Dave Craven: ‘Failure to communicate’ only makes the sport less attractive

More specifically, the sampling at the start of the hit of a famous quote from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.

You know the one. Uttered by the evil and brutal captain of the work camp so intent on making life miserable for Paul Newman’s eponymous chain gang prisoner: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate…”

As civil war breaks out in the domestic game here, after six ‘rebel’ clubs walked out of the latest Super League meeting to restructure the competition, it is hard not likening the utter pointlessness of it all to the harsh regime depicted in that film.

And a blindingly obvious failure to communicate in any way.

Of course, on the eve of a World Cup, this should be a column excitedly looking forward to the enticing prospect of a tournament which brings the majority of the globe’s finest rugby players to these shores over the next five weeks.

Yet, as so often seems to be the case, rugby league manages to shoot itself in the foot and darken the whole vista with puerile bickering. Few protagonists, if any, come out of the sorry saga with any credit whether that be disgruntled Wigan Warriors chairman Ian Lenaghan and his five cohorts who have derailed the Policy Review, or the RFL whose inability to secure a Super League sponsor, among other things, has caused such rancour.

Wigan, Huddersfield Giants, Warrington Wolves, Hull FC, Hull KR and Catalan all walked out in an organised move to prevent a vote being taken on a reduction from 14 clubs to 12 and the likely make-up of Super League in 2015.

It came only a fortnight after an extraordinary general meeting of the RFL council was bullied into postponement after Lenaghan’s ‘call to arms’ forced a re-think on the governing body’s re-organisation plans just as everyone thought they were going to be rubber-stamped.

His stance is that any debate on change – the RFL’s preferred proposal is of a 12-team Super League and a 12-team Championship which after 23 rounds split into three qualifying play-off groups, each comprising eight clubs – should only take place alongside a review of the competition’s commercial management and governance.

That is understandable. Questions have to be asked about how Super League has not attracted any title sponsor money for two years running and Lenaghan’s crew certainly seem to be saying they have no confidence in the current set-up.

Leeds Rhinos’ Gary Hetherington hit back claiming the ‘rebels’ were ‘putting a gun to the head of the sport’ which, though that might be true, only serves to add more fuel to a fire that is threatening to burn everything down,

Who, in their right mind, would want to sign up and sponsor a competition that airs its dirty linen in such a public manner?

At the heart of the matter is the way in which television funds will be divided up when/if promotion and relegation returns.

There is clearly still debate to be had there.

But why do it now? Lenaghan and the rest have known about the RFL’s proposals for months yet only managed to show such a distaste for it right at the death – and just before a World Cup kicks off in the UK.

They have had ample chance beforehand to raise concerns but, more worrying, RFL chairman Brian Barwick said in a statement barely two weeks ago that all parties involved are “unanimous in their belief the key focus for rugby league at this moment is staging a successful Rugby League World Cup 2013 and this should be the focus of the sport.”

Well, the guns have not been silenced. Indeed, Barwick was swift to comment again on the rebels’ latest move and so it rumbles on.

In that aforementioned cinematic classic things did not get any better for Luke. Super League is heading the same way unless these hostilities cease now.