Quote: Donnyman "I am suggesting the sport does what it has always done best and that is to survive good sir.
In fact it survives ONLY because of the SKY TV deal. Would you like to consider where we would be had SKY or anyone else not bought the rights in 1996???
NA do not develop players or bring us TV money, France develop very few players and bring us no TV money - they likely have to go if the TV deal drops.
We are a corner shop who attracts a lot of local customers including the odd rich one, so we have to keep selling until even the locals don't want it.
That's the reality - and the problem is sending players to NA and France, and dropping clubs here for them to play in SL, will only shut the corner shop more quickly.
I'm a believer in letting people decide what they want to do and spend their money on, as long as 120K people along the M62 and SKY want to pay us money we provide the service but as for "expansion" forget it, the demand for RL is the M62, so sell to the real customers - don't sell it out to France and North America.'"
If "we" cant move the sport forward by either increasing participation and/or investment, there will, at some point, be no SL or any professional version of the game in the UK/France or N. America.
Like you, I'm no fan of the N. American experiment, which only has a future IF they can develop their own players - which is a HUGE undertaking and probably some way beyond the consortiums aims or controls.
To create junior RL with a wide enough base to support a few Pro clubs would be massive and there is little or no evidence of this even being thought about, let alone started.
However, contraction to the M62 corridor is an equally poor and short sighted option, which will inevitably lead to the demise of RL as a pro sport, as there are only 4/5 clubs that could even consider having any kind of Professional side.
I mentioned in a previous post that our best players are not actually being taken by clubs in France or N. America, they are being cherry picked by the NRL clubs and to a lesser extent Union and although there is little that the SL can do about this.
WE have to find new investment, new fans and increase the playing pool in the UK (and France) and this can only be done by increasing the games profile, retreating to "Yorkshire" and "Lancashire" just isn't the answer.
Your "corner shop" analogy may be accurate and yes, most of "our" customers are northern based but, corner shops cant afford the "product" that we are trying to sell and all of our aspirations need to be a little more ambitious than watching a glorified "pop n crisp" league sponsored by Londis or Spar, which no broadcaster in the land is going to pay to show on their TV or streaming platform.
Although I may agree with some of your sentiments, I believe that your solution would be terminal and despite my loathing of Toronto, as a "fit" for SL, I do believe that for RL, we either expand or die.