Quote: Pumpetypump "Its the Rugby League way. Try to destroy the roots before they take hold.
Why stay in Bridgend and become integrated with a working class population, when you can move to Wrexham 5 hours away. Why stay in Maesteg when you can go to Neath, Torfaen, in a slate mine or just anywhere as long as you keep moving.
Why on earth stay in a specific area of London and become embedded in a sense of community when you can move between Fulham, Crystal Palace, Barnet, Brentford, Twickenham, Ealing, the back garden of Buckingham Palace.
Why would you stay put in Blackpool, a sizeable solidly working class town, when you could instead move to become the second team in Wigan,'"
Because these so called expansion clubs do not become embedded in a sense of community
Blackpool spent 33 years trying to become "embedded" but attracted very little support (the seaside trip offered away fans a great day out but when Huyton who had no away fans landed in Boroughs last year the attendance was 240 Borough fans
Everywhere we go we are up against Soccer, and Union provides the "Rugby Alternative" Coventry City and Coventry RU are big clubs historically embedded in the city, so there is little enthusiasm to support Rugby league whether going through the turnstyles or actually playing it.
Can we claim a success in London after 40 years? It doesn't look like it, and is it a success when what we do manage to achieve is on the back of someone pumping in massive amounts of private money? The "success" is clearly very very expensive indeed.
So should Rugby Union be heavily castigated for their failure to get a foothold in Yorkshire and Lancashire? Where are Leeds RUFC after all these years??
If we want Rugby League to survive this won't happen via "Expansion" it can only happen through investing in the game in it's heartlands, so we need private money going into Bradford where they even dwarfed Bradford City, and Widnes a strong RL town by tradition. Prospective owners may still lose a bundle but this happens in all codes.....
