Prince of Denmark

Bronze RLFANS Member



Joined: Tue May 31, 2005 11:17 pm
Posts: 3570
Location: Trapped in a circle of despair!
Early Bath wrote:Finally re the ground - Is there another stadium in North London with a capacity to work on? Hendon/Wealdstone prob too small - any others?

The only remotely sensible one I can think of is Leyton Orient.

Dagenham and Barnet are too small. There is no non-league football ground in Greater London any better than those. Other than that you've got either modern grounds like Charlton and Millwall that are too big, plus other even bigger grounds; then there's the likes of Brentford that is too antiquated to satisfy the increasing drive towards modernisation of SL grounds.

Our current ground is as good as we'll get; the trouble is it's probably in the worst area of Greater London in which to establish RL. I'm not sure "London RLFC" as tenants of an established other club is ever going to work. It didn't the last time and a lot of people, myself included, felt the link up with Quins was the final throw of the dice. Being Quins at The Stoop feels like we've got our own ground to me in a way that squatting at Brentford FC didn't.

Ideally we need a ground of our own that isn't associated with a bigger club playing another code. Even Skolars have got that! Is there a dormant stadium somewhere that we could take over and redevelop as our own home? Even if there is it would require a benevolent multi-millionaire to make it happen. If the RFL & Sky really do feel it's so essential to sustain a London club in Superleague maybe they can do something to bring about a dedicated rugby league stadium in the capital?

YOU COULDNT MAKE THIS UP

London Welsh?

You really couldn't add this to the other thread?

I don't think some realise how important Quins are to RL as a whole.

The Quins importance depends on how much you really value the games expansion and its national profile. Some people are content to stick to the heartlands and dont care what the media thinks where as others see raising our national profile as the only path to legitimacy and anyone who thinks other wise is a flat cap wearing pidgeon fancier. Being a Cas fan I can understand both sides but it is hard to be objective when confronted with a faultering club being propped up potentially at our expense.
If we want to expand then why does any team have to be demoted? why not expand the league? If there are so many more young lads comming through then surley the game can sustain a bigger superleague? Why not be positive?
I might be paranoid but this whole franchise thing just feels like the RFL trimming off the less desirable clubs in order to shake off it's flat cap image because they value perception over the strength of the game.
But I am not objective as I just want Cas to survive but that prospect gets less realistic by the day it seems.
Does it even matter to the RFL if we get a new stadium?

On the contrary, I think some people believe that Harlequins make rugby league what it is. Put it this way, the only thing Harlequins disappearing or being demoted will do is potentially alter the TV deal. In the time that we've had rugby league in London, national media coverage has decreased significantly and during the time I was doing my dissertation, one of my interviewees stated that the perception on most editorial desks is that we're still very much a Northern sport (which we are)

However, I cannot see us suddenly going from overnight to a new dawn where no games are televised. A broadcaster will pick it up as it is a marketable game. Potentially, someone like PremierSports could invest in it and suddenly find themselves with 400,000 new customers over night. And similarly, if Sky dropped rugby league, I'd estimate a few people may reduce their Sky package not to include Sky Sports. Obviously it's all ifs and buts but people are making assumptions and using them as fact. We don't know until it happens.

I think we need to be a bit careful and not jump to conclusions as no-one knows what sort of assistance has been requested or provided.
However, I think the RFL needs to be very careful. In the 'good old days' an existing SL club's survival in SL depended on its performance on the field and the team with the fewest points at the end of the year was relegated. In those circumstances assisting a team to stay up by say, awarding them 3 points for a win whilst everyone else got 2, or disallowing every 3rd try their opponents scored would have been viewed as outrageous and would have made a mockery of the sport. Nowadays a club's survival in the SL is largely dependent on their financial performance with less emphasis on the on-field performance, so providing certain teams with financial support whilst denying it to others is not all that different to this hypothetical extra points scenario.
I can understand (though don't necessarily agree) with giving clubs from expansion areas like Catalans & Crusaders a hand for the first 3 years when they first enter the competition but no established club should be treated any differently to any other otherwise they risk making the 'competition' a laughing stock.

There is no way at all that the RFL should bail out London. The whole London thing has been a failure from start to finish and IMO if we want to expand the game then it should be from the heartlands outwards, not by just sticking satellite clubs in areas where they think they have a good catchment area.

If a business is failing (and needing to be propped up by £1.5 million per annum is failing in my book) then why chuck more money at it? The Harlequins are trying to compete in a league that they are not ready for, the business is just not right for SL. They get poor attendances and whilst the player development is certainly improving, it's not at SL level as yet. There is no way they should get a franchise and i'd like to see them drop down to say Championship 1 and start to build their business from there.

When we have clubs like Widnes, who (whilst they have had financial problems in the past) have now clearly got everything in place to run an SL franchise, I can't understand why they keep propping up the London experiment. I don't actually have anything against the London club and would love to see them get to the level where they can run a franchise properly, but they are simply not at that level and it would be just ludicrous to keep financing them indefinately with the hope that they will one day make it.

David Hughes hasn't asked for financial assistance-I spoke to him 2 days after his meeting with Woods from the RFL-He is rich enough to fund the club but is unwilling to fund it all as a 35% owner. Lennegan being the owner of 65%.