Are Bramley still run by that communist clown?

Groucho Marx ?

Everything is more expensive on the August BHW but if Wakefield or Widnes got to the final and didn't half fill their allocation, the same people defending Catalan would saying we should get rid of small town teams.

You have just undone the argument that we need teams away from northern England, if Catalans (and Toronto) are just a club like any other then why couldn't it be Leigh or Bradford or whoever instead? Why were Catalan given special treatment to get them promoted and then ring fenced from relegation in their first year in SL? Why do Toronto get to play blocks of home and away games to make their fixture list easier?

I am not saying we should get rid of 'expansion' teams btw, just that I don't understand why some people seem to think it is better for the game to have Toronto in the league over say Fev, no matter what their on field performances are.

Come on London beat the Fleapack for the good of all RL.Unlucky Pansymonium

I think it's also important to get a full team on the field.

I wouldn’t mind both London and Toronto in, for the good of the game. If we don’t grow the game it will be dead in 20 years or so, at least in a professional sense.

London would need to invest and be competitive though, otherwise they wouldn’t attract supporters.

Glad the Mad Max extras going to watch Toronto on free tickets are in MPG.With luck London will beat them

I'm not undoing any argument. I'm simply saying that if you're going to hold one club to performance a metric that is beyond their control, you need to hold all clubs to performance metrics beyond their control, rather than using this absurd double standard to judge Catalans.

The reality that you ignore is that Catalans are responsible for two failing clubs coming together to create one that is performing on the field and attracting gates that surpass many clubs in the heartlands, and that youth participation has increased in France since their introduction into SL. I ask you again; what more do you want them to achieve to be considered successful in their own right?

As for your last comment, the whole "why are some clubs more valuable than others?" thing comes down to commercial potential. How many potential sponsors are sat in meetings going "you know what? Featherstone is a real growth market for us!"? There is your answer. Sponsors and broadcasters, the people we need to attract to get more money into this sport, don't give a stuff about deprived former mining towns with 17,000 living in them.

You can decry that all you like and say that the only thing that should matter is what is on the pitch (ignoring that Fev have been nowhere near qualifying for SL since the switch to Summer) , but then you've no right to complain when this sport continues its decline and can only manage sponsorships from tinned mushy pea brands and payday loan sharks.

Just when is this "commercial potential" going to come to fruition? We're seeing zilch so far, and from the numbers being bandied around recently, there's no expectation of any increase on what we've got now when the TV deal gets back on the table. Indeed, a decrease seems to be what is being expected?

There's still no evidence of a coherent plan for the game that will reverse this "decline", whether that means expansion or otherwise.

Your rhetoric is great, but there's nothing substantial and sustainable forthcoming for the good of the game based purely on clubs outside of the UK being part of our competition. In fact, given our limited resources, they are a drain due to the additional travel costs for clubs.

Ultimately its down to the clubs to realise that potential, but the reality is that without the Catalans, we wouldn't have Super League aired on television sets in Continental Europe, we wouldn't have had companies like Renault or Air France KLM involved with the sport (both companies that have sponsored the Dragons in some capacity) and the geographic spread of this sport on a professional level would be the smallest it has ever been in the summer era.

But two things need bearing in mind firstly, its not going to fall into our lap. All clubs have a duty to go out there and grow their clubs using these tools, rather than expecting the tools to do it for them. And secondly, Catalans, Toronto and any other club will do things in their interests - to expect English clubs to benefit from the commercial successes of expansion clubs is laziness on their part.

As I've said plenty of times before, expansion is not necessarily THE answer, but it's currently the best answer we have. I've heard lots of people claiming that the answer is to "focus on the heartlands", but not one of those people claiming that can offer an explanation as to how doing so makes the sport relevant to new audiences and the modern TV and sponsorship market. If they could, I'd perhaps have more sympathy with the anti-expansion argument.

The sport spends too much time talking to the people who already buy it, and not nearly enough time talking to the people who don't. That needs to change.

So, genuine question, how does SL being aired in Europe and having Renault, Air France & KLM involved help the game IN THE UK?