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Thread: Super League take over.

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    Quote Originally Posted by KentishBarry View Post
    Evidently Chickentown!

    Seriously though, and not meaning any disrespect to Leigh, it seems to me as a bit of a climb down from the likes of London or Toulouse...and, although I thought it a basket case, Toronto!
    I know Covid has knocked everything back in many sport, but I can't help feeling a little underwhelmed by this.
    We could put a club in Paris, New York or Peckham but it ain't worth the paper it's written on if it has'nt the infrastructure to succeed. in fact these clubs going tits-up has done a lot of damage to the sports credibility down the years.

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    Quote Originally Posted by eddiewaringsflatcap View Post
    As would any one of the other sides who were hoping to be promoted to SL.
    None of them were going to tear the place up, that much is true. But London would have been better equipped to at least make the bottom of the table interesting as they only dropped in 2019 because of points difference and had a few good results beating us and Catalans twice and also Wigan and Leeds. Might have been against weakened teams but it's as near as guaranteed Leigh won't be able to do that.

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    Quote Originally Posted by eddiewaringsflatcap View Post
    We could put a club in Paris, New York or Peckham but it ain't worth the paper it's written on if it has'nt the infrastructure to succeed. in fact these clubs going tits-up has done a lot of damage to the sports credibility down the years.
    Exactly, it needs planning and due diligence instead of prematurely ejaculating at the first sexy name which raises its hand.

    Unfortunately those deciding on such projects have about the same stamina as a teenage boy

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    Quote Originally Posted by eddiewaringsflatcap View Post
    We could put a club in Paris, New York or Peckham but it ain't worth the paper it's written on if it has'nt the infrastructure to succeed. in fact these clubs going tits-up has done a lot of damage to the sports credibility down the years.
    Oh I agree with much of what you say, and my feelings about Toronto have been posted on here several times. However, Toulouse are an established French side, and IMO London have done enough now to be accepted as 'established' even if they move home every couple of years!
    Nothing against Leigh, I wish them well, but they're not exactly a 'high profile' addition to SL who are going to attract attention beyond the M62 corridor.

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    Quote Originally Posted by KentishBarry View Post
    Oh I agree with much of what you say, and my feelings about Toronto have been posted on here several times. However, Toulouse are an established French side, and IMO London have done enough now to be accepted as 'established' even if they move home every couple of years!
    Nothing against Leigh, I wish them well, but they're not exactly a 'high profile' addition to SL who are going to attract attention beyond the M62 corridor.
    Part of me wonders whether the decision is deliberately unambitious because the powers that be know whoever the twelfth club was was on a hiding to nothing and they'd rather a nothing club got harmed by that than one they have their eye on developing as part of an expansionist project.

    Of course, that might be giving the RFL too much credit for being able to think.

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    In The South Stand KentishBarry's Avatar
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    Newcastle have been promoted to Championship to replace Leigh.

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    https://mobile.twitter.com/sjrbsimon...79657960738822

    This is the opinion of the Chairman of The RFL. The contempt he has for the fans, being patronising and questioning their loyalty is quite the hat-trick of PR own goals.
    St Helens Rugby League Football Club

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dos Cervezas View Post
    https://mobile.twitter.com/sjrbsimon...79657960738822

    This is the opinion of the Chairman of The RFL. The contempt he has for the fans, being patronising and questioning their loyalty is quite the hat-trick of PR own goals.
    "We made a decision which was controversial but we're not accepting responsibility for it, please buy our product".

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    Quote Originally Posted by The Heretic View Post
    "We made a decision which was controversial but we're not accepting responsibility for it, please buy our product".
    I thought it was a parody at first. I couldn’t believe that someone involved in The RFL would say that.
    St Helens Rugby League Football Club

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dos Cervezas View Post
    I thought it was a parody at first. I couldn’t believe that someone involved in The RFL would say that.
    I find it flabbergasting that he apparently thinks promoting a team based on an off field decision is anything approaching normal. Personally, and yes I know there are arguments why they couldn't (but they weren't insurmountable*), I would have kept SL at eleven teams. I don't like any team being promoted on anything other than on field merit. In fact, I find offering congratulations to Leigh pithy and very out of place. What, as a sports team, have they achieved? A boardroom decision has promoted them. I've no axe to grind with them beyond this decision and would have felt much the same whichever of the six got it but I can't help disliking them intensely now. It's crap and it's an embarrassment.

    *Loop fixtures could have been done away with for one season particularly with the World Cup coming up.
    *If loop fixtures were maintained, there were ways and means around it. A special rule whereby if a team finished two points behind 5th place but played one game less, they could get an end of season opportunity to make up that game (a straight playoff for a playoff place with the team in 5th).
    *Challenge Cup match/es could double as a SL match for the team/s missing out on a SL game.
    *Magic Weekend: six matches instead of seven (as would have been in 2020) with Newcastle v Championship team making up the sixth. I can't imagine the fans of whoever Leigh are playing at it being particularly enamoured about travelling up to the northeast to see their team wallop Leigh.
    *Play the 1895 Cup with Championship only teams like was done with Challenge Cup and SL teams. Winner of that gets promoted so at least there's some merit involved.

    Not saying my solutions are what should have been gone with. They're only intended as suggestions. I can't help but feel there were alternatives to this though.

    Then for the chairman of the RFL to come out and basically say "nothing to see here, go off and be good little fans now... and be grateful for what we give you" is disgraceful.

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    I suppose given how the 2020 season ended in the Championship that no club could have been 'promoted' based purely on 'on-field' merits given they all barely played last season, but if you take 2018, 2019 and 2020 together then Toulouse were most deserving. They finished 3rd in 2018, Leigh finished 6th. They finished 2nd in 2019, Leigh finished 4th, and in 2020 they'd both won all of their few games I think. Toulouse have at least shown that they have put a side on the field that is consistent in the second tier, and have proved it over 2 and a bit seasons.

    Added to that, for me it wasn't a risk picking Toulouse, they are in a RL area and would have given SL the kind of growth that we should be throwing our arms around, in the 4th biggest city in France, a club with over 80 years history and a ready made rivalry in the division with Catalans. The Perpignan metro area is about 270,000 and Catalans are well developed now. The Toulouse metro area is over 750,000, so imagine the potential for that club in Super League, imagine the sponsorship and tv potential that would give the sport in France, and imagine how much potential the Toulouse-Catalans rivalry and twice yearly games would have if given time to grow. Off the back of that, you could then end up producing more interest and more opportunities for other French clubs in the south to make the jump as well. If we want Super League to expand beyond the M62, the south of France is the best area to try and do it because the game exists there. We've made attempts to spread the game into areas that aren't interested, and attempted to do so with new clubs with no history and no regional rivalries to bounce off, whilst here we had the opportunity to add an already established club, in a big city, in a RL area, and we said no. It baffles me. We have an established club in a RL-friendly city the size of Liverpool or Newcastle ready to go, with a decent team and a bit of ambition, and we say no.

    We allowed Toronto loads of leeway in terms of scheduling because of the weather in Canada in the early part of last season, so we can't say Toulouse were not chosen because of Covid-related logistical reasons surely. I'm sure it would be easy enough to tinker with their fixture list if there was a fear of them travelling constantly in the first month or two, and we could also send clubs down there to play them and Catalans on successive weekends (staying in a bubble down there for the week) if we needed to make it easier for them to fulfill their home games early in the season, etc. Compared to the challenges of having Toronto in the league, this would have been fairly simple even with the annoyance of Covid until maybe early summer.

    As for Leigh, well I agree, hard to congratulate a club that didn't achieve anything but were selected by a panel. They finished 6th and 4th in the last two full seasons, and now we're expecting them to be competitive in the top flight despite not being good enough in the second tier. Had they finished 2nd the last two seasons and simply lost out to Toronto then fair play, you're the next in line, take the spot, but getting it like this is poor, especially when the side that really was next in line has so much upside and potential to increase the scope of Super League.

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    Quote Originally Posted by eddiewaringsflatcap View Post
    In fact these clubs going tits-up has done a lot of damage to the sports credibility down the years.
    I don't think this is true, you have to break some eggs to make an omelette.

    Most of the worlds successful businessmen have experienced failure. The myth they create is they are masterminds but in reality most of the worlds millionaires and billionaires are just persistent and don't cry and suck their thumbs every time they have a setback. Amazon took 14 years to make a profit and nearly went bust a number of times, a decision to cut loses and give up would have seemed justified at many points. Now the owner is the richest man in the world.

    This, as a sport, is our biggest failure. We try something for a year, we find out that our project is not going plop out golden eggs from day one and we just give up. This is why Rugby League keeps on failing, we have no stomach for the long term and when we do give up we have a bunch of flat cappers there to tell us we were wrong to even try in the first place. Why do we even listen to these people, why are we such snowflakes when it comes to believing in our sport.

    My attitude towards Toronto was to let it play out. If the razor company guy blows some money and Toronto fail under his leadership then we tried and we can learn from his mistakes. Crusaders is a great example, we tried in Bridgend and got average crowds and struggled for local backing. They moved the club to Wrexham (almost by accident) and got health crowds and more of a local backing. However the debts of South Wales eventually sunk the club, WHICH THE RFL INSISTED THEY KEEP BECAUSE SOME OF THE DEBT WAS TO THEM. Now the lesson we should have learned from that was that we should have just started in Wrexham with a clean slate, as the Football club just went bust they could have even bought the ground and made that the base for Welsh rugby league (instead of buying Odsal's lease). Find a good backer and let them carry on from a much stronger position. Instead, the RFL chucked them out the league and made them start at the bottom again. Now they play at an athletics track and are hardly existing.

    Bradford, Leigh, Widnes, Halifax have a long history of going bust and coming back. But no one is saying "oh the Leigh experiment has failed, lets not do that again", instead we keep sending them back in to replace these embarrassing expansion clubs. The sad thing is that expansionists are not against homeland teams they just want the whole sport to get bigger. But there are just some people (not all) that want to keep the sport small because they know their club can't grow with it and (this is the worst bit) the rest of us listen to them.

    What hurts the sports credibility is we are a regional sport played in a few small pockets around the world.
    I could agree with you but then we would both be wrong.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Noel Cleal View Post
    I don't think this is true, you have to break some eggs to make an omelette [...]

    What hurts the sports credibility is we are a regional sport played in a few small pockets around the world.
    On the first point, fair enough, but there's a difference between how we view these projects inside the sport and how those outside of it look at them. If we look at Crusaders, Toronto etc as projects that might fail, and we accept the risk as a sport that is one thing, but to those outside the sport they are seen as vanity projects from a sport that has no idea what it's doing. That may be unfair, but that is how it's seen, and if I was someone looking at RL from outside I'd look at these expansion ideas and just roll my eyes thinking they'd fail quite rapidly. If (for example) I heard that Toulouse had been 'promoted', with the back story that this was an 80-year old club that had finished second to Toronto in 2019, played in a RL area in a 20,000 seat stadium and had a good set-up I'd be less likely to roll my eyes and would see it as the natural progression of a club that had potential to succeed. I'd have given Toulouse the same crack as Catalans got, 3 year exemption from relegation, etc. I see no reason to think that after 3 years they wouldn't be punching their weight.

    On the second point, I think we make too much of the regional nature as a sport. Hurling in Ireland is a regional sport, but it gets crowds that we could only dream of really in a country with a population similar to that of the combined conurbations from St Helens to Hull. Aussie Rules is a regional sport that commands huge crowds and attention in parts of Australia, etc. If a sport is strong where it is regarded as important, it tends to matter alot less if other areas consider it important I reckon. We only worry about what other areas think of RL because we've failed to keep it as strong in the North as we should have.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gray77 View Post
    I suppose given how the 2020 season ended in the Championship that no club could have been 'promoted' based purely on 'on-field' merits given they all barely played last season, but if you take 2018, 2019 and 2020 together then Toulouse were most deserving. They finished 3rd in 2018, Leigh finished 6th. They finished 2nd in 2019, Leigh finished 4th, and in 2020 they'd both won all of their few games I think. Toulouse have at least shown that they have put a side on the field that is consistent in the second tier, and have proved it over 2 and a bit seasons.

    Added to that, for me it wasn't a risk picking Toulouse, they are in a RL area and would have given SL the kind of growth that we should be throwing our arms around, in the 4th biggest city in France, a club with over 80 years history and a ready made rivalry in the division with Catalans. The Perpignan metro area is about 270,000 and Catalans are well developed now. The Toulouse metro area is over 750,000, so imagine the potential for that club in Super League, imagine the sponsorship and tv potential that would give the sport in France, and imagine how much potential the Toulouse-Catalans rivalry and twice yearly games would have if given time to grow. Off the back of that, you could then end up producing more interest and more opportunities for other French clubs in the south to make the jump as well. If we want Super League to expand beyond the M62, the south of France is the best area to try and do it because the game exists there. We've made attempts to spread the game into areas that aren't interested, and attempted to do so with new clubs with no history and no regional rivalries to bounce off, whilst here we had the opportunity to add an already established club, in a big city, in a RL area, and we said no. It baffles me. We have an established club in a RL-friendly city the size of Liverpool or Newcastle ready to go, with a decent team and a bit of ambition, and we say no.

    We allowed Toronto loads of leeway in terms of scheduling because of the weather in Canada in the early part of last season, so we can't say Toulouse were not chosen because of Covid-related logistical reasons surely. I'm sure it would be easy enough to tinker with their fixture list if there was a fear of them travelling constantly in the first month or two, and we could also send clubs down there to play them and Catalans on successive weekends (staying in a bubble down there for the week) if we needed to make it easier for them to fulfill their home games early in the season, etc. Compared to the challenges of having Toronto in the league, this would have been fairly simple even with the annoyance of Covid until maybe early summer.

    As for Leigh, well I agree, hard to congratulate a club that didn't achieve anything but were selected by a panel. They finished 6th and 4th in the last two full seasons, and now we're expecting them to be competitive in the top flight despite not being good enough in the second tier. Had they finished 2nd the last two seasons and simply lost out to Toronto then fair play, you're the next in line, take the spot, but getting it like this is poor, especially when the side that really was next in line has so much upside and potential to increase the scope of Super League.
    My thoughts exactly. The only reason I can think for the decision to deny Toulouse is the fact that they wouldn't bring fans to the UK. If that was the reason then I think it is shortsighted. Leigh will probably only take a few hundred to most grounds, maybe a a few more at LP HJ or the rent boys. With a Toulouse v Cats derby they could have sold the rights for that game to French TV. They run a reserve team under 15's, 17's and 19's. I hope they don't decide to return to the French league.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Belgian Saint View Post
    My thoughts exactly. The only reason I can think for the decision to deny Toulouse is the fact that they wouldn't bring fans to the UK. If that was the reason then I think it is shortsighted. Leigh will probably only take a few hundred to most grounds, maybe a a few more at LP HJ or the rent boys. With a Toulouse v Cats derby they could have sold the rights for that game to French TV. They run a reserve team under 15's, 17's and 19's. I hope they don't decide to return to the French league.
    The original aim was for it to be a European Super League, however naively at the time given we only had PSG, but having Toulouse and Catalans would make it alot more of an English/French league rather than primarily English with one side in Perpignan. France is our best way to make Super League broader and more popular, and I'd invest more effort and energy in the south of France than I would in anywhere in England south of Cheshire to be honest. I'm not overly bothered if they don't bring loads with them to away games, because if they're both getting 8-10k every fortnight at home and full houses when they play each other it will be a success. It's when these sides bring a taxi load to away games but then struggle to get a crowd at home as well that the problems start. If you're selling the sport as vibrant and something worth investing in you take the Sky cameras down to Toulouse for their games against Saints and Wigan, that sells the concept. You don't hype up the reverse games at LP or DW or show them on TV, because that doesn't sell the concept nearly as much. You let their strengths tell the story, and within a few years they'd be doing okay on and off the field IMO, much like Catalans are.

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    I'm more concerned about what's going on in terms of player development.

    Someone on here has mentioned it before and they were right. Hull have 2 teams & nobody is coming through. Bar Saints, Wigan, Leeds & now Warrington, who have got their act together recently, it's not happening.

    The professional game will wilt eventually if there isn't a drastic improvement

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gray77 View Post
    The original aim was for it to be a European Super League, however naively at the time given we only had PSG, but having Toulouse and Catalans would make it alot more of an English/French league rather than primarily English with one side in Perpignan. France is our best way to make Super League broader and more popular, and I'd invest more effort and energy in the south of France than I would in anywhere in England south of Cheshire to be honest. I'm not overly bothered if they don't bring loads with them to away games, because if they're both getting 8-10k every fortnight at home and full houses when they play each other it will be a success. It's when these sides bring a taxi load to away games but then struggle to get a crowd at home as well that the problems start. If you're selling the sport as vibrant and something worth investing in you take the Sky cameras down to Toulouse for their games against Saints and Wigan, that sells the concept. You don't hype up the reverse games at LP or DW or show them on TV, because that doesn't sell the concept nearly as much. You let their strengths tell the story, and within a few years they'd be doing okay on and off the field IMO, much like Catalans are.
    Completely agree

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    Quote Originally Posted by Noel Cleal View Post
    I don't think this is true, you have to break some eggs to make an omelette.

    Most of the worlds successful businessmen have experienced failure. The myth they create is they are masterminds but in reality most of the worlds millionaires and billionaires are just persistent and don't cry and suck their thumbs every time they have a setback. Amazon took 14 years to make a profit and nearly went bust a number of times, a decision to cut loses and give up would have seemed justified at many points. Now the owner is the richest man in the world.

    This, as a sport, is our biggest failure. We try something for a year, we find out that our project is not going plop out golden eggs from day one and we just give up. This is why Rugby League keeps on failing, we have no stomach for the long term and when we do give up we have a bunch of flat cappers there to tell us we were wrong to even try in the first place. Why do we even listen to these people, why are we such snowflakes when it comes to believing in our sport.

    My attitude towards Toronto was to let it play out. If the razor company guy blows some money and Toronto fail under his leadership then we tried and we can learn from his mistakes. Crusaders is a great example, we tried in Bridgend and got average crowds and struggled for local backing. They moved the club to Wrexham (almost by accident) and got health crowds and more of a local backing. However the debts of South Wales eventually sunk the club, WHICH THE RFL INSISTED THEY KEEP BECAUSE SOME OF THE DEBT WAS TO THEM. Now the lesson we should have learned from that was that we should have just started in Wrexham with a clean slate, as the Football club just went bust they could have even bought the ground and made that the base for Welsh rugby league (instead of buying Odsal's lease). Find a good backer and let them carry on from a much stronger position. Instead, the RFL chucked them out the league and made them start at the bottom again. Now they play at an athletics track and are hardly existing.

    Bradford, Leigh, Widnes, Halifax have a long history of going bust and coming back. But no one is saying "oh the Leigh experiment has failed, lets not do that again", instead we keep sending them back in to replace these embarrassing expansion clubs. The sad thing is that expansionists are not against homeland teams they just want the whole sport to get bigger. But there are just some people (not all) that want to keep the sport small because they know their club can't grow with it and (this is the worst bit) the rest of us listen to them.

    What hurts the sports credibility is we are a regional sport played in a few small pockets around the world.

    Great post.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cyprus View Post
    Please yes. Rimmer and elstone are killing us.
    Cyprus what 'experience' has Elstone under his belt apart from being booted out of Everton , each time I've watched him being interviewed he seems out of his depth and as though he is reading from a script.
    roy litherland it's happened i told you it would

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    Quote Originally Posted by Noel Cleal View Post
    I don't think this is true, you have to break some eggs to make an omelette.

    Most of the worlds successful businessmen have experienced failure. The myth they create is they are masterminds but in reality most of the worlds millionaires and billionaires are just persistent and don't cry and suck their thumbs every time they have a setback. Amazon took 14 years to make a profit and nearly went bust a number of times, a decision to cut loses and give up would have seemed justified at many points. Now the owner is the richest man in the world.

    This, as a sport, is our biggest failure. We try something for a year, we find out that our project is not going plop out golden eggs from day one and we just give up. This is why Rugby League keeps on failing, we have no stomach for the long term and when we do give up we have a bunch of flat cappers there to tell us we were wrong to even try in the first place. Why do we even listen to these people, why are we such snowflakes when it comes to believing in our sport.

    My attitude towards Toronto was to let it play out. If the razor company guy blows some money and Toronto fail under his leadership then we tried and we can learn from his mistakes. Crusaders is a great example, we tried in Bridgend and got average crowds and struggled for local backing. They moved the club to Wrexham (almost by accident) and got health crowds and more of a local backing. However the debts of South Wales eventually sunk the club, WHICH THE RFL INSISTED THEY KEEP BECAUSE SOME OF THE DEBT WAS TO THEM. Now the lesson we should have learned from that was that we should have just started in Wrexham with a clean slate, as the Football club just went bust they could have even bought the ground and made that the base for Welsh rugby league (instead of buying Odsal's lease). Find a good backer and let them carry on from a much stronger position. Instead, the RFL chucked them out the league and made them start at the bottom again. Now they play at an athletics track and are hardly existing.

    Bradford, Leigh, Widnes, Halifax have a long history of going bust and coming back. But no one is saying "oh the Leigh experiment has failed, lets not do that again", instead we keep sending them back in to replace these embarrassing expansion clubs. The sad thing is that expansionists are not against homeland teams they just want the whole sport to get bigger. But there are just some people (not all) that want to keep the sport small because they know their club can't grow with it and (this is the worst bit) the rest of us listen to them.

    What hurts the sports credibility is we are a regional sport played in a few small pockets around the world.
    I agree with most of this. If we're going to "expand" the game, then surely looking closer to home, such as Wales, which is steeped in rugby tradition, with many of it's "sons" being legends in RL as well as RU, would make sense. There is both fertile ground to produce players and fans and with North Wales being packed with "Ex pat northerners" there's your marketplace. We have failed the Welsh experiment through ineptitude. With more commitment and persistence I'm sure it would be succesful and much less of a crazy logistical risk than Toronto or even Tolouse. SL seems dazzled by the glamopur of setting up foreign sides, but they don't see the project through because they don't identify the shortcomings, they only see the bright lights! Establish the game at home and then look further afield.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Prez View Post
    I agree with most of this. If we're going to "expand" the game, then surely looking closer to home, such as Wales, which is steeped in rugby tradition, with many of it's "sons" being legends in RL as well as RU, would make sense. There is both fertile ground to produce players and fans and with North Wales being packed with "Ex pat northerners" there's your marketplace. We have failed the Welsh experiment through ineptitude. With more commitment and persistence I'm sure it would be succesful and much less of a crazy logistical risk than Toronto or even Tolouse. SL seems dazzled by the glamopur of setting up foreign sides, but they don't see the project through because they don't identify the shortcomings, they only see the bright lights! Establish the game at home and then look further afield.
    I agree on Toronto but not sure Toulouse would be that big of a risk logistically if it were not for the virus. I think within a few years they'd get crowds on a par with Catalans and would improve the marketability of the sport with two competitive French sides bouncing off each other and increasing the overall reach of the league in the south of France. Toulouse would become one of the three biggest cities that Super League had a team in, with a history of RL and a chance to be really valuable.

    I'm not sure I agree about Wales. Whilst we have a rich history there with alot of the greatest names in our sport coming from there, I'm not sure that translates to a club side actually working. As you rightly say, north Wales does have a decent share of people who moved across from the North West, but those people have their allegiances and teams to begin with. If RL fans exist in north Wales (and they obviously do) how many of them will want to fully support a club side for 15 weekends a year in big enough numbers when traditionally they're Saints or Warrington fans (or their Dads were, etc) and both grounds are only an hour away? There will be some of course who have no allegiance to any English club and would jump at the chance, but how many does that add up to? North Wales is full of football fans, but west of Wrexham there isn't a team with a ground that holds more than 5,000 because the traditional pull of Liverpool, Everton, United etc is too great. At a smaller level RL will be the same I would imagine, and so managing to have a viable club in the top flight would IMO be difficult because the people you're attracting are already fans of other clubs whilst the ones who aren't are too small in numbers.

  22. #147
    Moderator Div's Avatar
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    I actually thought Wrexham could have worked. It's a town without any other truly elite sport.
    When we went there they did genuinely have a couple of thousand fans there are that was effectively a new club. The few folk I spoke to on game day were genuinely excited about the sport.
    It's a shame the plug was pulled so quickly. Short term view as usual.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Div View Post
    I actually thought Wrexham could have worked. It's a town without any other truly elite sport.
    When we went there they did genuinely have a couple of thousand fans there are that was effectively a new club. The few folk I spoke to on game day were genuinely excited about the sport.
    It's a shame the plug was pulled so quickly. Short term view as usual.
    Went a couple of times and thought it was good setup, easy to get to, decent parking near and the new stand was very nice.

    I can't really remember why they failed, their crowds were okay iirc

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    Quote Originally Posted by roy litherland View Post
    Cyprus what 'experience' has Elstone under his belt apart from being booted out of Everton , each time I've watched him being interviewed he seems out of his depth and as though he is reading from a script.
    He was on the board at Cas in 2007 getting a new ground sorted !!

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    He did a good job with that then.

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