I contrast I have been involved with long standing amateur Rugby league clubs here in the heartlands who struggle to raise one team.

Mine has just folded it's winter Pennine team for that very reason.

Its' very depressing. When the Lost Loiners have been nomadic in the past, looking for somewhere to knock about on a Monday evening its' been the RU clubs that have been welcoming and hospitable, not the rL clubs.

Our home now, Morley, have been great to us for the last five or six years and there is literally NO issues with us being RL lads or any chips on their shoulders. In fact, many of the Morley boys and admin avidly watch RL as well.

I know of precisely 0 RU players/fans who were not thoroughly impressed by Burgess' try the other day. I suspect that had an RU player scored such a try many RL players/fans who would have dismissed it astripe on the grounds that the Vichy government seized RL's assets in france before they were born and that the Southern RFU refused to pay broken time payments and threw Ray French off a train.

LOINERTILIDIE--- "The point is that Union DO do these things. "

Well said and the GOLDENGAMBLE itself rarely pays out its full prize.Gives me the impression that sales have topped out.On away matches the prize available seems consistently smaller.
Conversely it would be interesting to know what the Gprem clubs normal revenue incomes are like for this type of scheme.

The biggest thing holding rugby league back in this country is the attitude of its fans IMO. Too large a percentage are the sort of bitter, small-time, insular people who are happy providing their own club is doing alright irrespective of the bigger picture.

Perhaps the comments of the Hull KR chief exec yesterday that he believes the average pre-tax loss of the 14 SL clubs to be in the region of £450k this year might act as a reality check to those within the game. It's quite capable of killing itself through apathy and mismanagement without Union having to lift a finger.

There seems to be an assumption that RL NEEDS to expand to survive, NEEDS to be innovative and forward thinking, NEEDS to be bigger than it is.

The RFL are continually trying to expand the sport out side a country’s ‘heartland’ and it continually fails.

Why is it that we can't just accept that we have a parochial sport and be happy with it – it has managed to survive for over 100 years as is and will never be as big as RU, why is that such a bitter pill to swallow?

Expansion makes sense from the point of view of the international game. We currently have players from at best 3 or 4 counties representing England, and little or no decent representation from Scotland, ireland and Wales.

I guess the long term vision is to have clubs from outside the heartlands, and a greater number of people playing the game, and being scouted, and therefore being available for the national sides.

At the moment, we simply don;t have the talent, or intensity of matches to compete on the international stage

If any business doesn't expand and look to exploit new markets it will wither and die.

By expanding outside its geographical heartlands, rugby league will attract larger spectator and player bases generating increased revenue. A larger player base potentially presents a greater opportunity of being competitive, maybe even dominant at international level giving the profile of the sport a massive boost.

The financial results being posted at all levels of the game would suggest that remaining as things are is simply not a viable long term option.

We will never be able to compete on the international stage as long as the Aussies continue to pump millions of $’s a year into their amateur game.

We will always be behind them in that respect, we will always be the poorer cousin.

A vast majority (virtually all) of RL income is generated within the heartlands so why bother wasting valuable time and resources trying to tout for business elsewhere?

A very idealistic view but outside the heartlands there is very little interest in our sport so why not concentrate generating further interest where there is already some.

The ‘Welsh experiment’ is nothing but pure folly by the RFL and will inevitably result in failure while also denying a team with genuine potential from reaching it.

How long RU fans will continue to support the game at the turnstiles if the dross on offer doesn't improve is a concern (or should be) to the administrators & press.
We have the better product IMO but not the clout nationally to exploit this.
Had any RU player scored the try made by Billy Slater we'd never hear the end of it.

At what point did the position right here, right now become what it will always be?

The challenge for the RFL is to generate and build that interest outside the heartlands where effectively the game is already operating at saturation point. How many more people in Castleford who aren't already interested in the game do you think the Tigers could attract for example?

Denying a team with real potential? Such as who? Widnes? Leigh? Halifax?

Take a look at what happened to those clubs when they were given the opportunity to "reach their potential" in SL. Add Workington and Oldham to your list too. They simply were not able to attract revenue sufficient to make them competitive, and drove themselves into financial ruin attempting to do so. Why should they, and indeed why would they want to, expose themselves to the same situation again?

Castleford already has a full time team – Widnes is currently in a viable financial position and have a business plan in place, there is already interest in RL within the town but they get ignored to try and generate interest in a geographical area traditionally dominated by RU.

I went to Newport this year and saw nothing but a handful of RL fans, a couple of hundred RU fans with free tickets and a couple of thousand Leeds fans. If that is the model that the RFL is basing it’s expansion on then the sport will wither and die.

How many expansion attempts will the RFL try before they realise that they are wasting time and money that should have been spent try to rekindle existing interest rather than trying to light a fire with damp matches and wet newspaper?