Quote Sir Kevin Sinfield="Sir Kevin Sinfield"Why do RLfans always claim we have the greatest game on earth, but dismiss out of hand RL’s chance of success outside the m62 corridor. That’s something I’ve never been able to understand.'"
Success? Define Success!
London, whilst not a total disaster, still failed in Superleague, but now seem to have found their level as a Top tier Championship club, with a good youth set up, albeit at the say so of their benefactor.
Other than that, we've had PNG and Crusaders, both who were "backed by benefactors" who expected the SKY funding to be enough to run a SL club ......it wasn't!
Then in the tiers below SL we have Skolars, Newcastle, North Wales, Toulouse and Toronto, the latter of which whom are starting to look a lot like Crusaders in that they are almost frothing at the mouth in anticipation of the £1.8 million in funding next year (as are some of their suppliers)....it still won't be enough and to cmpete Argyle will need to drop £2 million a year for a decade.....Toronto are getting "PSGesque" crowds and seem to have a bit of razzmatazz about them, but next year in SL they will be dealing with much bigger fish, so the Jury is still out. Hemel don't play in Hemel, West Wales are a basket case and lest we forget...Gloucester and Oxford.......where did they get to?
It's not that RL fans want expansion to fail, it's just that done as a stand alone SL rich mans toy it has failed so far and done as "from the bottom up" scenario, it takes 2 decades or more and we've broken a lot of eggs in the process for no omlette.....Toronto are a Hybrid and may well buck the trend, but Dublin, with 10 of their starting 13 as Union Players not up to scratch, playing in the North of Dublin before moving south, run by a guy who runs Lancashire Irish RL with its 200 likes on FB, with no sponsors and with no backers other than some people that apparently "want to invest" according to a bloke that knows some other bloke at the RFL is as pie in the sky as it gets.
As HMcN, the funding guy at Skolars about setting up in a strange town with a strange game on a limited budget and with no pedigree or heritage........He should be Knighted for his services to RL, but the reality is his side after 23 years in existence and 16 years in the top tiers are a bottom 5 club out of the 38 we have in those top 3 tiers.....or better still, ask any London Broncos fan what would happen if David Hughes was to pull his backing....and it's not just outside SL either......Look at what happened to one of our only 4 winners of SL to date. Bradford wouldn't exist as the entity they are now without the benevolence of the RFL......and if, as expected, Bradford and York go up, then the Dublin Blues will be joining a division with an average attendance of 500 or so......
...so no. I am not dismissing this imaginary team "out of hand" but with the knowledge and research of seeing the multiple failures that have gone before.
