How do you think the semi-professional teams in RU handle the distance? Supporters travel from Cornwall to Yorkshire at least four times a season. Doesn't that make it more interesting instead of playing your neighbours week in, week out? These are exactly the changes that need to be made if you wish to see RL progress and become much more wildly accepted. If you wish RL to remain a niche sport in Britain with no prospects then I understand the reluctance to change, keep in mind it will probably get worse as other sports gain in popularity.


Doesn't look that way to me, even if it does come to pass that is what all the supporters and clubs need to speak out against (licensing) rather than berate the expansion of the game.

They could always do what your club does every few years and go into admin?

The interview with the chairman clearly shows he's not in it to make money. He just wants to see the stadium used all year round.

That was the case under past regimes. But Carl Hall is now running the club under strict financial guidelines and we have just ended another season in the black. The players don't get picked if they don't fully commit to training and if they don't play they don't get paid. At this level that is the way it should be.
The point i am trying to make is how do we know how committed to an RL team will a soccer chairman be when it starts costing him money for possibly not much return attendance and success wise.

Great news.

You can say that about anyone that takes over a club though. And your track record on this subject has shown that you'll look for anything to talk them down.

If they can support their existing brand at break-even, it's still a win for them.

There are 3 ways for any business, in any sector, to increase its sales:
1) sell more of your existing product to existing customers;
2) sell new products to existing customers;
3) sell to new customers

A RL team in summer at a winter pro sports club ticks at least the last two of those three boxes. To football clubs, our salary cap makes RL a strategically attractive option. I've costed a C1 club, and I think it's affordable at break-even, maybe even with a small profit margin. But we're only talking plus or minus ten grand. And if a club progresses to SL in, say, 20 years, those clubs turn over 20 times as much, and as the sale of Hull FC shows, they can be worth £2-3m. Bloody good return for a soccer business.

I hope Northampton succeeds, and I'd extend that to all the expansion clubs. If nothing else, it will draw hundreds of talented, ambitious teens into
our game in new areas.