Wigan's a pit town.Like most of the places.. up North..

Quite a bit to unpack here.
Firstly, being from the South, I consider anywhere north of the Watford Gap "THE NORTH" and often refer to some places with RL sides as Pit Villages as a term of affection. It's like Northern Monkeys.....just a bit of banter.
In terms of making way for expansion, before SKY came along and we parachuted London ad PSG into the sport at the expense of Keighly, Wigan were buying everything and the top flight had an average attendance of about 5.5k. PSG folded pretty much straight out of the traps and London began their nomadic existence. Meanwhile, the 2nd tier carried on with some pretty average attendance figures with various sides attempting to reach the SL an the supposed riches there. Teams to win promotion include Salford, Wakefield, Hull Sharks, Hull Kingstone Rovers, Castleford & Widnes. Of those sides, the Hull Teams and Castleford have increased their fan base, whilst Wakefield and Salford are embarrassingly low in terms of support. London used to be bemoaned for having a average of 4,900 in 2006......both wakefield and Salford had fewer average gates than that in 2018.
In terms of Hughes and his investment. The bloke is a cast iron RL legend, but a fool too boot. If he's flushed about 30 million of his own cash away, he's also flushed another 50 in Central Funding. With little planning, he is has essentially stumbled from season to season, ground to ground with not a clue of what to do. To his credit, the youth system at London is paying dividends with the Likes of LMS picking up SL rings, but in real terms, Hughes and London haven't done any harm to the game and certainly offer more in terms of growth than many of the 2nd and 3rd tier West Yorkshire sides do. In terms of Keighly. they had their chance to get promoted in 1996 and blew it....last year of full comp they were thankful for West Wales stopping them being the worst side in the three tiers. They don't bring anything to the table in terms of growth and development of the game and have a track record of being very VERY badly run. But you'd have them in rather than Toulouse



Back to the original topic. League 1 in 2022 is currently an unknown entity. Until te RFL announce the exact level of funding and the nextt format of the tiers of the game, the likes of Coventry and Skolars will hold back on any major spending or signings. If the Game does got to 2 x 10 with a third division split into regional sections, then these clubs along with the unlucky bottom 6 of the Championship will need to make their own way. If there is funding available, I'd argue it would be better spent in Wales, London and Coventry than Keighly, but that's just my opinion. The Broncos going part time has seen a great number of their own developed players being signed in the North and this shows the benefit of a strong presence in the Capital, but if you're of the opinion that Bradford bring more to the table, then let's see them earn it without any hand outs (or more handouts) from the RFL.

Not interested in what he's saying, he exists to just say the opposite







I remember when Brian McDermott was coaching London and trying to keep the club in Superleague. Although Hughes had the money, players did not want to go down to London and live there, they were more "at home" (whether they were overseas players or M62 born players) on the M62 along with their families and mates and the latter included overseas players who may have signed at different clubs but still socially met up with other NRL players.

In short and in theory there was a player pool for all SL clubs, but a large part of that pool was unavailable when McDermott called.

Still I suppose (as many fans say) clubs should [i"develop their own players"[/i. I suppose if they could all do that then we would not see them max out on overseas players. The issue for the league one clubs outside the M62 is there is no professional RL player pool in most of the locations they choose to provide us "expansion" from......

As for "give it time", London are 40 years on. We used to hear the same about Toronto even though they made no effort to develop players.....

£30,000,000 didn't buy success. And finally what are people gonna do when LMS and Clubb retire, and they can no longer be hailed as London's great success?

add that to the comments from McDermott when he was at Toronto saying how the game needs to think bigger than little pit villages, looks like eating humble pie every day now that he's at Featherstone, I hope he chokes on it

Quote snowie="snowie"add that to the comments from McDermott when he was at Toronto saying how the game needs to think bigger than little pit villages, looks like eating humble pie every day now that he's at Featherstone, I hope he chokes on it '" https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/ ... pack-works IIRC he got cornered in an interview when he had to admit that TWP hadn't bothered about player development and Canadian TV weren't bothered about screening them.... I think Mac could redeem himself if he took it upon himself to wear a miners helmet during the course of next season, Should that chafe a little too much then he can wear a flat cap instead......

Quote snowie="snowie"add that to the comments from McDermott when he was at Toronto saying how the game needs to think bigger than little pit villages, looks like eating humble pie every day now that he's at Featherstone, I hope he chokes on it '" https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/ ... pack-works IIRC he got cornered in an interview when he had to admit that TWP hadn't bothered about player development and Canadian TV weren't bothered about screening them.... I think Mac could redeem himself if he took it upon himself to wear a miners helmet during the course of next season, Should that chafe a little too much then he can wear a flat cap instead......

there isn't one big enough for his head

Yep going to be intetresting , he is not liked in Feth so either he will not last long or for once the locals are going to have to forgive and forget and that would be a first

Exactly we should stick to England n France in areas where there's an interest !

But the interest in those areas is dwindling and the areas are shrinking.

Wow, Toronto have moved on but this forum clearly hasn't.

This reminds me of the time another Brian went to manage Leeds United, that didn’t work out too we’ll either.