WHAT makes great sport?

It is a question I have asked myself many times. Athleticism of course; skill, craft and courage for sure; but also, fundamentally, well-matched competitors going at it hard, each with a fair chance of success, to win meaningful prizes. When you add fully engaged, enthusiastic and vociferous supporters and fans into the mix, you have the perfect recipe, for great sporting entertainment.

Whether it is the dip for the line, the photo finish, the knock-out punch in round 15 or the impossible putt off the green to win the Ryder Cup, nothing but nothing delivers like sport.

Sport at its best is real, live, unfolding drama.

As a good friend once memorably said to me “it doesn’t matter how many times I watch the film Titanic, I always know the ship is gonna sink.” Well not with sport it’s not; uncertainty of outcome is the very essence of great sport and that is why it is so compelling. For all those reasons, live sports rights around the world have grown exponentially for the last three decades.

When you set that test of great sport, against current rugby league, you’ll find out that what we have got is top drawer.

I would argue our home game against York ticked those boxes, and now is the right time to congratulate them for their success.

We hope and expect to renew our friendly rivalry next season.

Of course the division that has delivered top quality drama, by the bucket load is the middle 8s. So what do we do in rugby league?

Entirely predictably, we decide to kill it off. It would be bizarre and amazing if it wasn’t so tragic and sad.

That debate has been had and well, even at 51 years old you are never too old to learn…..this time I’ve learnt that it is not true, turkeys do vote for Christmas.

The spectacular success that appears to be the last qualifying 8s now reaches it last regular round with only one thing actually certain; that Halifax and Widnes will be in the Championship.

And if London and Toronto can win this week, then Hull KR dynamo Neil ‘Hudgo’ Hudgell, will be chewing his nails off sweating on beating Widnes on Sunday afternoon.

Appears like the definition of well-matched teams going hard at it for meaningful prizes….and that, of course, is before the almost unwatchable drama of the million pound game.

That is why those clever chaps at Sky have chosen to broadcast three of the four games this weekend.

Never mind, the Super League chairmen and Mr Elstone must think those loopy fixtures that some clubs have voted in to replace the 8s must have stellar box office appeal.

I can hear the protests of over exposure of the same clubs screaming out of the TVs next year and off the letters, pages and noticeboards.

It looks likely that Toulouse will miss out on promotion but I think there will be two overseas clubs in Super League next season.

And it could quite easily be three soon - if not next season, then it might be the year after, or the year after that.

Toronto and Toulouse are big, big cities with large catchment areas and strong local economies to deliver the corporate dollar.

In the long run it is likely, I may even say inevitable, that clubs with that kind of earning power, will come to the surface.

Can you see townships like Widnes or Featherstone having the same spending power? It will be interesting to see how the new Super League executive make sense of this when the next television negotiation actually takes place.

I have no doubt these issues will occupy the mind space of those charged with leading the game.

The obvious answer is, of course, that our elite competition should have gone to 14 clubs, as I set out some weeks ago.

Fourteen clubs, including some expansion clubs that we include on different terms, where they couldn’t suffer relegation but they also had to earn their own money. The solution was fair, logical and progressive, which true rugby league supporters could see when they voted it the most preferred solution to the recent self-inflicted format crisis.

The problem was that to deliver such a progressive and well thought out solution, needed a visionary, independent RFL Board with a positive view as to how to go forward.

The sport’s two new chief executives, Ralph Rimmer and Robert Elstone, shared a platform on Sky Sports last week.

All very amicable and agreeable, in fact such was the total agreement and unity on display I was left wondering why we needed two of them. It was, in the main, a polished and accomplished show of unity, with no disharmony, disagreement or controversy.

The only tiny slip came when Elstone attempted to explain the loop fixtures while keeping his face straight, with a 100-word response, which in reality should simply have been “these are unnecessary artificially contrived duplicate fixtures designed for no other purpose that extracting more income from supporters”.

There was then a very worrying, tap room analysis that the model to follow was the NRL, when virtually everyone in the Southern Hemisphere, me included, see that the NRL is riddled with over refereeing, controversies and one-dimensional styles of play based upon wrestle and straight hard hit ups. It is a fact that everyone I speak to back in New Zealand prefers, and I do mean prefers, to watch UK Rugby League because it is a little more spontaneous with individual flair.

Don’t get me wrong big events like Origin when played well are excellent, although not as good as it was, but the week in week out grind is, with a few remarkable and noteworthy exceptions, patently less attractive on the eye than the stuff we serve up here. In my view it would be a terrible betrayal of the sport in this country if we simply and slavishly follow the NRL, warts and all.

Back to the business at hand, where we welcome Oldham to Odsal Stadium for a Sunday afternoon 3pm kick off, for the second time this year.

Of course in the nicest possible sense of the word we wish they weren’t here, indeed we wish we weren’t here, but you tend to get what you deserve in this sport and we came second because we deserved to; simple as that.

We recently played at Oldham in a very strange game, but we saw enough in both our league games to know that the Roughyeds have enough discipline and toughness to trouble anyone.

Former Bulls player Scott Naylor has done wonders with the scant resources at his disposal, year after year producing competitive teams.

This is sudden death and there will be no second chances.

I appeal to all Bradford Bulls supporters, past and present to turn out and give the boys the vocal encouragement that might just make the difference. Thank you so much for your continued support.

Welcome to the ‘seat of your pants’ drama, that is sudden death rugby league.