Not sure what the relevance is of Wigan & Leeds getting smaller crowds than their football counterparts. All that shows is the popularity of football as no sport gets the crowds that football does. So by that argument no sport can ever expand in this country.

There are loads of places RL can expand into, just look at Championship 1. Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Wales, Newcastle amongst others are all potentials where the sports market has plenty of space for an RL club in the future.

To suggest nowhere other than the current RL heartlands would be interested in RL is just plain daft and ignores the big increases in participation in some areas in recent years.

He took a pay cut to go to Bath, from listening to him he didn't enjoy Sydney as much as think he should have. The top RL players in the NRL make mega money - Sam will not be able to earn more more playing RU in England than he would RL in Australia.

If anything Burgess 'enjoyed' himself too much last year. He wasn't as good on the field, was a regular on the Footy Show and in the gossip columns in Sydney. He started to get a lot of stick, particularly after the infamous squirrel-grip, which seemed to genuinely take him by surprise.

This year he cut out virtually all media activity and knuckled down to playing. As a result he was far more effective on the field.

Sadly I think the high profile of RU internationals and playing on the big stage more often was a big part of his decision to move. Had Souths not won the premiership I'd be certain he'd go back. Whether he does or not now depends on how successful he is in RU.

I'm not sure how much money has to do with it right now, although the potential to make huge amounts in RU if he succeeds is greater than anything he could get in RL.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Luke at Souths now. He was a fringe player last year, and with Sam gone the whole 'clan Burgess' deal has been weakened a lot.

The potential for money is far greater in Union currently for English players certainly. He's on apparently £250k at Bath but could boost that to around £500k just with England appearance money, never mind sponsor deals etc. And let's face it, he could play like Joe Vickery but he's going to play for England.

I was at the first American Bowl at Wembley, a pre-season game between the then reigning Superbowl champion Chicago Bears and the Dallas Cowboys.

They played IIRC seven of them, and at no point did the idea of playing a regular season game at Wembley even look remotely realistic. Indeed the NFL took the American Bowl games away after 1993 and focused more on Japan, Canada and Mexico.

They tried to run a franchise out of Wembley in the old World League/NFL Europe. It failed. Pretty miserably. In the end the NFL virtually gave up on expansion into Europe until fairly recently.

If you had said in 1986, or in 1993, or when the Monarchs were around, that NFL franchises would be willing to give up regular season home games to move them to Wembley very few people would have taken you seriously.

A SL team would work anywhere, providing you grow it, market it and develop it properly in the way the NFL have done. What doesn't work is dropping a ready made team into an area and expecting fans to take it to their bosom, then complaining when they're not immediately drawing 10k crowds and winning every week.

So true. The wales expansion was a farce. There certainly is scope for exclamation and championship 1 features as many expansion locations as heart land teams. It's still a massive step up to the next level but is certainly more sustainable

The NFL are only playing three games a year at Wembley not a whole season the dynamic is very different. Easier to market an exclusive - an example would be Bolt running a one off meeting. If the NFL were playing at Wembley every week I doubt the attendances would anywhere near as large. If you want to see elite American Football live this is your only opportunity, the same could not be said of a new RL franchise

Don't really know how seriously the NFL are taking expansion into the UK when they don't even know where it is???

there is only 8 home games in an NFL season, so hardly every week 8 games between september and january is easily sustainable with crowds of over 60000

Looks like Sam might be fast tracked into the England set up sooner than we thought.
Clearly made a good impression in his first game then.

Just saw Stuart Lancaster's comments, really hard to believe that the RFU just gave him another 4 year contract.

Sam has a lot to live up to. Apparently Courtney Lawes was taken off “after making an astonishing 12 tackles in an hour”.

As I said on previous page Lawes had an outstanding game on Saturday, I was there. The number of tackles is irrelevant, as more relevant was the change of direction from the Aussies to keep away from him.

What is also more relevant, is that I believe in Union, the stats for tackling are recorded as the first man in, rather than also including the 2nd and 3rd man, like league. I am not a defender of Union, far from it, but the comparison of tackles if made to league, should be a fair reflection.

Well we have the uneven fixture in the 2nd half of the league...there's our opportunity to take the game on the road.
Even double head them and play in areas like Birmingham/Nottingham/Leicester/Bristol/Newcastle