I tried to watch it I fell asleep, that was an international between Australia and South Africa, so not low level. Union has the most heinous history of any sport ever devised since gladiator fights between armed gladiators and unarmed Christians tethered to poles. If not for Establishment support it would have been banned over the 100 year, bar a few days “professionalised” ban, good god Inwas banned sine die as a kid myself.

   We have a faster, more exciting, more flowing vibrant sport, it dwarfs other sports for its pace and intensity, from amateur to internationals, yet the RFL can’t, .it’s my opinion won’t, promote the sport. We should hand the entire lot over to the NRL, look where they are, Premier League type money from their TV deal, genuine expansion, not what we Havel clear structure, clear plans, we need that here! Before the sport withers away entirely.

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