Depends on your defination of "hiding". Fact is London and the south is the largest growth area for participation in Rugby League within the community game at both Open age and youth participation. The same is happening in Wales as well were participation has dramatically increased since Wales had a SL club. Clearly these playing participants aren't neccesarily paying SL customers, but a percentage of them will go onto play the game professionally and maybe some can be persueded to be paying punters.

In time with the right infrastructure I'm sure some of these new teams may even have a quiet ambition to play at semi-professional level. From there the game will grow and I'm sure of that.



Try telling that to the all "antipideons" where the sport grows in audience terms at the top level and PNG the only country on the planet that has league as its national sport. But then again when your myopic "rugby league is a local sport for local people" vision is constantly @ 100% then you can't see beyond the M62 corridor. Can you?

Sport England were convinced by the RFL that there was opportunity to grow the game outside its "traditional" and narrow base. That's why the RFL were given a "grant" of £27m to do so. And I'm sure some of that money has gone into "growing" the sport it's it "traditional" areas.

Let's face it: "We've got more fans than you" is a pretty cr*p argument, as is "It's a Northern game" and "Quins/Welsh are a farce", etc, etc. I can't (can I?) be the only Cas fan who actually wants the game to expand and welcomes plans to do just that. Along with that however, I do think chucking out a club with history, roots, die hard fans, etc is a bad idea and damaging in the long term. I don't see why expansion has to come at the expense of the already established, however condensed those established teams are perceived to me. Getting a club in (say) Birmingham at the cost of one in (say) Wakefield isn't really expansion, it's just relocation.

But back to the point. Cas have had the same time as everyone else to sort things out, nothing new has happened and the goal posts haven't suddenly moved. It's unfortunate that Cas' council happens to have two SL clubs to consider (had that not been the case I genuinely believe we'd be playing at Glasshoughton now) but those are the breaks. The ball is and always has been in Cas' court and there's no point moaning on about the rules now just because we might not be able to comply with them.

I've followed Cas when they played Fulham (I think it was in Chiswick) in the early/mid 80s. I've watched them play London Broncos when they were squatting at Brentford and I've been to The Stoop to watch every Quins v Cas game since the London team moved there. Never has the whole ground been open. The first year or two one of the stands was closed. Then Quins took to closing 2 stands wth the away support behind the sticks & the home fans in the main stand.
This year only the main stand was open and even then it was far from full.
This experiment with RL in the capital has been going 30 years, you've had God knows how many names and even more grounds and you still can't fill a single stand.

One thing that I'd like to see as a Superleague franchise qualifying criteria is that each team should sell an average of 2500 to 3000 tickets through their club for each away game (Not including such as Murryfield magic etc to fiddle the figure).

Regardless of what such as Lambeth Quin states as 'a local game for local people'.....it is a game which has always been intended to be played in front of home and visiting supporters. As we know some teams like Catalan bring about 30 supporters, Quins maybe 150 ish, Crusader about the same...to Wheldon road. To me a lack of visting fans surpresses the atmosphere of the game. A surpressed atmosphere isn't an inviting one which grows crowds, and to meet with RFL requirements we do all (appart from 2 or 3 clubs) need to grow our crowds. I honestly would like to see such as the Quinns getting home crowds of 8,9 or 10,000 but just isn't happening! Will it ever happen, personally I can't see it and I will be the first to put my hand up and say 'I was wrong!' if it ever does.

We all see the odd televised quinns home game and think, with typical visual crowds of 2,500....3,000 how on earth can they meet the criteria of being self sufficiant, viable, solvent business as part of the franchise criteria.....they must be losing money....So in support of earlier statements of the game being corrupt, it's easy to see why people feel that things....things simply don't add up!

Anyway best of luck to all involved, lets hope that all are treat fairly and equally which somehow we all get the feeling won't happen!

My oppinion is Cas willbe dumped fromSuper League,not Wakey

Thanks for that.

fantastic...Really insightful thread, I'll sleep better knowing that

Congrats on packing so much fail into such a small sentence.

The best way to improve gates at a club is to have a successful team. That has been proven time and time again.

Clown by name, clown by nature.

Agreed, but if you look at Hull and Warrington their attendances improved immediately after relocating and more success on the field came later....probably on the back of inceased gate receipts and other stadium-related revenue.

Yep, Hull and Warrington were averaging similar attendances that Wakey and Cas get now before they moved to spanking new stadiums.

Whats your opinion based on? If we have half the luck your team had then we will be fine as you lot should be propping up the 3rd tier right now.