THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE RFL | ISSUE 61 RRRRIIISISSSIIININNNGGGG T TTTOOOO TTTTHHHHEEEE T TTTOOOOPPPP QUE STION TIME GO ING GLOBAL RUGBY LEAGUE BULLETIN October 2009 CONTENTS 5 Media Matters SEE THE SUPER POWERS OF INTERNATIONAL RUGBY 6 Grand Designs North Eastern LEAGUE CLASH THIS OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER Promise 8 12 Passing On Their Experience 14 Higgins At The Helm 15 Super Human! 18 Taking Aim 19 Euro-vision Rising To The Top 10 20 Promising Signs 24 Helping The Grass Roots Thrive 26 Learning With The Skolars 27 Making The Grade One Hell Of A WeekendQuestion 28 Tales From Wembley PgTime 16 & 17 16 Friday 23rd October Saturday 31st October Saturday 14th November Published by the Rugby League Services Department of the RFL. ENGLAND V FRANCE ENGLAND V AUSTRALIA The RFL, The Zone, St Andrews Road, Huddersfield, HD1 6PT. CubsGoing To Lions KEEPMOAT STADIUM, DONCASTER DW STADIUM, WIGAN Tel - 01484 448000 | Fax - 01484 545582, Global 22 Saturday 24th October Saturday 7th November FINAL Email - [email protected] | Internet - www.rfl.uk.com Pg 26 & 27 AUSTRALIA V NEW ZEALAND ENGLAND V NEW ZEALAND ELLAND ROAD STADIUM, LEEDS THE STOOP, LONDON GALPHARM STADIUM, HUDDERSFIELD The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the RFL Board of Directors. FAMILY TICKET OFFER GROUP STAGE FINAL OFFER* DISCOUNT RECEIVED ON Contributors - Tom Hoyle, Phil Caplan, Neil Barraclough, swpix.com, Dave Williams, John FOR 2 ADULTS AND OFFER Connaughton, Phil Hodgson, Dave Burke, Dave Woods, Callum Irving, Alex Ferguson 2 JUNIOR TICKETS for A FINAL TICKET WHEN £40 1010 for99 £10£10 PURCHASING ANY GROUP GAME If you are interested in advertising in the Rugby League Bulletin, please contact - [email protected] NOTE: ALL TICKET OFFERS Main Cover Photograph - The Angel of the North © The Rugby Football League Ltd 2009 Designed by - Tom Hoyle Tickets from £20 adults, £10 conc. Printed by - Redwood Print Ltd Tel - 01484 711111 Call 0844 856 1113 or visit www.rugbyleaguetickets.co.uk INSIDE THIS ISSUE RL MEDIA MATTERS .... with John Ledger IN NUMBERS Welcome to the October edition of the Rugby League When my former Bulletin .... colleagues presented me 8 with a satellite navigation he latest issue contains some fantastic interviews and features which I am sure will make great Teams that took part in the system as a farewell gift Treading to all followers of the game. expanded engage Super League “play offs” for 2009 when I left the Yorkshire We’ve got interviews with RFL Match Officials Director Stuart Cummings and Super League’s most expensive teenager Richie Myler, as well an article on the game in the North East and a feature on Post to join the RFL in touring. July, there were the Back on the field the season continues to carry on at a great pace and we are now just day’s away from one of Rugby League’s biggest events, the engage Super League Grand Final. inevitable wisecracks on the accompanying card .... For over a decade the Grand Final has gone from strength to strength and I am sure that 2009 will continue that trend, with Old Trafford once again providing a great venue for an event that has cemented itself in the British sporting calendar. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting to read John Ledger’s feature on all the previous finals. 713 Players registered to take part in t’s a special Rugby League version: the only Once the Grand Final is done and dusted it’s international action that will be the main attraction. Masters Rugby Iroad programmed in is the M62,” one wag This autumn’s Gillette Four Nations is sure to be a great spectacle and the chance to see some of the wrote. world’s top stars is a real treat for fans, both here and in France. Another quipped that I might find it useful to International action is also set to take place in the Community Game with the Great Britain locate the kitchen at Red Hall because after 19 Community Lions set to travel across the Channel at both open age and under 18 level, whilst the years at the Yorkshire Post I had never worked under18s are also set to take on the touring Australian Institute of Sport in late November. out where to go to make a cup of tea. On the domestic front the National Conference League and BARLA regional leagues have got off to Little did I know that within just two months I’d a great start and are now in full swing and along with the Gillette National Youth League are further require sat nav not to get to a Rugby League proof of the strength of the game up and down the country. match but to find myself around the venue 1,506 where one was being staged. Touchline Managers qualified as Wembley like Theseus in a modern day concrete Nowhere was the 2009 Carnegie Challenge Cup TOM HOYLE part of the RESPECT campaign Rugby League has long embraced technology and plate glass labyrinth. written about in more glowing terms than in the Editor - the sport was among the first to have video Daily Telegraph, a newspaper which has treated replays for crucial decisions and the first The new Wembley may be one of the world’s Rugby League with contemptuous disdain in to have match officials linked by an active most wonderful sporting venues but away from recent years. communication system - and the professional the public areas it’s a maze of unfathomable referees are currently involved in a research dimensions, a place staffed by blank-faced In the Bank Holiday Monday edition programme with Leeds Metropolitan University stewards whose grasp of the venue is as limited correspondent Andrew Baker wrote that “this is which has them hooked up to GPS. as their grasp of English. a wholesome sport which bright young people can enjoy, as spectators as well as players”, a There is little I wouldn’t have given to have my I lost count of the times I got lost in service sport that has “clung on to some of its most own satellite tracking system on the afternoon tunnels or was directed to corridors which led cherished traditions while accelerating into the 16,968 of Saturday August 29, the day Warrington no further than a locked door; of the occasions future.” Wolves ended their 35-year wait for Wembley when a simple request to a steward such Visits to the Community section glory with victory over Huddersfield Giants in as “Which way to the tunnel area” was met Baker continued along the same theme saying of the RFL website in the month the Carnegie Challenge Cup Final. with a look last seen on the faces of the two “there was plenty of skill on display at Wembley, of August Crucifixion supervisors in Monty Python’s Life of but speed and commitment are the key to I saw my first Challenge Cup Final in 1983, Brian played by Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle. success in the sport” and concluded that “there when the underdogs of Featherstone had their was no crowd violence, none of the on-field day against Hull FC, and have attended all but To compound matters I also forgot to Sky+ the violence or cheating that plagues the other one Final in the intervening 26 years, the last match at home before I left for London, leaving code of rugby. Instead, a good, clean, fast game 14 as Rugby League correspondent for the me indebted to the work of the journalists that has glimpsed the future and sees little to Yorkshire Post and, writing as my alter ego Ed whose match reporting in the Sunday and fear.” Hughes, the Sunday Times. Monday newspapers was consumed more avariciously than usual. Except, perhaps, the continued indifference of Even though I arrived at Wembley at 9.30 on important newspapers like the Daily Telegraph, the morning of the match and left three hours As is usually the case with the Challenge Cup which has given little more than cursory 76,560 after Adrian Morley and Lee Briers had hoisted Final, the match delivered a rich tapestry of mentions to Rugby League since Baker’s Spectators in attendance at the the Cup, I somehow contrived to miss the vast material for the media, many members of which prescient and pertinent article. Carnegie Challenge Cup Final at majority of the 2009 Final. focused on what winning at Wembley meant to Wembley Warrington’s Lee Briers, a player who down the Quite why the Daily Telegraph takes the stance Not that I was ever likely to see the whole years must have felt fated not to get his hands it does is, like the way to the Wembley tunnel, glorious show because with so much going on on a major trophy. lost on me. As a sat nav is unlikely to find the behind the scenes, there is much to prevent the answer perhaps a few e-mails to sports editor RFL Media Manager from witnessing the action. The Rugby League writers did what they always David Bond ([email protected]) from do and did the Final full justice while some Rugby League Bulletin readers who occasionally Even so, I had hoped to have seen more than of the national papers who have in the past or regularly read the Daily Telegraph may elicit the fleeting 10 minutes that I did and to have been less than supportive of the sport wrote in an explanation.