Lets go Wolfpack, lets go!!!!
What a good crowd. Hope the fans turn up in numbers for them next season.
Well its happening so I guess we will find out how it goes.
TBF to Toronto there was a good atmosphere at the stadium, the fans seemed to be knowledgable they seem to be engaged with what was going on the pitch and its an opportunity going forward.
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I think Ralph Rimmer made that suit himself out an old pair of curtains.
I'm still not sure what sort of expansion this will bring- will it be a few more teams dotted around the world joining super league or will Canadians, for example, start to like the game and create their own league? Will Super League consist of the likes of Toronto, Barcelona, New York, Manchester and London - and will places like St Helens still feature? Yep sounds like a negative view, I accept, but I do think a long term view of what we want needs to be considered and planned for.
Bloody hell.
We have had the same old teams struggling for survival,getting promoted then relegated,never having a fan base of more then 2-5k and it's been going on for years. Toronto has brought some media attention and seems to be well run with some real money behind it. We may as well give it a go as we have nothing to lose.
I have my reservations about the Toronto project: it’s going to be a logistical challenge sorting out the fixtures and as far as I can tell their whole business model relies on sponsorship from an airline ... if that dries up would they be able to continue?
BUT I must say in the 25-30 years I’ve been watching the game I’ve not seen an expansion project done as well as this. And they’ve done it the right way, too: started at the bottom and put their money where their mouth is.
Fair play to them - they’ve earned it. Let’s see how it goes.
Im not a big fan of expansion for the sake of it, which RL has been guilty of for decades now, but they're in the league for next year and we'll have to see how things go.
I just read an interesting stat that their playoff attendances were higher than wigan's, who obviously had significant numbers of away support to bolster the gates. If they can maintain or increase those numbers it will be a great achievement
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Can't see the numbers increasing too much, the crowd for the final was pretty much capacity. That said, there's a bigger stadium in Toronto they might be able to use for an occasional game in future, plus with the weather there in February and March they may need to play some games on the road if SL don't let them play a block of away games (like Wigan when their landlords want to relay the pitch)
Will they have to field a reserve side like everyone else and if so, how will that work?
Thier CEO was on that was it "rugby am" or whatever saying that he would have to buy in "youngsters" for the future of the club , he is looking to be as successful as superleague clubs with thier academy as he says there are thousands of "onion" players over there , and he did say he has spoken to Sonny Bill and current internationals who have/are contacting his club , very interesting . Was it Total RL I was watching on the Freeview channel ?? , sorry just cant remember.
roy litherland it's happened i told you it would
Great comments from McDermott at the end about making ourselves more appealing to broadcasters.
The Swinton/Manchester nonsense highlights this even more. Swinton haven't been Swinton since the 1990s, yet an attempt to make the club more appealing was met with death threats.
It is also worth saying that being pro Toronto does not make you anti Featherstone. Fev are actually one of the forward thinking clubs out there. How they bought and relocated their "new" stands was brilliant. While the Chris Moyles stuff a few years back was very smart. Featherstone are everything they can be and need to be congratulated for it.
I could agree with you but then we would both be wrong.
I suspect being a North America team they will need to get a few Universities to start leagues. If Ottawa/New York etc. Get started it makes sense for them to pool there resources and start there own system rather than flying Academy players over here.
However I think this is secondary to making the team financially sustainable.
I could agree with you but then we would both be wrong.
I have no objection to Toronto per se, but I have my doubts about sticking them in an English league system which will create loads of headaches logistically.
They’ll never play home games in the marquee TV slot of Friday night here because it’ll be 2:45 in the afternoon there, which will negate the impact they may have when they have to play bigger home games which will end up kicking off on Saturday or Sunday evening over here, etc.
Eventually if the aim is for Toronto to spearhead a real interest in RL in N America then the hope would be that a third competition is set up to rival the NRL and Super League with Toronto as the pioneer club that got it started. Do they simply just leave Super League when this happens, or do we end up with more N American clubs joining our system?
I think the first option would be easily more preferable but even that would mean we had a club in our top division for a short time before going elsewhere. The second option, whilst exciting for some, would end in disaster IMO because we simply can’t have a league that covers two continents and ends up with clubs that have no cultural or historical links playing each other every week. Saints v New York or Wigan v Chicago may sound exciting, but why would Saints or Wigan fans actually care about beating New York or Chicago, and why would people in New York or Chicago even know where St Helens or Wigan are let alone wanting to beat them in a sport that is 5 minutes old there?
New York may want to beat Toronto, and Chicago may want to beat New York etc, but within the confines of their own competition and not in a comp featuring several small towns in Northern England. And that’s the worry, would these small towns in England become the perceived problem, and would we then be encouraged to become Liverpool City Saints and would Wigan be encouraged to merge with Leigh and Salford and become Manchester Warriors etc? A long way off maybe, but I can’t see a situation where big city N American teams playing with smallish town English teams works in the long term.
You would hope the goal is to one day have a North American league with a champions league type tournament of cross Atlantic games. Having more full time leagues in the work is crucial to the sports long term growth.
That being said. Given that Super Rugby has teams covering five countries. SA, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Argentina. Super League having a Toronto team seems a bit bog standard in comparison. The main problem is Super League needs to embrace Toronto and not make life hard for them.
I could agree with you but then we would both be wrong.