Eddie Hearn is not a rugby league man, he is one of those "I get results, now get out of my way and let me do what is necessary" guys. Which means he will probably not be too bothered by RL people telling him that he's messing with "tradition".



Cricket has been revolutionised by 20/20 which appeals to a different audience and now that is threatening to be bigger than the traditional Test game it has got the cricket establishment panicking about whether their game has been hijacked, but maybe RL is ripe for this.



Could it be time to re-think the old talk of mergers and consolidation (eg Warrington/Widnes as the Mersey Wolves)?

Rule changes to make the game appeal to a new audience? Reduce the tackle count to stop 5 drives and a kick - how about switch to 3 tackles then a handover to encourage teams to throw the ball around and take risks? Introduce a powerplay period of the game where points count double, so if you're 30-12 down going in to the final 20 minutes and it's powerplay time, you're still in the game as one converted score makes it 30-24 and just a try off the lead? Introduce lineouts to make the game more familiar to an RU audience? Look to embrace technology by fitting up the players with cams and mics (like the NFL) and allow fans to watch the games from their phones with an app that allows them to switch the viewpoint of whichever player they choose?



RL could look very different in 5 years and there will always be those who resist it and end up saying the old days were better but Eddie Hearn will focus on where the opportunities to bring in new fans and new sponsors are rather than being beholden to those who want to go back to winter rugby and listen to Ray French.

Simples then. Eddie Hearn or Eddie Waring.

As long as its not eddie Hemmings i don't care

Lineouts, 3 drives & a kick ? Maybe it would be better all round to go cap in hand to Twickers & ask to be let back in.

As for mergers, i don't think that would appeal to us parochially minded fans who are still stuck in 19th century local rivalry mode. I think it would be an idea to get a league going with south of England teams,similar skill sets & place names familiar to the South of Watford set.

I watched some of the Saracens /Quins game on Channel 5 yesterday afternoon ,good game of end to end club rugby & a good crowd at the London Stadium. There are obviously plenty of rugby fans in the country but the Twickers version is winning hands down.

This will be the challenge for Eddie Hearn but also the opportunity, he doesn't have the baggage of having to appeal to a constituency of parochially minded fans, he will develop a vision of where the game can be in the future. He won't be thinking wistfully about Bradford Northern v Featherstone Rovers.



The NRL made tough decisions in 1999, which meant old clubs like North Sydney Bears, Balmain Tigers, Illawarra Steelers disappeared but the NRL has gone from strength to strength since then. Same with Welsh RU which had a painful reform in 2003 to create the merged 'regions' and got rid of old clubs like Bridgend, Pontypridd and Newport - since then the Welsh national side has been much more competitive after a period in the doldrums.



With Toronto on the way up and the experiment of taking an SL fixture to Australia the seeds of change are in the air but it might be that if you want to go expansionary you can't fill the league with clubs from Lancashire and Yorkshire, there will need to be compromise. Leeds, Wigan and St Helens have enough size and history to be standalone but the others you might need to merge: Mersey (Warrington/Widnes); Calderdale (Wakefield/Cas/Hudds), Humberside (Hull/Hull KR), then Catalans, Toronto, bring back some form of London team and establish another franchise eg Coventry or Leicester. To follow the Aussie model the merged clubs could split their home fixtures around their component clubs' grounds, ie Mersey Wolves play home games at the HJ and Halton stadium plus some on the road fixtures.

You are Maurice Lynsey and I claim my five pounds.

I will stop watching if we ever had to merger.

So would thousands from both sides

Home games at HMP Halton? No thanks!

This was all said about Wests Tigers or St George-Illawarra Dragons, nobody would watch the joint venture and so on. There were (and still are) die hards on internet forums who say they are boycotting the clubs but both those teams have won Grand Finals and get support, and now its nearly 20 years on a whole generation of new fans have grown up with the new club identities.



The point of reform is to attract a new audience not to just please the older fans, for how many years have we been complaining that the RFL doesn't know how to look outside its own back yard.

Aussie clubs dont tend to own grounds like we do over here so the ability to own several and move games about is cost prohibitive.

A more natural merger would be St Helens and Widnes. Both align themselves to a scouser flag and could play under a name like the Woolybacks or something a bit less controversial.

Widnes merge with Saints ! You jest,Sir.

With the amount of diving we are seeing from some Saints players perhaps they should merge with a football club.