Watched Lebanon v Ireland earlier, result as expected but a scrappy affair.

The ball steal rule used in this tournament is total BS.

Everyone keeps dissing the attendances- but the tournament is still on track to beat the overall attendance of the 2017 World Cup held in the Southern Hemisphere where rugby league is NOT a minority sport!

6000 at Leigh for Lebanon v Ireland is pretty good....more that turned out for NZ last week in Warrington

2013 should be the comparison, international RL isn't the same draw in Australia as it is here, although I think they double counted the semi-final attendance in 2013 as it was a double header.

Ireland really poor discipline in that game, so stupid - gave the game away when it could have been a contest.

The ball steal rule is stupid - why do we always let the Aussie impose their rules on International RL. Get 3 in a tackle, One works both hands round the ball, the other s drop off and the odds are in the defenders favour every time. It looked like Ireland had never heard of the rule before that game!

Re Attendences: The Ireland/Wales/Scotland games should have been shown in their respective countries - great opportunity to spread awareness lost.

However, the marker will be when we come out of group stages and into the QF, SF and Final. A good England performance and crowds in these will be where the tournament should be judged. Does anyone even know (or more importantly care about) the attendance of the minnow nations Union WC games in the opening rounds ?

Don't like that different ball steel ruling at all, don't know if the refs are shouting tackle complete but some are border line infringements as though the player relaxes to play the ball and the defender just steals the ball.

The nrl rules have got ridiculous

If the average RL struggles to keep up with the rules what chance has a newbie got ?

The challenge rule is stupid doesn't belong in rugby

And the 2 point drop goal is just ridiculous

Hate the "try no try" aswell

So many pointless things added to this great game

So far I think all comparible fixtures are down on 2013 and as the 2013 final sold out and the Semi got more than the Emirates capacity, they are now reliant on the Quarters bringing in the crowds to try and beat the previous total. They will no doubt use the Womens and Wheelchair numbers to proclaim 'biggest WC ever' though.

Though to be fair the 2013 format produced some bigger games in the group, for example England playing Australia.

The 2013 semi was a double header though, so if they sell more at Emirates and elland road than the 63k? At Wembley in 2013 then that'll help with the attendance figures

I think they already sold more tickets than the 2013 edition, but there are more games to do so, and all men's games are singular events.

The next aim the organisers have is to outsell the Women's Euros, which had 500 odd thousand tickets sold.

I'm not sure this is the case. Unfortunately I no longer feel able to rely on anything Jon Dutton says.

I feel sorry for him, this tournament definitely isn't going as he planned. But as a Rugby League man he should have known that the prices for some of the tickets were ridiculous - and whilst they may say that for most games lowest price categories remain unsold those are for poorer parts of grounds which is a detraction in itself.

The narrative that this is an expensive tournament with half empty stadia has been set now. It will definitely come round a bit in the knock out stages but only an England win is likely to make anyone think it has been a huge success.

I will say that the appalling functionality of the ticketing website simply compounds things. This again is something I simply can't understand him and his team allowing to happen. They didn't even need to reinvent the wheel, there must be a load of off the shelf solutions to this.

I agree the ticket selling website is a s*** show, but if the tickets do sell at the numbers he hopes, then the pricing is justified, and will make an even bigger profit than those who think the tickets should be cheaper would have if they had been in charge!

Being able to pick your seats would have been a nice function to have, or telling you what row you're in before you buy them. You'd be miffed if you paid £70 for a game to be on the front row

A stand for unreserved seats would have been good too, some like to just turn up and sit with friends last minute.

Anyway, good effort from Wales. Tonga are either deliberately taking it slow or they just arent as good as 2017.

Teeside Live reporting that Middlesbrough's mayor spent 250k on the World Cup bid and sadly sales arent going well.

Would love to see a breakdown of what that has been spent on. If the World Cup team have managed to get a huge hosting fee then it makes sense why they seem quite blase about low sales as the money is already in the bank. But quite shocking what tax payer money is being spent on and it clearly isnt being spent on effective marketing by anyone!

Edit: "As part of the £250,000 bid, £75,000 will be spent on community engagement projects and advertising"

If anyone on Teeside can spot 75k's worth of advertising please let us know

I thought that was exactly the idea, you put the games in the cities that bid the highest (in exchange for a healthy cut of the ticket sales) and then they are heavily incentivised to market the game for you.

The higher the crowd, the happier everyone involved can be.

[code[/code

Bit disappointing that ticket sales aren't going well, there was a lot of £25 tickets available in a lot of the ground, it's only an hour or so from Leeds too, so not too far from the heartlands...has the potential to be a good game too

Lived there for a brief time when Johnny Wilkinson was in his prime playing not far up the road and even then both codes of Rugby were completely off the radar in Boro, it was almost impossible to get SL on in a pub. Its a shame because the stadium is brilliant.

If I was a Teesside taxpayer id be asking serious questions where that cash has gone, they dont seem to have done much with the Captain Cook angle either which was the whole point of giving them a Cook Islands game.

In the Nineties BBC paid Scottish Rugby Union 37 Million to show that code -now that was a waste of tax payers money.

They aren't as good as 2017 they had Michael Jennings and Andrew fifita

Also no jason taumololo yet but he been back will help them

Ireland are done, but JWH should definitely cop a few games

And Hicks has been giving a red all season for that. Have the rules changed?

Good crowd and atmosphere at headingley tonight , what the kiwis deserve. Far better than the Warrington turnout

Yes 14k a good crowd. Its a shame Leeds cant easily improve the reamining open terrace as with a decent stand there it could be the main stadium for international RL.

Well I've just bought tickets for the potential Aus vs NZ game at Elland Road, plus 2 tickets for the Final. Think the semis were around £55 each and the one's for the final for £110 each.

This isn't a complaint at ticket prices! I'm really happy to see that all the cheaper tickets for the Semi have gone and the majority for the final have gone now! Should be two awesome games there!

What are the ticket sales for England's QF? And England's potential semi at Emerites?