Please show me where I've argued that London are a success. Don't worry - I'll wait.



See my post earlier in the thread. Wakefield not being in Super League doesn't stop kids in Wakefield playing amateur rugby league. The opportunity to live and play professional sport in cities like New York, on the other hand, is an opportunity that I think any young person would be more than inspired by.

You pointed out that it had taken a generation before London delivered SL quality players. Sorry if I misread this as you saying it was paying dividends after 20+ year = a success.

Maybe it won't if that did happen, but in my experience when I played my junior RL, I only went because my dad took me up initially to see if I enjoyed it but i knew deep down he was desperate for me to love the game(Trinity) like he did, I remember before I played he wanted to take me to a game at Belle Vue, but i was 6, watching anything was almost impossible at that age. So many of my mates dads were just the same as mine, so luckily we all ended up playing together.. He also only really pushed me to go & keep going , rather than push me towards junior football or Sandal RU, because he supported Trinity and had played the game himself and wanted the same for me, as his dad had pushed him in the 50's and his dad before . I bet loads of Pro RL players would tell a similar story if asked how they started playing.

IMO Not much has changed in the past 30 years as far as how a kid generally finds himself playing RL rather than RU or Football, it's almost as if RL is hardwired into our DNA and we're doing the same as our parents did in one way or another. All my mates that are Trinity fans, nearly all of them once their kids hit 6--8 have taken them down to Stanley, Eastmoor, Crigglestone etc to see if they enjoy it - same as friends in Leeds or Cas, so many take their kids to Community clubs. The kids that end up loving it & play week in week out and develop a passion for the game, just about all want to play for Trinity, plus their favorite player's either Tom Johnstone or Dave Fifita. For some reason it's so different to football even at that age, where usually they want to play for Liverpool or Man City nowadays & god knows who their favorite players are.

IMO Take away the City/Town club and gradually fewer & fewer parents will be interested in taking their kids to play, there won't be that same passion and aspirations that got many a dad off the sofa to take them, plus if the worst did happen, a whole generation of RL fans and parents are suddenly going to resent the hell out of RL. Of course some will always go because it's a good sport and they want their kids doing something, playing a team game etc; but if any of that becomes remotely true, how badly would the junior game be hit, in whichever area it happens to be.


Then again I could be completely wrong and you can make a different argument & we should chance it, and things may improve slightly.

THANK YOU. I know how keen you are for this to work, but for me I think that fundamentally using £Millions to form professional overseas clubs with no substance that then replace English clubs as professional entities who have (1) player development and (2) Paying TV audiences will destroy SL. Money can do good things but also bad things.

1. The only "proof" of the success of TWP's media marketing is a TV contract. Mr. Perez said they cannot get one without at least 5 NA clubs in Superleague. As I have said our next SKY deal is set to be lower and will be for a 10 club English game. How can you fit 5 NA clubs into that - could you deal fully and directly with this point?

2. It took London about 20 years before the likes of Clubb and LMS appeared but even 40 years on they only offer a handful of SL players with Clubb and LMS heading for the end of their careers, but that's not the point. They were playing Rugby League in London long before Fulham came along (SARL), but they aren't playing RL at all in Canada and TWP have abandoned any player development - please aknowledge this??

3. No we are not basing eligibility on profitability mate - we are just NOT doing that - eligibility is based on being an English club, capable of developing players, and attracting subscribers to SKY sports, with enough financial backing that when combined with a share of the TV deal they can manage to put out a team of a decent enough standard to compete in Superleague. Could you acknowledge this?

Could you deal with my points and not offer totally different points that aren't relevant? Mr. Perez himself said success was TV deals and player development??? Let's stick to Mr. Perez's rules as regards "success"?

RU and other sports, like American football, seem to manage to get people playing in new areas. Why do you think RL shouldn’t be able to?

You're absolutely right that this is, at the moment, how many people get into the game. It's how I got into the game.

But we can't ignore some alarming trends. Attendances are largely trending downwards, media presence is trending downwards, the games relevance amongst the public is trending downwards and participation is trending downwards. By simply relying on enthusuastic dads, we're going to continue that trend because those trends show that, generation by generation, we're not replacing the supporters and players that we lose.

There are a host of reasons why that is happening and if you were to write them a list in order of priority, expansion clubs would be way, way down that list.

More pertinent reasons are factors like:
[list
- Demographic changes - the make up of our towns and cities is now very different.
- Societal changes - People move around more, they commute longer. They spend time and money on things that didn't even exist not that long ago.
- Parental concerns about player safety - do you think that the current narrative around head injuries is encouraging parents to take their kids to the local RL club?
- Poor facilities - the club I played at as a kid doesn't look to have had a penny spent on it in the last 30 years. I'm part of a group who play tag rugby and even now, it's hard to find decent floodlit facilities.
- Competition from other leisure activities.
- The declining profile of RL.
- Declining birth rates - people are having fewer kids, that means fewer players.
[/list:u

Getting rid of expansion clubs doesn't address any of those issues, but those are the issues that RL (and every sport) has to tackle. There are sports that are increasing participation levels whilst working in the exact same environment that RL is working in.

Given the way things are trending (and have been for a long time), the idea that heartland clubs should be protected because "dads take their kids to the local club" looks a weaker and weaker argument.

They are able to - the list of countries that play RL has grown, but they also play RU in these places and RU has a policy of surpressing RL where ever it can. We had success in Greece and Lebanon but RU has actively opposed it. In Canada all the kids play RU who have all the volunteers and coaches to facilitate this, and Argyle acknowledges he can't beat that so he just accepts it. In England yes American football took off in the 1980's but after the novelty wore off it declined badly.

You can get anyone playing anything mate but to produce adequate numbers of talented professional players you need a player base of thousands to select the elite hundreds to develop and find the couple of dozen professional quality players a year that produces and not only that you need the development officers, the organisers and the quality coaches and facilities and money to do these things. So it isn't about "getting people playing" it's about producing a very large and costly development system with qualified staff and facilities.

I'm keen for the game to succeed. I want to be able to watch the most talented players, in top-flight facilities, playing in a vibrant competition. I've never said that North America is the only answer, but it is a potential answer. I've heard lots of people shouting "focus on the heartlands", yet not one of those people shouting that seems to have an idea on how that gets the sport out of it's current rut.



The latest Super League resolution says that there can't be five overseas teams in a ten team league, so that's that concern directly addressed. (2.7 of the October resolution doc [url=https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/03238540/filing-historyhere[/url). Nobody I have seen on the pro-expansion side of the debate is suggesting that could or should be the case (ignoring Jean)

I think it's right to acknowledge that TW have increased media profile. As I said earlier, I think that's its right to acknowledge that they have increased the reach of RL - it is being televised to audiences that it wasn't being televised to before. You have to chalk that up as a success to some degree.

Of course, the challenge is getting a paid TV deal. I don't necessarily agree with Perez that it needs "five or six clubs" due to the more fragmented nature of North American TV markets, but acknowledge he probably knows more about that than I do. Nobody has said that it is an easy challenge to overcome. But I'll maintain again that having a presence in North America opens doors that simply being along the M62 doesn't.

As for the Sky deal, that is going to reduce because, more than likely, we're going to let it. I've not seen any sign of what extra value we're offering Sky to justify a higher TV deal, given that it is well known how both the media and advertising landscapes are changing. If the whole justification for a bigger Sky deal is "we just want more", then we deserve everything we get (or not, in this case).



To say that they have "abandoned" player development is also a little sensationalist. They have "abandoned" an idea to convert gridiron players to RL, but ideas get abandoned across business and sport all the time. Some work, some don't - this one didn't, but does that mean that club should forever be tainted by it?

But I do see the club engaging with local clubs, both RL and RU (remember that the class divide across the sports isn't a thing in Canada like it is here). There is a hell of a lot of content being put out by TW about the community work they are doing. Is some of that window-dressing and PR? Possibly. But it's still a lot more than many heartlands clubs seem to be doing. The proof will be in the pudding but as I said earlier, that pudding still needs 15-20 years in the oven.

As for London, it's important to recognise the challenges that they and other non-heartland clubs have. RL is not as ingrained in the culture of those areas so it's harder to pull them from other sports to RL, and the cost of living in the SE makes RL a less lucrative career option. That doesn't mean we should give up. The cutting of development officers in the South East was absolutely criminal.



Why does it need to revolve purely on a Sky deal? Why can't we have a central pool where funding from different broadcasters all feeds into it? Why can't the competition try to structure itself in a way that can open doors in other markets?

Why does eligibility have to be based on being an English club? For starters, this is (and always has been) the European Super League. We now have a North American club involved and so far, there has been more said about that club than all of the 10 English clubs put together. That North American club is also reaching audiences and demographics that our other 10 clubs are finding much harder to reach.

If we're basing eligibility on ability to produce players, then we can make a case that an awful lot of heartland clubs aren't pulling their weight. If we're holding TW to that standard, we have to hold everyone to it. We have clubs that have produced barely a handful of England internationals in the last two decades - should we be casting them aside as well?



Firstly, Mr Perez is no longer involved with TW so to hold them to metrics that a former employee suggested is nonsense. I don't expect my former employers to be still using my ideas, and I wouldn't work in a job where I was expected to follow the ideas of my predecessor.

I don't think I am coming back with different points. I've addressed each one, acknowledging the pros and cons. I'm not entirely sure what more you're looking for. Do I think TW are a success? In some areas yes and in some areas no. Do I think NA comes with risks? Yes. Do I think those risks are worth considering given the potential reward? Yes - at least they offer a reward that's greater than persisting with the approach that has got the game into this mess. Do I think that NA is the only possible answer? No, but it's currently the best answer we have.

I'm not looking for anything but an honest debate that is based more on how things are rather than how we may personally want them to be. Your post is quite excellent in terms of an honest and direct reply, regardless of my disagreements with some of your points. I must say I disagree with you less than I did yesterday.

In general (whether these points are yours or not) I can never agree with the idea that "away fans are a bonus" and that a club has to somehow survive without taking away fans into account. I have a business based in a small town in West Yorkshire, and I do not turn away customers who may be in Lancashire. Where people who walk through a turnstyle come from is irrelevant a paying customer is a paying customer and I would not be asking stewards outside the ground to turn away fans who can't provide proof of address.

I can crunch numbers and I can maybe crunch the attendance levels for Leeds.v.Bradford or Castleford, Hull.v.HKR, or Castleford.v.Wakefield or Leeds and then project what the Superleague average attendances for English clubs will be in a transatlantic league without Cas, Fartown, Trinity and Rovers. Last year the SL average was 8,200 which is way down on the best SL year of 9,833. Our clubs attendances will go well below the 8,200 average should several teams purporting to be North American turn up here, customers are important. Customers here don't want Hull.v.Ottawa, they want Hull.v.Hull.K.R. Apparently they did a poll in Hull about the overseas clubs and about 80% of fans were against it!

I can never agree that clubs like Wakefield, Castleford (in their crumbling stadia) and Huddersfield (in their empty stadia) are expendable because they don't produce the players the bigger clubs do. I can look up the origins of players and Hull has a poor record in recent decades, and Leeds produce hardly any players from North Leeds, but like it or not the west riding clubs south of Leeds are a very important area indeed for player development and have developed players in good numbers. To withdraw SL status for these three clubs and shut down their foundations and academies will only shrink what is a shrinking pool of players already. It's no good telling us that in 20 years the first Canadian pro RL player will come along - we will be dead by then if we go Transatlantic.

To quote Eamon McManus "Toronto is a team of English and antipodeans owned by an Australian in Canada" my final point is how is it ever possible those who run Superleague will stand by and allow the league to go Transatlantic. they fought tooth and nail not to allow TWP into SL and promoted the idea of Toulouse instead, but were tied by an agreement with the RFL. Next time they will not be tied in this way.

The club owners and the fans do not want a transatlantic League. How then can it happen my friend?

I think it's important to stress that nobody is talking about "turning away fans away", as your analogy suggests. I do however maintain that this obsession with "away fans" plays an excessive role in the decision making and discourse around how to take the game forward. I don't think away fans are a good excuse for poor crowds, nor do I think Thursday nights are. We've got clubs who are used to the "bumper pay day" of certain clubs coming to town, and that leads to poor decision making like loop fixtures - clubs simply believe that the easiest way to survive is to play each other more,and it's damaging the product.

You might not turn away customers from further afield but I suspect that the customers you have from the local area are worth more to your business in the long term. I suspect they're more loyal, less likely to be swayed by other suppliers. That's generally how it works and it's the same in sport - a local fan is worth far, far more over their life than an away fan. That's my entire point in this - away fans have value, but nowhere near as much as a local and the emphasis should be on that, not away fans.

I disagree that clubs can't grow. What the sport has done for a long time now is look at downward trends in crowds, TV figures and profile, and ignored them. We're not adapting what offering to appeal to new audiences, instead relying on the same pool of people and the same, outdated promotional tactics. You cite Huddersfield as an example - a club that has persistently undervalued and undersold the sport with cheap ticket deals and, when it doesn't work they make it cheaper still. There's so much more they could be doing, and that applies to every club.

As for what fans and clubs want, I think it's fair to say that SOME clubs don't want Toronto and SOME fans don't want expansion, but some do and are more positive to it. What is clear is that the sport is very divided on this issue.

There is no right or wrong answer to it but my personal view is that, if the sport is going to address those downward trends, thinking that the clubs and structures that got the sport into this mess can get it out of the mess is the height of fantasy. I look at other sports and how they have adapted to the modern realities of professional sport (overcoming the same realities facing RL), and they've left RL for dust in so many ways. We don't solve those problems with protectionism, parochialism and a lack of imagination. I appreciate people will disagree with that, but I've seen a lot of mentions of "focus on the heartlands" but very little substance sits behind that statement..

your right very similar experience to me being taken to games never really understating the rules but enjoying the excitement in a full crowd, got to be around 14 and I used to go on my own with my mates,
what do remember was at Crofton high school around 1973 on wards we had a teacher that looked after us and taught us the game, he had also organised and brought in a RL official who used our team in a photo shoot to produce a booklet and poster to market the game, so like you say it is hard wired into you at an early age.
The poster got displayed at the back of the north stand for youngsters to read, My copy which we all ended up chewed by my dog



also remember playing Eastmoor high school who had only just changed from playing RU to RL and we wiped the floor with them as they kept kicking the ball to us, no idea of the game rules.

Take all that away and your lost the foundation