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Women's Ashes

A number of sources have described the 2025 England tour to Australia as containing the first women's ashes test series. But there were GB vs Australia test series in the 1990s, though any sources I can find describing them as "Ashes" test series look to be done so retrospectively. What are people's thoughts about including these on The Ashes (rugby league).

My opinion is a brief mention in prose but not to include in the stats unless any sources from the time can be found which describes them as Ashes matches. Mn1548 (talk) 13:40, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Any GB/England v Australia series in any sport gets labelled "the Ashes" either at the time or later. I think that what needs to be looked at here is the status of the games in the 90s and under whose auspices they were organised. The Australian Women's Rugby League didn't become part of the Australian Rugby League Commission until 1998 so the 1996 GB Tour wouldn't be seen as an ARLC sanctioned event. Similarly the Women's Amateur Rugby League Association didn't become part of the RFL until much later, so the 1996 wasn't a RFL sanctioned event either. On that basis it can be seen why the 2025 tour is being touted as the "first" Ashes tour by the RFL and ARLC.

So, should we exclude history? Obviously no, but we need to make sure we explain it correctly. I think, that with sourcing, we can say GB have met Australia previously but it isn't until 2025 that the matches have the status of IRL Recognised Senior International Matches (assuming they do). Nthep (talk) 15:02, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

It is difficult finding any contemporary sources for the matches – too old for websites (live or archived versions) and too recent for digitised newspaper archives that don’t have paywalls. However, are there sources for the early men’s games being known as the ashes? I could find no references to it being called this in the Australian newspapers (Trove) until 1920, so it may be that these have also been named retrospectively.

There are enough sources now referring to the 1996 tour as "the ashes" to support including something about it in the article, notably from both the RFL [1] and NRL [2] in their reports on the hall of fame recognition. The match details are covered in the GB Women's team article, so a brief summary with link to that article seems reasonable. EdwardUK (talk) 18:11, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I would definitely agree that a mention is needed. Statistical unification wouldn't appply anyway as one was England other was GB, and I don't think it should be included in a table unless there is adequate sourcing (though EdwardsUK's point on the retrospectiveness of the early men's games is an interesting one, but untimely a separate issue). Nthep's point on them not being official teams though is probably main reason to keep it out the table.

This brings me on to a separate point: Does the article on the Ashes needed splitting, as I'd imagine a article that is talking about four different test series (GB v AUS men and women, and ENG v AUS men and women) could get quite confusing, and there is already three infoboxs in the lead. Perhaps two separate men's and women's articles would be better (obviously providing the sourcing is their for GNG). Mn1548 (talk) 19:38, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

So, I've been talking to the record keepers club who manage stats on behalf of IRL, and the 1996 tour games are counted as first class matches, so there has been a women's Ashes series between GB and Aus. The RFL even celebrate it [3]. That makes all talk of next year's tour being the "first" having the meaning of England v Aus. Interestingly the men's series will be the first Ashes series played by England as England, rather than England being used as shorthand for Great Britain.

I think there's material and source to split into three articles; GB v Aus (men), Eng v Aus (men) and Ashes (women). I'm not sure we have enough sourcing as EdwardUK points out to support GB v Aus (women) as a stand alone article at the moment. Nthep (talk) 20:37, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd agree. Any thoughts on article titles?

• The Men's Rugby League Ashes (original series)
• The Men's Rugby League Ashes (modern series)
• The Women's Rugby League Ashes

Would these three work? Mn1548 (talk) 13:04, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Lower case all three:

• Men's rugby league Ashes (original series), or could use the date range
• Men's rugby league Ashes (modern series)
• Women's rugby league Ashes

Nthep (talk) 20:28, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

From articles that I have copied from text only newspaper articles via Newsbank or ProQuest there are two contemporary references to Ashes.

Gym fixes it for Natalie's Ashes tour / May 22, 2002 / West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire Counties Publications (England)

Which opens with "Natalie Parsons will be grateful for the hundreds of hours she spent in the gymnasium when she takes her place in the Great Britain women's rugby league team this summer. The 17-year-old from Low Moor admits she was surprised to be chosen for the Ashes squad to tour Australia."

Parsons is predicting big things from GB / October 7, 2003 / West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire Counties Publications (England)

Which includes "Great Britain, who awarded ten new caps, reflecting a period of major change since last year's Ashes Tour, started with a 28-12 victory over Samoa in Pool C."

So there is a contributing journalist (or two) that attribute the label Ashes to the women's matches, similar to how Origin was attributed by multiple journos to women's interstate matches which where selected on a residential basis at the time. That is, in the rare instances, where there was some coverage.

On the other hand, the 2nd and 3rd Test reports for 2002 in the Rugby League Express and a one pager in the Rugby League Weekly of which I have a photo copy of, do not mention the Ashes. Team lists for the same Tests (2nd and 3rd of 2002) appear in the Big League but these also do not use Ashes in the heading. As an indicator of how inconsistent reporting was in Australia at the time, the results were not given in the Big League

There is a series of videos on YouTube posted by the Women in Rugby League project that interview players. Most of these were done in 2022 and were taking about the players' international experiences. The Ashes may have been mentioned in some of those, but having listed to all of them, I can't recall which ones. More recent interviews focus on local club experiences.

Yours in Rugby League,

John Moriarty

Cronulla, NSW Nhoj1898 (talk) 23:42, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Squad tables - redux

I thought we'd got somewhere on this last year (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rugby league/Archive 27#Squad tables) but we're back to square one with 2024 Rugby League Pacific Championships squads. I think we need to formalise a project style guide for these. Nthep (talk) 21:17, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, still way too much going on compared to the old style RLWC squad lists or even an NRL team article squad list. Definitely think the "Other Reps" column needs to be the first to go, not exactly relevant enough to be shown in full per player in my opinion and the league icon format is useless at identifying, say, Mitchell Moses's teams. If it remains I think as this is a squad list for an international tournament it should only list other countries they've represented, not PM's 13 or all-stars games, and a simple country name would suffice.

I would also trim club games, not sure how its relevant. Ambivalent on player age and total games for country, could be useful but also somewhat unnecessary extra detail. I don't mind the debut year though. Jersey number column could also cause issues if players are chopped and changed, that seems better suited to smaller lists for the actual games on the main article. I feel like this style isn't terrible or anything but it could benefit from a bit more brevity. I think we should go something like:

CAP NUMBER (including * for debutantes) | NAME | POSITION (maybe use shorthand ie SR) | NRL/SL CLUB | TOURNAMENT STATS

e.g.

1. 123* | Mitchell Barnett | SR, LK | New Zealand Warriors | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4

Age and total national stats (including debut year) could be optional inclusions.

Thoughts? PhinsUp23 (talk) 09:07, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Jersey number is pointless unless squad numbers have been allocated, but having the column but leaving it empty is fine. Cap number? Do you mean heritage number? Age and total stats, I'd leave out - that's what individual articles are for. There might be reason to mention age outside the table and in the text e.g. someone is the youngest or oldest selected but that's about it. Everything else I agree with you. The only thing I'd add is to keep the colour scheme basic and not go for using national colours in the tables. Partly aesthetic, partly accessibility. Nthep (talk) 09:59, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Not sure 100% what heritage number means, but it probably means the same as cap. James Roby's number was #678, does that mean he was the 678th person to play for England? If so that's the same as a cap number. Again optional things, player name is probably enough, but I think cap number would be better than jersey number if either are to be included. Jersey numbers seems like they could cause a real headache if we get outside backs/forwards swapping sides and thus numbers, or if players are shuffled around due to injury. Good for a game team list but not for a tournament squad list. PhinsUp23 (talk) 10:09, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Cap number/heritage number, we're talking the same thing:-) Another Aussie/UK terminological difference, I just wasn't sure if you meant 678th to appear for their country or in this game xx won their 678th cap. Not sure where I stand on including these, as previous discussions regarding cap/heritage numbers have been to omit them from player articles, certainly at club level and I don't recall seeing much mention of them at international level. If we have list articles on List of players who have represented XXX then do we need them in these tables?

Debutante, I think can be dealt with in text, not table.

Having shirt numbers make sense to me, because I'm in the UK where squad numbering is universal in the sport, at least at professional level, but in the Pacific I guess it's still positional numbering that is predominant. I know it was quite an issue for Australia at the last World Cup, having to have squad numbers. All I'm suggesting is that, for consistency, we include the column in tables where squad numbering is the case for some or all of the teams. If one or more teams are using positional numbers then it can just be left blank for those teams (and not the, imo, ludicrously footnoted, "these are the numbers worn in the last game of the series" I've seen previously). Obviously if no team is using squad numbers then omit the column. Nthep (talk) 10:57, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I have seen cap numbers in, say, List of North Queensland Cowboys players, but not something like this, I just thought it could be an alternative since I'm not familiar with British squad numbering. Not having numbers at all is probably the best option for stuff like the pacific championships, lest we end up with something like:

3, 4 | Tom Trbojevic

4, 3 | Bradman Best

7 | Mitchell Moses

7, 14, 18 | Ben Hunt

But yeah, if you blokes use consistent player numbering no harm in having it as a column in some kind of standard international template that we can just drop when not relevant down here, so long as we can make sure all the Aussie editors know not to put positional jersey numbers in it or something.

I don't think there's any harm in simply including an asterisk after a debutante's name, I see this from time to time as well. PhinsUp23 (talk) 11:31, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Nthep (talk) 12:24, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, I messaged @Nhoj1898: (pinging to invite to the conversation) who uploaded the tables and the reply can be viewed on his talk page.

In my opinion a national squad table for any competition should be Squad Number | Player | Appearances (for national team at time of selection) | Tries (for national team at time of selection) | Points (for national team at time of selection) | Club (at time of selection)

Also open to Age (at time of selection) and further addition information on points ie conversions, penalties, and drop goals. Mn1548 (talk) 13:28, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for inviting me into this conversation.

Reading the comments from the four of you there is some variation in your opinions on what should or should not be included. This is understandable, as it is subjective.

Already for the 2024 squads page there have been over 200 views on the first two days. Of the independent views, how do we know whether they like what I have presented or share your option that less is better. As the innovator in this instance, I could make a sweeping but not unreasonable generalisation that other than those that comment here, or on the page's talk tab, there are over 150 readers who like the way and the amount of information that is presented.

Given the variation in opinion by the five of us, perhaps I should go through each field and explain my rationale for its inclusion.

1. J# - Jersey number - Flexible as to whether it is a tournament or game day jersey. I use two columns for this in my spreadsheet, one for the jersey and one for the order, displaying the former. If jerseys change during the tournament, the most recent jersey is used, with a note above the table. To me, its Optional.
2. Player - Obviously mandatory. Here I have used plain text where an individual Wiki page does not exist, because most of the women and wheelchair players have not yet had a page individual page created for them. To me, it looks better to use black rather than red text in such circumstances.
3. Age - I use a function to calculate current age where the date of birth is known. So the age is as at the last update. If a player has a birthday during the tournament, age will advance at the next update. I've used Age rather than DOB, or both, for brevity. To me, Worthy of inclusion as age alone.
4. Position(s) - Here I only use two positions where a player has played about 20% or more of their games in two positions. The full name appears because the rlp template is used. I would be okay with using only the abbreviations as @PhinsUp23 suggests, even though it requires longer text to link to the position than rlp. Mandatory but flexible on short (SR) or longhand (Second Row).
5. Tournament - M, T, G, F, P - Included as it has relevance during and after the competition. I'm divided as to the worthiness of including goals and field goals, as usually its only one or two players that kick them. I opted to include for completeness, and greying the zeros so that the positive numbers are more easily seen.
   1. Matches - Mandatory
   2. Tries - Mandatory
   3. Goals - Worthy but could be covered in the notes if there is consensus to do so
   4. Field Goals - Used F rather than FG in the heading for reduced width. Worthy but could be covered in the notes
   5. Points - Mandatory
6. International Team Stats - M, T, G, F, P - Included as it has relevance before and during the competition. As above with respect to goals and field goals.
   1. Debut - Used the year rather than the date for a narrower column, which is also why "Dbt" is used rather than "Debut", as my preference is to have the info present on one line when viewed on a laptop, tablet or PC. A benefit of its inclusion to an attentive reader is in comparing two players that debuted at the same time, but have different number of matches. Worthy
   2. Matches - Mandatory
   3. Tries - Mandatory
   4. Goals - Worthy but could be covered in the notes if there is consensus to do so
   5. Field Goals - Worthy but could be covered in the notes if there is consensus to do so
   6. Points - Mandatory
7. Club - The moniker has been used for a narrower column. Dragons is a lot shorter than St. George Illawarra Dragons (says a Dragons fan, who loves travelling down to Wollongong). Nearly all readers are going to know the monikers, and if they don't they can hover or click to find out. An alternative for narrowness is to use the name rather than the moniker. I opted for Dragons rather than St George Illawarra because it was narrower. I also innovated to shade the clubs outside the NRL and Super League, and then also mention such club's full name in notes. Inclusion Mandatory but width debateable. Using the moniker for a narrower column Worthy
8. CM - Club Matches - Included as it was misleading with only the total matches column appearing next to the club. Worthy
9. TM - Total Matches - Included as it collectively demonstrates the experience and quality of each squad. Worthy
10. SL - CM / TM - Including these columns where two or more squad members have played in England/France during the year, such as the Fiji men's team. I expect Cook Islands men and PNG men will be similar. As NZ men and Tonga men have one SL player I have excluded the column but have called it out in the notes. An alternative could be to add Super League and NRL matches together in a single column, say T1M for Tier 1 matches and use a Current Club Matches column as well. Worthy
11. Other Reps - Similar to including the number of NRL/SL matches, the intent here was to show the experience of players. Icons were chosen as a succinct way to showcase that experience. Due to the variation I opted for one shared column than several columns with mostly zeroes.
    1. Origin - Included due to the high standard and the benefit that most players exhibit in and after playing Origin. Worthy
    2. Other nations - A succinct way to show that a player has international experience with other teams. This is also called out in the notes. Worthy
    3. Prime Minister's XIII - Included more to call out the experience of PNG players, I agree that it has less relevance for those that have played for the Australian PM's XIII and my use of the same icon does not help. Worthy for PNG, whilst Australia PM's XIII appearance could be called out in the notes.
    4. All Stars - Included partly for completeness, and partly because I like the way that flags subtly identify players with Indigenous heritage. Worthy for Aboriginal or Māori players, less relevant for NRL All Stars although they are dwindling.
    5. City / Country - Now excluded for the men - as the last origin was in 2017 there are only a few left with such experience. Have included for the women, as the most recent match was last year (2023).

Finally, as I suggested in my reply to @Mn1548 there is a way to get an objective indication as to whether the format I have put forward is preferred by readers. That is to run two parallel pages to the conclusion of the tournament.

• ...squad statistics using the table format and notes that I have used
• ...squad lists which has minimal information, based on what the four of you agree upon

Both options can be referenced from the main page.

We can than see by page views which is preferred by readers other than ourselves.

Yours in Rugby League,

John Moriarty

Cronulla, NSW Nhoj1898 (talk) 22:37, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Not going to address everything myself, the other fellas should be able to help with that, but re the positions if we do want to use shorthand I can't imagine it would be too hard to find a way of doing so without using the really long links I used earlier. Team boxes on something like the PM's XIII article include position links in shorthand form.

Only other thing I want to specifically mention is the other reps column, if consensus is that it should still be included it should definitely be formatted some other way, like just having the name of the country. League icons aren't really helpful because, using Mitchell Moses as an example, few people will instantly recognise Lebanon's colours and clicking the icon doesn't help as it's not named correctly (unlike the utility value of an NRL team league icon, say). Ditto the use of team colours or the Australian flag to represent PM's XIII matches. PhinsUp23 (talk) 06:52, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

• Jersey - already discussed but only worthwhile if squad numbering is used. If the team use positional numbering then it's of no relevance.
• Player - should be linked, even if currently a REDLINK as players who have played internationally have more chance of becoming notable.
• Age - moot whether it's particularly relevant, but need to be reliably sourced somewhere, e.g. in the article on the player.
• Position - position(s) they normally play, not what they ended up doing during a tournament
• Tournament stats - no disagreement, except for WP:ACCESSIBILITY purposes we should not be using low contrast text and backgrounds. Standard black on grey (or white on black as it appears in dark mode) should be used.
• Club - full name, we're writing for the general public, not just other rugby league fans.

The rest, club stats, total matches, other reps, non-NRL clubs, debut. All this is not relevant. To quote WP:NOTEVERYTHING; Information should not be included solely because it is true or useful. An article should not be a complete presentation of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject. Articles such as 2024 Rugby League Pacific Championships squads are not substitutes for articles on player's career histories. Club stats etc are all relevant information about each player and that is the place where those facts belong, that's why we have links so readers can click through to the appropriate place. This absence of an article on a player (acknowledging that there are a lot of redlinks for female players especially) is not a reason for putting the information in the wrong place, it should be a driver to getting rid of the redlinks.

Neither is it our place to "demonstrate(s) the experience and quality of each squad". We don't offer our opinions, we report what reliable sources say. So if the SMH says "this is the least experienced squad Australia have announced since 1990", then we can report that. Nthep (talk) 10:58, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

My preference would be to generally match the 2023 squad lists which seem to cover what is most significant, though I have no issue with keeping team colours for the column headers rather than everything being grey. For the club information, only the current club name is needed, not the match totals with it. The tournament stats relate directly to the scope of the article, but the career stats do not and are better covered in the player articles or national team/list of players articles. I would perhaps keep the debut year as this will not change, but the other columns only tell part of the story, i.e. career up to that point - which currently matches their total career stats, but whether the information will stay like this or be updated to include the tournament itself, or even post-tournament careers, is not made clear. Also I am not convinced of the value of the Other Reps column, but if using icons for this there needs to be a footnote that lists what each icon represents, with All Stars for example, is not obvious because the icon is not used on any of the articles about the All Stars matches, each of which have different colours for the team. The 2023 Championships and the last World Cup each had only one field goal, so for these I would consider having a combined goals/field goals column using something like (+1) to indicate a field goal rather than a separate and mostly empty column. EdwardUK (talk) 17:40, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I have just added a table under the subheading #Tournament versus post tournament presentation to demonstrate that the tables during the tournament do not have to be those preserved afterwards.

My contention is that the career statistics, club matches and other reps columns add value. To readers familiar with rugby league it displays that data in one place. This provides an easy option for readers to draw their own conclusions as to the relevant strengths of the squads. To those readers who see no value in this additional information, no harm is done, they can simply ignore it.

Once the tournament concludes, the relevance diminishes and so that additional data can be removed.

Another reason is that not all players in the tournament have an individual page, and of those that do, not all are up to date. It would be more accurate to refer readers to the external websites of the Rugby League Project or Rugby League Record Keepers Club. And both of those do not have the full set of games played by longer serving Women's players like Ali Brigginshaw and Elianna Walton,

Also, to clarify, for positions I have used the mostly recent club positions. For players outside the RLP database I've generally looked at just one recent game. I've limited it to two positions. Where a player is usually a bench player for their club, I've typically used used the position (or two) of where they start on the occasion that they start.

Age is calculated from the Date of Birth in the spreadsheet, as taken from RLP which manually lifts from the NRL website when ages are added. This appears to be the responsibility of the clubs, as there are several NRLW players whose DOB is not yet on their NRL website player profile. An example is Pihuka Berryman-Duff (Eels).

As to the grey text, I have only used grey text for zeroes. The intent of doing so is to aid with visualisation, as tries, goals and field goals stand out in contrast.

Regarding the use of redtext for players without a page, I am more in two minds.

Page views will be highest prior to the conclusion of the tournament, which is an argument in favour.

That said, readers that themselves would take action to create a page would be able to surmise that the lack of a hyperlink when other players in the list have them, means that a page does not exist.

For the casual reader, or a non-contributing rugby league fan looking at the page, the presentation looks better with plain text rather than red text, especially the large proportion of women's players without a page.

To reiterate but slightly refine my earlier suggestion. If you remain against including the additional data during the tournament that we can make an objective study by running two pages during the tournament, and reverting to one at its conclusion.

1. 2024 Rugby League Pacific Championships squads - with the additional stats
2. 2024 Rugby League Pacific Championships teamlists - without the additional stats

Reference link both from the main page, with an explanation

We can then take a look at page views at the end of the tournament. That will provide an objective count of what readers prefer.

After the tournament concludes, say in early December, the content of the teamlists page can be copied over to the squads page, removing the international career, club matches and other reps data from it. The teamlists page can then be redirected to the squads page.

At the moment, based on last year and this year so far we have over 200 views on several days, looking at what I had presented including the additional information. But of those 200, only 5 commenting in this forum have objected.

So, implicitly, 95% of readers are happy or at least content with the information as presented.

Running two pages would measure that. If your supposition is correct, readers will overwhelmingly prefer the teamlists page. If I'm right the squads page will get more view.

It might be that both pages get a decent number of views, in which case there is an argument for repeating the two options in future tournaments.

Given that I agree to merge the pages after the tournament then there is no need to worry about running two parallel pages for more than two months.

Yours in rugby league

John Moriarty

Cronulla, NSW Nhoj1898 (talk) 00:07, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, but no the career information does not add value, it is nothing to do with the tournament and player's appearances and scoring in it and that is what the article is about. You also seem to be suggesting that some information cannot be verified from reliable sources in which case if fails WP:Verifiability and/or WP:Original research and those are other reasons for not including it. The place for sourced career information about a player is the article about that player, not repeated at various places across Wikipedia just because it seems convenient to dump everything on one page rather than encouraging readers to explore Wikipedia and follow links.

Grey text on a white background fails MOS:COLOR. If you think it's important to highlight the non-zero values (I don't) then use n-dashes rather than zeros.

Redlinks are encouraged and omitting them on the basis that red text doesn't look nice is just rubbish. Please read WP:Red link.

2023 Rugby League Pacific Championships squads has had 1232 pageviews since 15 March 2024 with no comment whatsoever, so implicitly 100% of readers are happy or at least content with the information as presented. True? Probably not because we can't draw inferences about the opinions of readers unless they specifically comment somewhere. Wikipedia doesn't work on pageviews. Policy on content, style, scope is decided by consensus of those who are prepared to contribute to the discussion. Nthep (talk) 14:47, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Nthep

Reading the Consensus page that you referred to there are three sentences that are of some relevance.

• Explanations are especially important when reverting another editor's good-faith work.
• Whether changes come through editing or through discussion, the encyclopedia is best improved through collaboration and consensus, not combat and capitulation.
• Editors with good social skills and good negotiation skills are more likely to be successful than those who are less than civil to others.

When I added the tables last year I did so in good faith.

Mn1548 opened a discussion and you made a comment with a mild insult – dog’s breakfast – to my earlier work on the 2021 Women's Rugby League World Cup squads. That page did vary from table to table. The variation in content then was due to the disparity of information available from Australia through to Brazil. At the time, I had good information on England player’s international careers, but club information was incomplete.

In the 2023 squad pages I had, however, attempted to standardise the information. There was some variation that cascaded to the tables. No Australian men’s players had played in Super League, but players from Pasifika nations had, in varying numbers.

A comment was added by a third user on 8 October.

Neither Mn1548 or you extended the courtesy of informing me that you had concerns, or of inviting me to provide a rationale.

Instead, having agreement from two readers of the forum you chose combat with the intent of forcing me to capitulate. Your changes blindsided me, with the negative impact on me being greater as I had travelled from Sydney to Townsville to attend the opening two matches. I found out on returning to my accommodation with intent of updating the tables.

Upset, I reverted and made the updates. Having ambushed me, you then accused me of starting an edit war. This suggests that your expectation was that I was obliged to capitulate.

To your point, Mn1548 it was the day after this combative action that PhinsUp23 added a comment in support of your opinion, whilst a fifth user/contributor offered a balanced comment.

This year, it was Mn1548, that showed courtesy in inviting me into the discussion.

In your comments this year, you are calling into question my integrity. If you look at any of the articles which I have started, or to which I have made a major contribution, you will see that they are well referenced. Some editors might suggest that some have too many references.

My point in rehashing the above is that you are demanding that I submit to policy/guidelines to which you have, al least in this instance, ignored.

Despite being upset by this behaviour, I have conceded several points and offered a compromise where the additional detail remains on the page now, but it removed a few weeks after the tournament concludes.

Acknowledging that our difference of opinion as to the worthiness of including the additional information is subjective, as is inferring what readers what, I made the suggestion that we run two versions temporarily and use page views to measure what readers prefer. The outcome of such an object study might be the low info you prefer, the detail I prefer, or combination where readers are split, but free to choose.

As I have previously acknowledged, readers viewing on smart phone may prefer just seeing teamlists as my version requires them to either scroll right or tilt to horizontal to see the data.

Getting back to the point on the relevance about the inclusion of the data, I wish to add some historic and contemporary context.

You may already be aware that the Rugby League News is digitised on Trove. Here I link to a 1972 issue where Australia hosted New Zealand in Sydney: Rugby League News Vol 53 No 26

• On page four we have pen portraits of the New Zealand players that cite their province, age, weight, height, occupation, position and representative experience.
• On page fourteen both sides are listed with their age and weight.

The inspiration for the squad tables comes from this approach. As I was born in 1970, I first encountered it in the late 1970s Big League. Unfortunately, the Big League is not yet digitised. More recent examples from the late 2010s include the player’s representative career matches, tries and goals alongside their name. If you would like to see an example, I can post an example to facebook or Twitter X.

So, my innovation was really only to bring in club matches as well, and use the icons as a shorthand way to show their other representative achievements.

Now to a contemporary example. Given you were likely in attendance at the Super League Grand Final, you may not have yet watched the Prime Minister’s XIII matches. I watched the women’s and the first twenty minutes of the men’s at Marrickville Library before going to the nearby Henson Park to attend an AFLW match.

Rewatching on 9Now Channel Nine’s commentary there are several mentions with the intext to inform viewers about players to which they are likely unfamiliar. From the first six minutes:

1. At 1:50 re Sam McIntyre — Played every game for North Queensland in an excellent campaign this year
2. At 2:04 re Sanny Wabo — There's Wabo who played 30 games for the Hunters over the last couple of years in the Queensland Cup
3. At 2:18 re Brandon Nima — And now Brandon Nima, almost a hundred games of Queensland Cup experience
4. At 3:30 re Australia — It will be a real challenge for this young Australian side. Not all of these fellas will have played together very much at all, and certainly a lot of them are inexperienced at the international level.
5. At 4:28 re Sylvester Namo — Here's Sylvester Namo. One of the best credentialled playes in the team, 24 years of age, he's played 4 times for Papua New Guinea, 14 games in the Engish Super League for Castleford this year.
6. At 5:30 re Judah Rimbu — You don't win the Petero Civoniceva medal for the Player of the Queensland Cup for no reason
7. At 5:47 re Judah Rimbu — He's a try-scorer Billy, he got 16 tries in 23 games in the Queensland Cup this year. For a hooker, that's huge.

My apologies if you are geo-blocked from watching on 9Now. The vison that the NRL has posted on YouTube uses the local PNG Digicel commentators. Nine do often post matches on YouTube a day or so later, so perhaps they will add it sometime this week.

You cite a preference for users to be obliged to go into a players’ page. My design doesn’t preclude that, neither does the suggested running of temporary two versions. As I called out last year, a flaw with the players pages is that they require manual update. For the majority of southern hemisphere players who are well-behaved, they typically are little more than putting the Rugby League Project Playing Career page into words, only with a random delay in updates.

For example, the Judah Rimbu page is currently a QRL match and try short, and doesn’t yet mention his award or include his appearance and try from yesterday’s match.

Finally, and I apologies for the length of this missive, I would like to mention the NRLW club pages. At the start of the 2024 NRLW season I was maintaining 8 of the 10 club pages.

• The exceptions were North Queensland Cowboys Women and Newcastle Knights Women, which are primarily maintained by a single user. They use a different format to what I have used for the other 8 clubs. Recognising their passion and good faith, I have not interfered with their pages or insisted that they use my design.
  • Both contributors are diligent at creating pages for their clubs NRLW players, with both implicitly using a rule that the player must debut internationally or in NRLW before they create a page.
• During the season, a user began updating the Gold Coast Titans Women page. I’ve simply let that contributor take over that page.
• Curiously, I am the only user to make any significant edits to the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks Women page. Those that contribute to the men’s page have yet to show any interest, despite a team from their club making the recent NRLW Grand Final.
• I created the New Zealand Warriors Women page, and already others have contributed. I’m confident that that will be well run by contributors other than me, going forward.

So at last to conclude, given that I have been conciliatory and have acted in good faith, I feel that there are just reasons to maintain the squads page with the additional data through to the end of November.

If you wish to have a simple teamlists page as well, I am open to providing that option to readers.

Yours in rugby league,

John Moriarty

Cronulla, NSW Nhoj1898 (talk) 00:37, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi John,

A lot to get through here again so like last time I'm not going to address everything myself but still have some points I want to reiterate. I think I'm starting to come around to your point of view - I still have to question the relevance of including every single parameter your tables show, but can understand that showing non-tournament statistics as of the time of the tournament may be useful down the line, when statistics on player articles no longer reflect their experience at the time of the tournament. I think after this I'm going to stay out of which parameters should and shouldn't be included for the rest of this, let the rest of you fellas come to some form of compromise.

I do want to address a couple of your points however, because I don't think they're the best arguments in favour of including everything, and I have some stylistic criticisms. Firstly, you bring up Rugby League News and Big League. Obviously as magazines have a different format, I don't think they're necessarily the best reference point for the standards wikipedia should meet. We can refer to player articles for more detailed information, which means we don't have to include every relevant statistic like they do, although as mentioned previously I can see the justification in wanting something to represent experience at the time of the tournament. You did bring up how player pages aren't always up to date but I don't think we can use that as an excuse, we should be updating them if we know they're outdated.

Secondly, while I can understand having something to show experience, I still don't think we need to go to the level of detail of including things like "matches for current club" as separate from "total club matches", separate columns for NRL & Super League, or the entire note list you have underneath. Simply including the club a player last played for at the time of the tournament should be enough, and if first-grade matches are shown a single figure should suffice. If the club is already linked, there's not really any justification I can think of for having notes saying e.g. "two squad members played for northern hemisphere clubs", nor is there a need in my opinion to double-up on representative matches such as the New Zealand Maori with both an inclusion in the table and in the notes. For players who play for teams that do not have articles, such as those included in the Fiji women team list, then the team name can be used as a redirect to link to something like the "rugby league in fiji" article. We could alternatively add a "(NSW Cup)" or "(Vodafone Cup)" after the team name for non first grade sides but I don't think that's necessary.

Finally, for the "Other Reps" column, even if consensus is reached that it should be included, I have to stress again that the current format is a poor way of showing them. I'm one of the few people here who defends league icons as having a minor utility value, but again I have to point to Mitchell Moses and Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow as examples of poor use. When league icons such as "Canterbury_colours.svg", "Queanbeyan_United_Colours.svg", and "Australian_colours.svg" are used to represent Samoa, NRL All Stars, and the PM's XIII there is no way that the average reader will interpret those as the correct teams without:

a) not immediately noticing the notes, opening the player's page, and then figuring it out from there, as I did last year when I first saw them, and which is counterintuitive to your view that people shouldn't have to read every player page to get the necessary information.

or b) referring to the notes, in which case why include them in the table at all?

While it can be used for the experience factor previously mentioned, I personally still take the view that as this is an international tournament, showing representative matches like origin, all stars, and pm's xiii are unnecessary, just as we don't include details for players' other reps in Origin team lists nor NRL club squad lists. The only representative information I think can warrant inclusion is previous international team for players who have changed their allegiance, that way if somebody like Moses is labelled as a debutante he isn't labelled on the same level as somebody like Lindsay Smith with zero international experience. Even then, regardless of which representative teams if any remain shown, I definitely think we have to move away from the use of "league icons only" in the table. Either simply include the name of their previous country represented, or include their representative details in the notes as you have done rather than the table/both. Current use of the icons in the other reps column most likely goes against the wikipedia standards used to justify trimming down on them in the (unrelated to this topic) discussion about league icons last year, somebody who was in favour of trimming them last time is probably better suited to confirm this. PhinsUp23 (talk) 08:41, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nhoj1898 I've never doubted that you are editing in anything but good faith, if you have got the impression otherwise, then for that I apologise. I don't disagree with the validity of any statistic (that can be verified), my point is that they are going in the wrong place. This is an online encyclopedia. That means, that unlike paper versions, we don't have to store and display the same information multiple times, as cross-referencing is easy due to links. If you really are set that experience of individuals is necessary then how about, in these tables, just including first-class appearances at the time of selection (or the date of the first match in the tournament). No breakdown by club/representative matches, just how many they have played.

I get the impression that part of your preference for presenting the information the way you are doing is ease as you're using some automated help which is quicker than updating the player articles as that needs to be done manually. I have absolutely no problem with (semi-)automated tools for prepping content but I agree with @PhinsUp23 that it isn't an excuse for not updating the player articles just because they aren't s quick to do (there are probably ways that could be more automated but that's the basis for a separate discussion about possibly using Wikidata as one way). Nthep (talk) 11:03, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

A suggested table. The column order can change, the width can change, and they don't have to be sortable. On the colours, various combinations start failing accessibility, so black or white text is best on most backgrounds.

Australia

Australia squad for the 2024 men's Pacific Championships

#	Name	Club	Age	Position(s)	Tournament statistics
					App	T	G	FG	Pts
–	Mitchell Barnett	New Zealand Warriors	30	second-row, lock	2	1	0	0	4
–	Lindsay Collins	Sydney Roosters	28	prop	3	0	0	1	1

New Zealand

New Zealand squad for the 2024 men's Pacific Championships

#	Name	Club	Age	Position(s)	Tournament statistics
					App	T	G	FG	Pts
–	Mitchell Barnett	New Zealand Warriors	30	second-row, lock	2	1	0	0	4
–	Lindsay Collins	Sydney Roosters	28	prop	3	0	0	1	1

Tournament versus post tournament presentation

From John

In considering your comments we have a difference of option on whether career and matches for clubs should be included on the page.

Perhaps I have not been clear enough in stating that my opinion is most valid prior to and during the tournament, but once the tournament has concluded, it is greatly diminished. Consequently, I have no object to the career and club information being removed at the conclusion of the tournament - or shortly there after, say December.

In a bid for clarity, I have prepared the following:

Column	Prior / During	Post Tournament
J#	Include. If jerseys change from game to game, use the most recent	Remove unless fixed jerseys were used
Position (Length)	Full Name	Full Name
Position (Link)	Currently linking to existing pages, but given the large number of players without an individual page, for asthetic reasons using plain rather than red text. I am monitoring this for page creation. If such a page in linked linked to the squads page the main page, then I will see the notification, and update. That said, the highest number of page views will be between now and the conclusion of the tournament.	Use redtext"
Age	Include where DOB is known	Age at conclusion
Position (Selection)	Regular position(s) played, limit of two, with most recent positions used in instances where a player has transtitioned.	Positions played during the tourament
Position (Length)	Currently full name using rlp template. Use of the abbreviation would allow greater space for the use of the full name of the club	Full name using rlp template
Tournament - M, T, P	Include	Include
Tournament - G, F	Zeroes in grey to that players that kick goals or field goals are more easily seen by readers	Include
Career - Dbt	Include.	Include. Bold the year of those that have made their debut during the tournament.
Career - M, T, P	Include. Relevant during the tournament to readers familiar with rugby league. Purpose is to bring that information into one place. Also, not all players in the tournament have wiki pages. Does no harm to the casual reader.	Remove. Career matches is less relevant once the tournament has ended, and career tries and points are also . "
Career - G, F	Currently included. Given that so few players have kicked goals or field goals a possible alternative is to tabulate in a separate goal kickers section.	Remove
Club	Shorter version used to accommodate career stats and club matches. Currently using the moniker as it offers the shortest description.	Full name, preceded by club icon. Could also include the club's country flag is there is a consensus. Preference to include both icons is used at all due to the similariy of the Australian and New Zealand flags when small.
NRL CM	Include. Purpose is distinguish between games played for the current club and total career games.	Remove
NRL TM	Include. Relevant during the tournament to readers familiar with rugby league. Purpose is to bring that information into one place. Also, not all players in the tournament have wiki pages. Does no harm to the casual reader.	Remove. Less relevant once the tournament has ended and the tallies become out of date once club competition resumes in February"
SL CM	Currently included if two or more members have played Super League during the year (2024). Reason for having a separate CM (Club Matches) column is that several players have not played any Tier 1 (SL, NRL, NRLW) matches, or have done so but have played more Tier 2 or lower matches for their current club. If a single column is used could combine Tier 1 and Tier 2 club matches, and show a blank or show ND for No Data as a tooltip.	Remove
SL TM	Currently included if two or more members have played Super League during the year (2024).	Remove
Other Reps	Include in some form. Relevant during the tournament to readers familiar with rugby league. Icons and a combined column has been used to help each row of the table fit into one line when viewed on a laptop, tablet or PC screen. Notes below each table clarify the icons.	Remove

Doubles, trebles, and quadruples

I think we need to rework how this information is displayed. Currently information is on this topic is displayed independently on Super League, Super League Grand Final, League Leaders' Shield, Challenge Cup, Double (rugby league), and Treble (rugby league).

I think a single template for the lists is in order as currently, one or two pages get updated or changed and they all end up contradicting each other. A problem further created by British and Australian doubles/trebles being different.

Further, what actuall is a double, treble, and quadruple? The media is so poor at reporting this, with sources constantly contradicting each other and themselves.

Eg the BBC's Grand Final match report. It describes Wigan as having won the quadruple with 2024 WCC, CC, LLS, and GF but also states they were the fourth quadruple team after St Helens (2006), Bradford (2003), and Wigan (1993-94) who all won the WCC the season after, which has always been the definition as far as I can tell as you can't get to the WCC without winning the GF. Similar to the Sextuple (association football), where Community Shield, Super Cup, and FIFA Club World Cup (now FIFA Intercontinental Cup) are all won the season after the treble of league, cup, and Champions League. Mn1548 (talk) 14:14, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

From the technical side of things, WP:LST is the best option here; have the winners tables in their relevant articles (e.g. Treble (rugby league)) and then transclude them to the other locations as necessary; creating templates for each list is a bit much. Primefac (talk) 14:17, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Thats a better alternative, thanks! Mn1548 (talk) 15:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Relatives in infobox

What are people's thoughts on including family members in the infobox (e.g. Jack Sinfield)? I know that the rugby union project does have them in their infoboxes, but is it relevant enough to a player's career to be worth including? J Mo 101 (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

For most articles this information is usually covered in a relatively small background/personal life section of the main text. I am not sure of the value of also including it in the infobox, but if doing so a single parameter for relatives would be better than separate parameters for family members which in most cases would (or should) be empty. In the roughly 17,000 rugby biography infoboxes the parameters for spouse and children are only used 400 times each (2,000 for the relatives parameter). The documentation states that these are for notable people and the template parameter report suggests that although this is done for the relatives, for spouse and children the notability part is generally ignored. EdwardUK (talk) 17:52, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

For what's it worth, I agree that it shouldn't be included in the infobox (covering any relevant family connections in the prose is sufficient, in my opinion), but wanted to get some more opinions before removing. If more people are in favour of inclusion, it would be better to add a field to the RL infobox, rather than shoehorning the information in by embedding another infobox (like in the example above). J Mo 101 (talk) 21:04, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Embedding a second infobox seems to be the preferred way of doing things, rather than adding additional parameters. Nthep (talk) 08:11, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It is an easy way of doing it, because the template is protected - so making any changes to it has to get consensus and be requested. Embedding a second infobox for something like a boxing or cricket career makes sense to me as they display a clearly defined section covering something beyond the scope of the rugby league infobox, but the relatives look out of place when tagged on to the end in this way. I think that if they are included they would look better if displayed at the end of the personal info section. EdwardUK (talk) 13:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I think there is a gentle swell towards using Infobox person then embedding others as necessary, so we might end up with the rugby sections being embedded into a generic Infobox rather than the other way round. Nthep (talk) 14:12, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It seemes to be common place in alot of people's infoboxes across Wikipedia, so I would lean in favour of including any notable relatives. Mn1548 (talk) 13:22, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't see much point in the information being in the infobox but also can't see any harm and it's pretty common elsewhere. Obviously only for notable family members. But, I would much prefer an addition to the current infobox rather than adding another, which seems to confuse the inexperienced. Doctorhawkes (talk) 03:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

List of Australia Schoolboy rugby league team players

List of Australia Schoolboy rugby league team players needs some sources or deletion. On the talk page an IP has asked for date changes but I can't help as the sole reference link doesn't work. Commander Keane (talk) 05:18, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Merger proposal - Men's Ashes Modern Series & Original Series

Hi all, Last year I proposed merging the original ashes and modern ashes series article together, this was done and undertaken. Given that just one of the teams has changed the Ryder Cup model seemed to fit. This seems to have then been undone - despite agreement being found. I've proposed the merger again and made a discussion here so we can come to a consensus. --Mollsmolyneux (talk) 12:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

N.B. I can see there was a discussion above RE: a separate page for Women's Ashes. While I don't think it needs one yet as one has yet to played and it was not a current ongoing series I'm happy to concede that point --Mollsmolyneux (talk) 13:01, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Weak oppose - While I don't see any harm in merging now, my worry is it will need splitting again in the not too far future, which was kind of the issue when the previous discussion happened. This might not be as bad an issue now that the women's ashes is a separate article, but all three merged was definitely impacting readability. Further, in my opinion, both are two separate series with different teams and a 22 year gap between the last of the old and first of the new. One page could promote editors to unify statistics which would require sourcing that the 2025 Ashes is the 40th of the series and not the 1st of a new revivied Ashes which isn't currently the case. In conclusion, I think that two articles is better futureproofing both. Mn1548 (talk) 09:10, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Weak oppose on the same basis as Mn1548. If 2025 is England v Australia (or vice versa if the IRL, ARLC & RFL can ever decide where the series will be played) as opposed to Great Britain v Australia, then it becomes a new event. The Ryder Cup isn't analogous as England and Great Britain are considered separate teams, unlike golf's expansion from GB to GB&I to GB&Europe. Nthep (talk) 10:34, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry to be a pain, but do you both want to copy your responses onto the other talk page just so they're all together. Then I'll happily respond there! --Mollsmolyneux (talk) 12:46, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Ok. Done. Nthep (talk) 16:48, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Nthep Mn1548 (talk) 17:40, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Fassolette-Kielty Trophy start date.

RFL claim 2012 ref, FFR claim 2015 ref. Anyone have any further insight? Mn1548 (talk) 16:48, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't know why FFR say 2015 but one of the references in the article is to this 2012 article [4] which mentions the trophy by name and says in the inaugural playing. Nthep (talk) 17:37, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

There is also an article from 2021 on the FFR website that gives 2012: [5]. EdwardUK (talk) 21:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Is it Hull FC or Hull F.C.?

This has been rattling about in my head since I wrote up the articles for the 2024 and 2025 Hull F.C. (see already?) seasons, but I think there needs to be a bit of clarity and consistency on the issue.

Wikipedia tends to go for 'Hull F.C.' in most cases - see Hull F.C. and Template:Hull F.C. current squad - but then the by-season articles go by 'Hull FC' - see 2009 Hull FC season and so on. On the club's website, they refer to themselves as 'Hull FC', and the Betfred Super League refers to them as 'Hull FC'. As far as I can see, the only prominent instance of the 'Hull F.C.' title is on the club's badge.

So, on Wikipedia, which is it? Is it maybe worth combing each article related to or mentioning the club and renaming/editing them one way or the other? Hullian111 (talk) 12:07, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

In British sports clubs articles, football club is usually always stylised as "F.C." (see St Helens R.F.C., Harlequin F.C., Everton F.C. etc.), so for consistency's sake, I would just add the dots to the season article names. J Mo 101 (talk) 15:42, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

F.C. is an acronym for Football Club, so it should be "F.C." Mn1548 (talk) 09:33, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Given what the OP wrote about Hull FC, those last two comments are unhelpful. HiLo48 (talk) 09:40, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

The full name of rugby is rugby football, hence Rugby Football Club. "Football Club" can refer to any code of football. Mn1548 (talk) 10:03, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

The club website uses Hull FC and has done since 2000 (archived on wayback machine). This is also the version used on current news sources for the club such as BBC Sport, Love Rugby League and Hull Daily Mail. As such it would make sense for it to be the name that is used for the article title and although this does not fit with consistency for other articles it may be the equivalent of the unusual exceptions in the Biography MOS.

However, in other articles about the club, the name could vary depending on the time period being written about - I did an image search and found that on team photos from throughout their history the name varies between F.C. and FC (and sometimes N.U.F.C. and R.L.F.C.). This is also the case on the British Newspaper Archive where articles appear to mainly use F.C. to start with then a mix of F.C. and FC. EdwardUK (talk) 12:35, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Tours vs test series

Do these two terms have official destinctions? Tours seem to be a more historical concept whereas test series seem to have alot more recent uses especially given th3 shorter length of these "tours". The recent Tonga/Samoa v England games have been described as tours alot in the media. But series like USA v South Africa or last years Kenya v France, can these be described as tours? Considering they are both in one location (Pretoria and Nairobi) you can't say the team was "touring" the country, unlike the England series where the Pacific Islanders did move through England. They also are of a lower prifile so don't really have the mass media coverage for a consistent description of the event. Mn1548 (talk) 22:49, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I got the impression that it was a test series if just internationals against one team whereas historically tours involved multiple opponents and could include test series, for example – 1911 NZ in AUS: a tour without a test series, 1937–38 Kangaroo tour: a tour with 3x test series, 1995 Trans-Tasman Test series: just a test series without a tour. Most sources used in the 2023 Tonga and 2024 Samoa in England articles refer to them as test series more than tours. However, according to the IRL they have no official definition for Test match (and it would seem therefore of Test series) as noted in this 2020 article: Why SIMs – not Tests. It is basically down to what the individual governing bodies and those reporting on it have chosen to use. EdwardUK (talk) 14:44, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Tests and SIMs are basically one of the same thing, but that doesn't answer the tours vs test series question. Your argument on multiple vs single opponents is a good one. But that's not official. Mn1548 (talk) 21:25, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Without a clear definition for Test series the IRL site does not appear to indicate how to distinguish it from a tour – and they seem to be used interchangeably for example with Kenya in 2023 – reports for their matches against South Africa call it a "historic series" and a few weeks later it is called a "two-game tour", this was followed by the arrival of the France tour in Kenya for their two-game series. For Samoa in England they had this article: [6] that uses series and tour several times. There does not appear to be anything definitive on the ERL or NRL sites either, and the Asia-Pacific site has been dead for about a year. EdwardUK (talk) 23:51, 3 December 2024 (UTC)