So he offends one of the game's greats with his ignorance, mocks the trophy, makes sarcastic comments about being unable to attend one of the fixtures, almost messes up the draw completely, and then apologises to his listeners for having to do the draw at all.

Not bad for a few minutes work, I'd say.

Having listened to the recorded link, Richard Bacon seems keen, if a little unawares. The draw is missing some decent production values though, which makes it sounds amateurish.

Any one particular incident, such as this one, could happen to anyone from time to time. It was slapdash and people should be really annoyed, put a few heads together, make sure it doesn't happen again and move on....but....

We all know we have a huge media problem in this country with RL. The inclinination of the playing field is very much against us, but notwithstanding all that, we are absolutely useless at media and image management. We can't even begin to overcome the media bias with the people currently in charge. I'll invite ridicule and say it again...the other week, for a period of time, the first thing you saw on the world cup page was a big picture of Nigel Wood. Smokey seems to think it was unique to me ( maybe images of Nigel follow me around ) but nobody should be seeing that as the first image. Again, a trivial complaint in and of itself, I admit that, but its when you add up all the 100s of little thing that diminish our image ( televised games in front of empty stadia amongst the worst) and the lack of things that build it up, that you realise we don't help ourselves in the media. Save some money on the CEO and (have a scarecrow do it for a while), then pay double for a leading media officer.

Steve McNamara has just been on the Chris Evans show, which has 9.5 million listeners talking about the RLWC and the semi finals day at Wembley, getting in the fact that tickets start from £20. Straight away people were texting in to ask if that was correct. He is also on BBC London and TalkSport today, but the RFL won't get any credit for organising that on St George's Day.

Hull KR have just invited Richard Bacon to the Wigan game via it's twitter account. Amazingly Richard said "Sure, When is it though?" The guy is a plonker.

I think the RFL is simply a euphemism for fans' frustration. It will be the world cup team who organised this, not the RFL, and from all accounts it sounds like it was a great promotion and McNamara did the sport proud.

We need to get Evans to do the next round draw, at least you know, however much of an idiot he may have been, he's a perfectionist and wouldn't have done anything as cringeworthy as Bacon yesterday.

Who do you think ‘the world cup team’ is if not the RFL?

Perfectly happy to give them credit for it. I don't think they're very good when everything is taken as a whole, but that doesn't mean they do absolutely nothing.

What happened to your 3rd team of choice then, Tolouse? Roasted by the grand old duke of York. You are oh so quick to beam on about expected wins for Landan & Catalan but no mention of the flops.

the RLWC is a separate team to the main RFL team. I believe they are based in Media City.

Looking at their LinkedIn profiles they have a great range of experience in events management, sports marketing, PR and communications, and all have been recruited in the past couple of years.

Who work for the RFL. The general manager of the RLWC is Sally Bolton who is the general manager of the RLWC because she is the director of Projects and Planning at the RFL and has been since 2007. The Tournament director is Nigel Wood,

He should come to the Worky v Widnes game so he actually knows where Wokington, Workingham, what is is called again? actually is!

I spoke to one of the women working on the World Cup a couple of months back, and whilst they work away from Red Hall as you say Wood is the Tournament Director and Ralph Rimmer is in the office once a week or so.

Bloody hell that's a massive gig getting the Chris Evans show! Think Mr. Barwicks little black book may have had something to do with that.

So it looks as though BBC are screening one match (Hud v Lds) and SKY none.

Time to give the RFL a pat on the back for a change, well done.
He needs to walk down the corridor and give Richard Bacon a slap, or at least tell the bloke not to deride the game so much, next time he is involved.

[urlhttp://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/castleford-tigers/inside-rl-cup-draw-shambles-that-adds-to-unjust-whippet-image-of-game-1-5612284[/url

Good article, if Bacon does goes to Craven Park perhaps he'd better wear a baseball cap and shades cos he's going to get so much abuse it's untrue! Mind you he is a complete and utter pillock and deserves all he gets!



Hopefully the RFL will avoid having any connection with his show in future. Although I don't particularly like Chris Evans shows like his on R2, and possibly Simon Mayo's in the afternoon would be much better to target ( Steve MacNamara was on with Evans this week) to publicise / raise the profile of RL events.

Smokey, I am one of the Warrington reps on the RLWC2013 Fans Local Advisory Group. We regularly meet the RLWC2013 team and have been to their offices at Media City. I can assure you that whilst they are employed by the RFL, they are a quite separate team to that at Red Hall.

I know there have been some people employed by the RFL specifically to do things for the RLWC, aswell as some consultants/contractors like Mccan and fasttrack, but the decision making (not least the decisions to employ/contract to those people) and overall running of the RLWC comes from the RFL and the same people at the RFL who get the criticism normally. As I said before Sally Bolton who is the RLWC General Manager is also Director of planning and Projects at the RFL, Nigel Wood is tournament director and obviously Big Chief at Red Hall. They have also been the ones in the press talking about the RLWC.

Im not trying to say no-one else is involved they clearly are, or trying to do down the good job those in media city are doing. Just highlighting that when the RLWC is doing something good, it is the RFL doing something good, because we all know, should the RLWC fail it wont be those at media city who we blame, it will be the people who had the power.

So we've established that if it's good it's this mysterious RLWC team but if it's bad it's the RFL? Got it!

Indeed. I'm not trying to detach RLWC2013 from the RFL. The RFL deserve massive credit for recruiting such a big and experienced team AND for locating them at Media City - a stones throw from the BBC and ITV. But people should realise that the people currently working hard organising and promoting the tournament are people working specifically on the RLWC and not just doing it on top of their day job. I am hopeful the tournament will be a big success and many of the lessons learned can be applied to the rest of RL. Plus, hopefully the profile of RL will be raised further helping the sport. Ticket sales so far have shown success at attracting people from outside RL to buy tickets - sadly the bigger challenge will be persuading the typical, over-critical RL fan to get on board.

Great article in the Guardian about competition manager Sally Bolton. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/ap ... lly-bolton

Great article in the Guardian about competition manager Sally Bolton. www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/ap ... lly-bolton