RICHARD de la RIVIERE, the author of ’50 Wigan Legends’, expresses his frustration with clubs refusing to all their players to speak to the media.
Last week I watched the first two Tests from the 2003 men’s Ashes series on YouTube, and now I can’t wait for the men’s and women’s versions to be contested next year.
The Ashes was the pinnacle of the sport for decades, and it’s fantastic that it’s coming back. Can the men win their first series since the Hull KR genius Roger Millward famously won us the deciding Test in 1970? Can the women replicate the success of the 1996 Lionesses?
Even if England are whitewashed in both series, it’ll give us an all-too-rare glimpse of the brilliant Kangaroos and Jillaroos, so buy your tickets as soon as you can, don’t get too wrapped up in the results, and just enjoy what these magicians from 12,000 miles away serve up.
We still don’t know which Hemisphere will host the women’s Ashes, but I’m excited to read about potential stadia for the men’s like Everton, Spurs and Newcastle.
But I want to share with you my experiences as a journalist this season, and why they lead me to conclude that, as a matter of urgency, Rugby League must change its relationship with the media if we’re going to fill any decent-sized ground.
Media colleagues tell me they are treated very poorly by some clubs. We don’t get it nearly as bad as referees, but unlike refs, we can put Rugby League in front of tens of thousands of new eyeballs. We can produce content that gets shared into timelines galore. We can help create personalities and brands. In other words, we can do the RFL’s and the clubs’ marketing at no cost to them.
Sadly, the bigger Rugby League clubs fail to see that these days, although I want to make it clear at this point that I don’t blame media managers for this because you have to assume they’re doing their jobs how they’re told to do them.
Clubs were great with journalists when I started doing this in 2005. Then in 2010, Bradford and the Hull clubs were the first to forbid journalists from contacting players without going through them first.
Having spoken to several long-serving journalists recently, there’s a consensus that that’s when the tide began to turn. It became common for interview requests to be turned down, and we’ve now had a whole generation of players who have had significantly fewer media commitments than their predecessors – which goes hand in hand with the ever-decreasing profile of the sport.
Even Sky told me last year they struggle to get interviews with the players they want and they’ve been bankrolling the game for decades.
Twenty years ago, a typical Super League squad might do 100 media interviews between them in a year. That number might now be as low as 15. Who is this benefitting exactly? You might say the players, but those with coaching, media or business aspirations would benefit from the experience.
Earlier this year, I set up Womensrl.com to help promote the female game, which I love watching, and I’ve been dealing with club media managers for the first time in over a decade.
Have things improved? Of course they haven’t!
The simple reality is that among the sport’s glamour clubs, players are very difficult to access, although I want to credit to back-to-back champions York Valkyrie who have been great with me.
Wigan and Leeds are comfortably the worst. They have this baffling superiority complex that would make you think their men and women are playing in front of full houses every week.
Wigan have assembled one of the most successful men’s teams our code has ever seen, yet on average they play in front of more than 10,000 empty seats at home, which is really poor. Where’s the ambition to get average crowds over 20,000?
These clubs may think they’re the Manchester United of our sport, but, commercially speaking, they’re nearer Carlisle United.
Requests for interviews – basically an offer of free publicity – are treated like you’re asking for an elephant’s ear on a bun.
When Wigan re-signed Georgia Wilson from Australia – one of the biggest stories of the year – it took them six weeks to arrange the interview I’d requested.
Remember the days of big signings from rugby union? The first thing the buying club did was parade their new star in front of the media to ensure a huge crowd for their debut. No interview request would be turned down.
Yet if Widnes signed the next Jonathan Davies tomorrow, and if they followed this ridiculous approach, they’d turn down or delay all media requests in order to “protect” him and only get him to do a short piece for the club website.
During those six weeks of fobbing me off, Wigan told me, “You’re the sort of journalist that would get a player to say something and print it without coming to us first.” Putting the rudeness and hostility to one side, this is completely untrue.
Having interviewed around 100 past or present Wigan players since 2005 with no problems whatsoever, I asked for examples.
The only one they could cite was my interview with Gemma Walsh, the captain of their WSL Grand Final-winning team in 2018.
The interview featured in my book, ’50 Wigan Legends in their Own Words’, which League Publications Ltd published a year ago.
In what I still think was a brilliant interview, Walsh told me that Wigan had supported the women’s side in 2018, but not so much in 2019, after which she left. The team then went into a decline until awakening somewhat this year.
Walsh didn’t criticise any individual and spoke wholeheartedly of her love for the club. Indeed, if every female in Wigan were to read that interview, there would be a huge surge in women and girls wanting to play and watch Rugby League in the borough.
The article didn’t come anywhere near meeting the threshold of having to contact the club prior to publication.
Interestingly, another ex-Wigan player once made much harsher criticisms in his autobiography of the state of the club towards the end of his playing days – and he’s now the chief executive!
So, what’s the difference?
That chapter with Walsh landed me on the naughty step with the Warriors, whom I’d always had a great relationship with, and I’m yet to be allowed off it.
I was told players and coaches would have to be “briefed” before they were allowed to talk to me. I’m guessing that means they’re told – wrongly – that I’m a troublemaker. Yet, genuinely, all I ever wanted to do was help them promote their women’s team, which I have showered with compliments all season.
At least Wigan eventually let me interview Wilson. That’s one player more than Leeds have allowed me to speak to. I made two requests to the Rhinos to speak to players – both internationals – but they didn’t happen despite one of the players, who has such a fascinating life story, telling me she wanted to do it.
Like Wigan, the Leeds women play in front of sparse crowds, so why are they turning down free publicity? I’ve also interviewed the best part of a hundred Leeds players down the years without a single problem. If I’m on their naughty step too, then I haven’t a clue why.
Compare and contrast to the approach of the great Peter Deakin, the finest media and marketing guru this sport has ever had, who, in the space of 12 to 18 months in the mid-1990s, nearly trebled Bradford’s crowds – and that was before they started winning trophies.
Deakin would encourage journalists to interview his players. He’d tell them which ones had the interesting stories and what to ask them.
After the 1997 Challenge Cup final, he even persuaded the editor of this newspaper to change its front page, and when he realised he was right, Martyn Sadler was happy to do so. It helped attract a bumper crowd at their next game.
Deakin knew that increased media coverage and rising crowds are inextricably linked, but, sadly, no one has since come close to replicating his success. What we are left with is a game-wide acceptance of mediocre crowds and poor media coverage.
If Peter was alive today and working in Women’s Rugby League, he’d have been delighted to see me come along, and he’d have set up all the player interviews I wanted. He’d persuade clubs to give big stories to journalists to maximise their effect, and he’d have shaken his head at the ridiculous idea of keeping everything in house.
Leeds and Wigan, as well as Saints, have carried the sport in the modern era. I know that. They produce the most players. They have the most fans. They win all the men’s trophies. But the bigger picture is this.
They have most of the England men’s and women’s players. If they and other top clubs don’t bring down the walls they’ve built around the players then you, dear reader, will be one of about 15,000 spectators sitting in a huge Premier League stadium, watching the 2025 men’s Ashes kick off, and wondering where it all went wrong.
Rugby League needs a new Peter Deakin just as much as it needs another Roger Millward, but it’s miles off finding one.
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