Quote: Donnyman "If it helps Toulouse averaged 2300 crowds (notwithstanding allegations of them inflating this). Soccer and Rugby Union in the city average 16-18,000 so Toulouse are a distant third. For a good number of years now since they made a straight enquiry about getting into Superleague, they have been toiling to have actual French players in their team as much as possible as Superleague bosses fed up with Catalans having a largely English/Aussie team asked them to do this. They were also asked for a TV deal, and the existing French deal for Catalans could have gone up with the addition of Toulouse to SL but of course the phoney TWP got in the way, so now there is no deal.
As with TWP and as you know good sir, attendances are nothing to do with possible entry to Superleague - the requirement is to produce pro/SL level quality players and get TV deals which neither club does. Toulouse don't have a rich backer either (they say once in SL backing will come) so I suppose they are a french version of Halifax. If TO were to put themselves forward for Superleague then Halifax, Fev, Bradford, Widnes and Leigh should all apply as they are certainly better qualified on the correct criteria than Toulouse.
As I am sure you appreciate, but I say it for any dreamers reading, expansion isn't putting clubs clubs 900 to 9000 miles away into SL, but a small but noisy band of alleged RL fans, plus two RL paper editors and a dual personality & gender victim, seemingly think it is?'"
As my fellow Celt Mark Evans said to Dave Woods on the BBC a few months ago, if you're the third most watched sport in a city it really is a massive struggle, i felt he was suggesting that they should stop playing, look at the Melbourne Rebels, the Western Force, Mark is a former CEO of the Melbourne Storm. Is there really any point of Yorkshire Carnegie? I'm not including international cities like London and New York here, cities under 2 or 3 million people.
