I like the idea in principle but there's another factor you haven't contributed as well.

I would still want to watch castleford in the championship (where we belong at the moment, regrettably)

but I wouldn't watch the new SL team as well. Why?

...........Cause it's too expensive to watch one club, never mind two

This is of course a problem that would require serious thought (much more than the 5 minutes I gave this idea originally). However I had envisaged heavily subsidised tickets at the new club for the first few years to try help build a base of fans.

So essentially you're basing the success of all three existing clubs plus another 'super club' on a speculative estimate of fan behaviour which itself looks highly dubious when compared with similar situations elsewhere...

I don't want to support a new club. I want to support Castleford. Even if I did have the disposable income necessary to be fully active in two clubs, my second choice wouldn't be a new club, it would be Castleford TWICE. I doubt very much indeed that any new club in the area would get any support at all from those already paying to follow their chosen club. There may be some drift to the lure of Super League rugby, yes, but I'd wager not enough to sustain the club, and certainly to the detriment of the three 'feeder' clubs' gates.

The only way a super club would survive is if the three existing clubs didn't.

Yes it is based on speculation. However there are no similar situations elsewhere and I did say it would be a big gamble. However it would seem a safer bet then setting up a brand new side in an area with no interest in Rugby League; which the NRL has managed with Melbourne.

How so?

Neither club has any money; added together, that would come to the princely sum of - no money.

I would have even thought in school these days you would learn that cutting costs (which reducing two teams to one team would do), means you have more money than the start.

But you are "cutting" costs, by first doubling them and then halfing them.

On the face of it no difference, but when you factor in that a merged entity would lose more fans than it gains, there is a massive net loss.

But don't let facts get in the way of your drivel.

Your talking drivel yourself mate.

How do they double. A new club isn't going to take on all the contracts, this happens in normal mergers or takeovers in everyday corporate life.

Your backward thinking losing more fans than gains, is just that, backward thinking.

The benefit is for a competition that is exactly that, a competition. Which will mean more sponsorship, more revenue, more exposure, which increases club revenue.

Stop looking at it from your own point of view, and think about the game.

To be fair, if you take two clubs, two stadiums and training facilities, two sets of players and other staff, put them together and then halve them, you do end up with what you started with. And it is likely that a new club would struggle with gates, at the very least in the short term. You would get the income from a ground sale, but that isn't particularly easy as Cas well know.

Thats how i see it.

It's rather disingenuous to compare the state of our game with the NRL isn't it?

The bottom line is this: The anecdotal evidence (look no further than this messageboard) indicates absolutely no stomach at all for a merged team among those who would be expected to watch it. The key promoters of the idea are without exception from outside the five towns area, yet despite the endless repetition of the word "NO" by Wakey, Cas and Fev fans alike, there remains an endless supply of outsiders trying to tell us what's good for us.

Huddersfield/Sheffield, Hull FC/Gateshead... Mergers don't work, certainly not in the way they are perpetually spun as working. They are nothing more than a means for one struggling club to make an asset grab on another struggling club in the hope that at least one of them can survive. This peddled myth that merging offers some kind of utopian dream for fans needs to be shot down once and for all.

Maybe Cas should go down to the Championship at least for a while. Having been there I confess it felt quite good to be a big fish, even if it was in a smaller pond. Or maybe we should be given the help, opportunities and favours enjoyed by other clubs who have struggled and with assistance seemingly turned things around.

But please, please, please... for the millionth time... will people just stop banging on about a five towns merger?

I was not suggesting a merger. That was the point of the post. And if I can't compare with the NRL then I don't think you can judge the potential of the idea from fewer that half a dozen posters on an internet forum.

Given that Cas owe the value of their land to Jack Fulton, you wouldn't even get that.

This whole discussion is based on a series of misinformed and wrongheaded assumptions; a merger or whatever else is being proposed makes sense only to those people who a) have no idea of what they're actually talking about or b) want to believe that culling a number of clubs will result in more Sky money for those that remain. Why anyone thinks that Sky would continue to fund SL at the same level it does now with 4 less teams participating and fewer televised matches is probably worthy of a separate discussion all of its own.