It is easy to forget that rugby league has friends in extremely high places. Those of us fortunate enough to be at Westminster last week can attest to that. RFL marketing and communications director Mark Foster gave a presentation to the All Party Parliamentary Rugby League Group in the bowels of power where he outlined the RFL’s aims for 2016 and answered questions on the achievements of 2015 from MPs and associate members.

It’s clear that the RFL is making great progress growing the sport in many areas and yet the deficiencies are always highlighted: attendances are down, Sky viewing figures in the regular Super League season are down, while the Challenge Cup shows little sign of recovering its prestige until final hurdles.

On the other hand, Sport England say participation is back up, the World Club Series went well and looks set to grow, the Grand Final was a sell-out for the first time, the Magic Weekend was a great success in Newcastle, record crowds watched England win the Kiwi Test Series, and the BBC were pleased with TV figures for the internationals and the Friday night Challenge Cup semi-final experiment. All in all, a good year.

Most of us often compare rugby league to rugby union, which has exploded in the last few years, or the football behemoth, instead of looking at our game’s overall growth. In most areas – TV coverage, social media presence, top flight attendances – the game is bigger than it has been for many years. In others – full-contact participation, lower division and cup attendances, newspaper coverage – it is shrinking.

League has also been accused of insularity and yet that is unfair these days. Super League clubs recently attended a meeting sharing good practice and saw presentations by Disney on their customer experiences, Wasps about their Coventry move, and Stoke City (regarding community presence). The RFL’s new Head of Communications Calum Gillies came from Red Bull Sports, while the marketing manager newly installed in the London office was previously with Morrisons. Foster, originally from Staffordshire, worked with Durham cricket and Newcastle Falcons before playing a major part in the 2013 World Cup success.

Foster revealed that one move towards boosting the profile of our top players will be the use of five “ambassadors” who will appear in promo films for Super League XXI on TV and in cinemas: Sam Tomkins, Kallum Watkins, Alex Walmsley, Ryan Hall and the Beeb’s new favourite Ashton Simms, fresh from an appearance on A Question of Sport.

Having managed to sell out the Grand Final at last, Foster’s vision is for two more years of house full notices leading to Old Trafford being rammed every year as fans change their habits to buy tickets months in advance.

Some readers may be dismayed that Thursday nights are here to stay but Sky are committed to them (they are even showing football on Thursdays in the rugby league off-season) and the RFL is hoping clubs change their attitudes and put aside the inconvenient scheduling to focus on a different audience, presumably a more corporate one, than the normal family-friendly events they stage on Friday nights or Sunday afternoons. Like most initially unwelcome elements Sky have imposed on the game, we will no doubt turn the occasional Thursday game into an opportunity pretty soon.

There were also encouraging noises about events in the capital. More of that next time.

Foreign quota

Having sprinkled his magic dust on the USA Hawks, assuring they qualified for the 2017 World Cup despite almighty scares by heroic Jamaica and Canada, Leeds coach Brian McDermott will return to Jacksonville next month as the Rhinos play the Hawks on 17 January during their annual Floridian training camp.

The US made hard work of clinching a marvellously tight three-team tournament however “Coach McDermott” deserves credit for bringing in just three new players and giving the domestic game a real boost by retaining half-back pairing Matt Walsh (Connecticut Wildcats) and Rich Henson (Philadelphia Fight).

USARL also tapped into other sports’ talent pools. Winger Taylor Howden is a new recruit from the US Sevens circuit, while explosive back Ryan Burroughs played gridiron in high school and local club rugby union before this impressive debut season in league.

“We’re always going to have players coming from other sports because they are always going to try the top level sports first,” US skipper Mark Offerdahl told No Helmets. “You’re talking 40, 50, 60 years off before someone says they want to be a rugby player.” With high profile rugby union growing in the States, league still needs to hitch itself to the growing awareness of rugby.

Meanwhile, Canada’s rapid rise should please the RLIF, given one of their goals is to ‘target two additional G20 nations for development’. Missing out on World Cup qualification need not hurt the Wolverines. They will come back stronger. Just ask the US, Italy, Lebanon or Wales.

Clubcall: AS Carcassonne

Berets off to the Canaries of Carcassonne, who have reason to be chirpy. They thrashed the inexperienced youngsters of Toulouse Broncos 58-14 on Saturday with three try hat-tricks to remain unbeaten after 10 rounds of the Elite. It helps that Toulouse, like Catalans, are fielding their reserve teams, Pia have folded and Villeneuve are on their knees, but, as Steve McNamara loves reminding us, you can only beat what’s put in front of you and ASC have certainly done that. And yet Carcassonne are not running away with it by any means.

Only two points separate the top four before a gap to newly promoted Albi in fifth. Someone useful is going to miss out on the top three play-off but it is unlikely to be Vinnie Anderson and the Canaries. Lezignan have sneaked above Limoux into second (despite only just scraping a win at bottom placed Villeneuve) and St Esteve-XIII Catalan are fourth. The top two meet this coming Sunday at Stade Albert Domec, which should be a cracker.

Goal-line drop-out

Here is an alternative Super League table for you to mull over: Leeds 92, Wigan 63, St Helens 52, Warrington 51, Hull FC 34, Hull KR 28, Castleford 26, Huddersfield 23, Salford 22, Wakefield 21, Widnes 20, Catalans 13.

It’s the number of Twitter followers each club has, in thousands, and while it’s not a scientific gauge of the size of each club, it does indicate the level of interest in them, and their investment in promoting themselves on social media. For example, in the last month alone, Saints and Warrington have gained around 5,000 followers while others have stagnated in the off-season. And after years of underachievement on the pitch, are Hull FC sliding back into the middling pack of Super League clubs rather than being among the big boys?

Outside of the top flight, Bradford show their size with over 21,000 followers while London Broncos – dismissed by some as an irrelevance these days - have over 14,000, reflecting the latent interest in the capital club. Leigh have about 13,000, Halifax nearly 9,000 and Featherstone around seven, all of which either put Catalans to shame or show that France has been slow to latch on to Twitter.

Fifth and last

Next time Mark Foster and his RFL colleagues are in a meeting with a potential commercial or broadcast partner, they can point to the 278,353 votes Kevin Sinfield received in the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year Awards last night. That suggests a quarter of a million people care enough about rugby league to put aside club loyalties – bearing in mind that the vast majority of us have seen our team beaten by Sinfield and his Leeds mates on many an occasion, often down to his astute game management or lethal goalkicking – to vote for a low-profile, humble, record-breaker. It was yet another fantastic show of togetherness by rugby league, something rarely seen in other sports.

Despite the treble, I am not convinced this was Sinfield’s greatest year performance-wise. I was at Huddersfield when Brian McDermott left him out of the Leeds 17 altogether. But it is certainly his annus mirabilis as a leader and an achiever as he brought his league career to a ludicrously perfect climax. Perhaps the Lifetime Achievement Award would have been even more fitting.

I did fear we would be reminded that he was actually a rugby union player when he went up to collect his runners-up trophy. I don’t think that was even mentioned, thankfully. And as for Lizzie Jones, words fail me.

Merry Christmas one and all. No Helmets will be back in the New Year.

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