The London experiment failed miserably a good 10 years now. If a SL team in London was ever going to be anything other than a pathetic embarrassment (and it's difficult to imagine how it'll ever be anything but now) with any interest from a fanbase at all then it would have happened in the late '90s early '00s when they were at the top of the league and reaching finals. Time to try and save RL in one of it's core areas by giving the SL place they're stealing to a real RL club now.

I'd much rather a Cumbrian team

Problem with that is no one Cumbrian team has the fan base to support a SL team. And a merger is not possible due to distances and it'd be like us and Wigan merging!

Whilst it's doing the image of the game no good to have a struggling London team, losing a SL presence in the capital would, IMO, be a huge backward step for the wider development of the game.

I don't want my sport to just be a regional afterthought in the media, and I have massive disdain for the type of parochial thinking that seems to yearn for a return the M62 corridor mentality.

If we do hark back to days of flatcaps & simpleton accents, we'll never develop as a sport.

So would I, Barrow and Whitehaven probably have average gates of 1500 to 2000 at the moment, we would expect that to double once into Superleague., and bigger gates when the top sides come to town
To allow expansion into Cumbria, the RFL would have to provide subsidy to allow whichever club to get up to a decent salary cap expenditure level.
The grass roots are already there...................... its a question does the game have the vision to wake a potential sleeping giant.

Indeed. The London franchise is a key one, without it I fear the Sky deal would collapse. There really would be nothing for them to pay money for. No one else wants the rights, so they could offer whatever they liked.

What London needs is support and money. The NRL did it in Australia with Melbourne, in an area which was strong with other sports and didn't have any interest in league. They invested in it, I think the NRL still owns part of the club. London here should be funded by the RFL and should be exempt from all the caps rules and overseas player rules.

I'm not sure how much more money then need. They have a wealthy owner who has poured loads of money into the team.

There is just no appetite for a RL club in that location. I've always thought that naming them 'London' was a bad idea.

You do have to wonder about the RFL's management.

The t.v. cameras at Leigh are situated in the East Stand. So what do they do? Sell the majority of the seated tickets in that stand.

Surely they should have sold the West Stand first and filled it. It wouldn't have changed the game but would have come across better on t.v.

Absolutely. The sort of hamfisted thinking that has plagued our sport for decades

When the governing body moved the Northern Rail final to Halifax and halved the attendance from that at Blackpool that perhaps shown the wider fans of the game they do not have a great deal of vision. If Blackpool was not available and no evidence suggests it was not just cost take it to Morecambe perhaps but not a leading light in the competition. Fair play to the goons they attended Leigh in numbers when they could have saved the money for the final. However getting back to thread I hate to say this the game is now damaged beyond repair in the capital. If we are to throw money at it perhaps Hemel is the answer build a stadium and the club a bit like MK Dons in football. I just found yesterday very sad I thought it would be less than thirty in it with the significance of the game.

There are more embarrassing things in Wigan this morning, but as a general warning please don't post any photo's.

Remember we are not an x rated site.

Just a caution no Saints fan has crossed this line, but it is being watched out for.