Agreed.

I am also not altogether happy with just accepting that "immigrant" communities don't play RL. Doesn't feel like an intractable problem to me.

The entire game is set up for the best interests of the majority of clubs. The majority of clubs happen to be in a pretty small geographical area, so we set ourselves up to try and overcome the problems they face.

London are different in pretty much every way, and the set up we have clearly isn’t working for them. The pretty obvious reason for this is that London don’t face the same problems as everyone else in SL, so having a league set up to solve problems London don’t face but everyone else does is clearly never going to work for London or any expansion club.

London needs to be treated differently, it needs different help and if it gets it they will be a success.

What help though?

Catalans made it work, and without the same help London have had, and for me one French team having to travel the way they do is much harder than a London team.

The league should be set up equally, without any one team treated differently to an another.

Perhaps the only way to make London work, is for the RFL to own and run it it's self? I don't know. But I do know that too much time has been spent on it to be where we are today. I am confident that other areas of the country (not restricted to the North) would have been a success with the same help.

We still have to sort out for next year, and it is clear to me that the league would be better for London not to be in it next year. Whether that changes for 2015, so be it, but at present London are not in a position to play super league next season.

I think Catalans are different, I think anywhere else in the country would be different. London have some unique challenges to overcome and I just don’t think the game is set up to help them do that.

The Salary Cap and overseas quotas for instance effect London differently to everyone else. London need to pay a premium for every ‘heartland’ player they sign, its not necessarily about them signing the big names, but even a relatively mediocre player would command large wages just to make it worth their while to move to London. That means not only do they take up more cap space but they
Actually cost more in cash. London are in a weird position where they can get a pretty decent overseas player for less than a pretty mediocre British player. That’s just the issues they see with players, never mind everything else.

Personally I think the RFL should investigate getting a London side in to bed with Brentford FC, and even if they have to become part owners get involved in the Lionel Road development and use it as a hub for ‘london rugby league’ not just SL but the amateur and youth stuff, aswell as international. Then if the RFL needed to take over the project I would give them a 25% increase on everyone elses tv funding, flood the place with development officers, give 49% of the club to a trust set up for the benefit of London Rugby League, and take 51% tell Gary Hetherington if in 15 years, London are playing in front of 12k crowds with a healthy youth development programme and a sustainable business plan that 51% of the club is his. If they can find investors for it, all the better.

With regards to the other parts of the country, yes and no

The fundamental issue with us expanding to other parts of the country is that these other parts of the country don’t have people willing to stump up the money like David Hughes was, maybe the RFL could push a little bit more, see if there are people in Nottingham, Leicester, Sheffield, Birmingham etc willing to fund an SL club.

The problems that any team outside of the heartlands faces are the same regardless of the level when they compete in leagues with heartlands teams. It being London just makes the situation even worse.

The problem is there just aren't enough people laying rugby league to make it sustainable outside of the heartlands. Once you move into Notts / Derbyshire it becomes harder to get a player. But pretty much every player you get will be from a Northern team, and will have to relocate or travel. they will also want more pay because they are going into a bit of an unknown.

For me, expansion needs to be done gradually. Get Sheffield big, get doncaster big. Then see what lies beyond. If you have loads of people watching and playing RL in Shefield then clubs in Notts / Derbyshire / Leics have some RL close by to play against and watch.

TBH though I think it may be a bit of a pipe dream to expect a SL team in the midlands in the next 20 year unless someone drops a huge wad of cash somewhere.

Nottingham has two big football clubs. It has a sucessful cricket team. Then there is Ice Hockey, which is next in the list. There is a mediocre RU team which barely gets 1000 fans. RL would be 6th in the list of sports people would watch.

This I entirely agree with.

Doncaster have just been bought by the football club, so have a lot more resource behind it now. They play in a super league standard stadium. The RFL should be working very hard with this club to advance it to Super League.

Sheffield have been doing an amazing job for the last few years now.

What a huge catchment area it is down there, and could really work with the right help.

I don't believe that, London clubs in any sport have found it easy to attract players...I'm sure a young Aussie/NZ'er or even a native Brit would rather be living and playing in one of the greatest cities in the world rather than in bloody Cas or Wakey...which even though I used to live there and will always have a place in my heart, it is really the back o' beyond and about 30 years behind the rest of the world

Most London clubs aren’t dealing with a salary capped sport where most of the player pool is based hundreds of miles away.

Say you are Ian Kirke for instance, pretty average player, say he is getting to the end of a 70k a year contract at Leeds. London offer him 70k a year for two years, Wakefield offer him 70k a year for two years. Do you expect Kirke to uproot his entire family move down south, have sell/rent out his house in Leeds, and buy/rent one in london for a couple of years or drive 15 miles from headingly to belle vue instead?

With all this talk of fast tracking the south yorks clubs into superleague, it's worth considering the one genuine hot bed of rugby league that isn't represented at superleague level.

CUMBRIA!!

Before you all say it's been done and failed, that was a long time ag. Workington in SL all those years ago was a rushed and very poorly run experiment that was doomed to failure. Nowadays clubs in the whole better run and well equipped to deal with the step up(bar a few xceptions). Lets face it there are no other major sports to compete wth RL in Cumbria.

Maybe it's time for the RFL to look at a way of getting a team from this area in to SL instead of persisting with the failure that is London.


Just a thought!!!!

I think the interest seen in the World Cup and how they have performed in the 9's make Cumbria a good shout. I live up here now and there is a lot of interest. Also there is not much other competition of other sports

A Cumbrian Club is definitely what we need in Super League, but in the future. You couldn't do it for next season. Featherstone, Halifax, Sheffield, are at least set up to be able to compete if nothing else, unlike London currently.

To pluck a club from Cumbria now would be a waste of time. And any super league club from Cumbria should be a merged club anyway.

To me the next logical steps to expand the sport would be:

1) Stabilise and secure the existing SL franchises (although I’m yet to be convinced that Wakefield can sustain the criteria to maintain their franchise)

2) Expand SL using already established RL strongholds – Featherstone, Halifax, Keighley

3) Look at outlaying districts to expand into that already has an interest in RL – Cumbria or Sheffield

Only when the above criteria has been achieved should we be looking to expand into ‘harder to crack’ areas such as Wales or London.

Walk before we can run, baby steps, softly softly catchy monkey, etc. although I suspect the brain trust at Red Hall are already planning a new SL franchise for somewhere equally as ridiculous, like Bath or Southampton.

Fev is a small town in a district which already has two clubs it cannot support. The idea that the future sustainability of professional rugby league on this country is small town clubs in poor facilities like Fev or Keighley is crazy.

Cumbria is an odd one because there is clear interest in the game but the geography of the area makes it nigh on impossible for a pro RL club to be successful, each town individually is too small and isolated with facilities which are too small to make SL a success on their own and they are too disparate geographically to merge.

Sheffield could be a huge success but they need money, they need a Koukash. The RFL need to find a way to attract an investor to that area, though considering they have actively dissuaded the investors already at London from staying with their idiotic proposed return to P+R I don’t hold out much hope for them,

as for baby steps, you cant get much smaller steps or a much softer attempt to catch a monkey than the 100+ years we havent done anything. How much smaller steps can we make?

The suggestion of Fev is to fill in next year, if they want 14 clubs, as London are not going to be able to compete.

In relation to the district, I have said it many times and seen no counter argument to change my mind, Cas and Wakefield should merge as one super league club, and that's it.

The issue with this thread though is what happens next year. Fev, Halifax, Sheffield, are the only ones set up ready to at least be able to compete, if 14 clubs is the required way to go.

London must stay for me, even if it means dropping down a division and re grouping, if the go down no one should come up as they would have no time to prepair and compete.
If London are not ready to go back in fot 2015 then Toulouse must come in, who I think are going to come in anyway or the best most stable suitable championship club, ( we desperately need another French team)