Off the field they have been incredibly impressive, hopefully they can keep the momentum up throughout the season. I still think we have made a big mistake making them play in league 1 rather than the Championship. https://www.sportinglife.com/rugby-leag ... deal/40047

Off the field they have been incredibly impressive, hopefully they can keep the momentum up throughout the season. I still think we have made a big mistake making them play in league 1 rather than the Championship. https://www.sportinglife.com/rugby-leag ... deal/40047

Spot on there in terms of learning about logistics. Next season will be so much harder anyway due to more fixtures as well as harder opposition.

I am glad they started in League 1 as it gives at least 7 teams the opportunity to go over to Canada cost free!

Absolutely correct putting them in League 1 first rather than the Championship. It would be trying to run before you can walk throwing them into the Championship straight away. No need to mess this up because of impatience.

Putting them in league1 is the dumbest of the RFL's ideas their squad will likely walk league 1 as toulouse did last year. It's no wonder league 1 struggles as it does, it's incredibly uncompetitive.

They will play in front of next to no-one away and then try and sell the worst standard of pro rl that exists to an unfamiliar public.

Then next year they will spend huge sums trying to get out of another semi-pro league where a third of the fixture list isn't decided until midway through the year leaving either 4 semipro clubs or 4 SL clubs possibly planning two trips to France and one to Canada within 2 months at no notice.

It would be laughable if it wasn't RL actively damaging itself and one of its best chances for growth in a long time

For the way to expand a sport see Super Rugby. It started as the super 12's with teams from Australia , New Zealand and South Africa.

It is now a league of 18 teams from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina and Japan.

If Toronto manage to survive long enough to make it to Super League, it will be in spite of starting in League 1 not because of it.

So you don't think they'll have any teething problems in their first year.....as a whole club not just the on pitch side of it.

what possible teething problems would be solved by playing in League 1?

IF we were seriously looking at expanding SL to include 2 French clubs and 1 Canadian club, the current structure is quite ridiculous.
The system has already increased instability in the top 2 divisions and in the event of any club making it through the promotion lottery, there is no certainty that their new "status" will last.
Surely, there has to be a return to some kind of franchise model ?

For clubs to survive and grow it is absolutely has to. How are Les Catalans/Toulouse or Toronto supposed to go out and sell tv rights when they don't know which competition they are in?

We could, quite easily, in only a year, be looking at trying to shoehorn 3 different countries in 2 different continents and 3 different timezones in to a competition which forces upon itself instability as a selling point.

It's looney tunes level nonsense to think that you can have a professional sport operating in Canada France and the UK (and eventually elsewhere) with the inherent instability and short termism of P+R, especially this form of it.

Sticking with any format of P+R would tell us the RFL/clubs are either A) stupid to an unfathomable or B) only paying lip service to growth and expansion.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.
Although there were issues with "franchising" previously, if we have any aspirations of expanding the game beyond the M62, it is the only sensible means of growing the game.
Of course it would curtail the aspirations of clubs like Featherstone but, the game needs to decide where it is going and then work out the best wat to get there.
For Toulouse and Torontro to succeed, you simply couldn't have so many "maybe's" for them to overcome, the game just isn't bige enough.
The "traditionalists" may point to the faliures of London, Paris and Crusaders and say "look what happened before" but, IF we are trying to achieve a top flight including Toulouse and Toronto then ,lets get on with it and make it work.

Toronto might have the money to compete at a higher level right now, but they wouldn't be doing it with any North American players. They have some players ready for this level, but need time to get them ready for the next step..

I think even expecting Toronto to have players ready for league 1 is a bit much. Many league 1 players will be either affiliated with or have come through SL and Championship academies. There is pretty much no north American players who will have had any youth training whatsoever.

Realistically Toronto will have the vast bulk of their players from the UK/Australia/Pacific for the next 10-15 years minimum. In the meantime all they can really do is take the best young athletes they have and expose them to the best quality players and coaching they can.

Playing League 1 is the right decision. There will be pros and cons to any decision they make. But there would be uproar if they were put straight into SL and there would be shouts of unfair if they were placed in the Championship. Toulouse for one had to come up through League 1. Yes they dominated, lost to Rochdale in the promotion final but managed to get up. And that will have done them the world of good in terms of developing their team, working out combinations. Building support etc. Success builds support.

They already have a number of North American players in their squad:

Ryan Burroughs (who started the CC game), Nathan Campbell, Quinn Ngawati (17 years old), Joe Eichner, Tom Dempsey and Chad Bain. All these players are more likely to be able to compete at League 1 level than in the Championship. If it were the Championship these players (maybe with the exception of Burroughs) wouldn't get a game. At least this gives Toronto the opportunity to play a few of these guys to expose them to a decent standard of RL. Bain for example has played alongside me at NCL level. A full time pre-season and a season at League 1 will do him the world of good as he already knows the game to an extent. Now it's taking the next step.

It's a year of learning. Logistics will be hard at first as it has never been done in RL before. RL has nothing to lose in this venture as Toronto are self funded as well.

Plus it gives the League 1 teams a bit of coverage too. Skolars have already announced record ticket sales for the match this weekend!

People on here as well saying about instability in the system. Yes there is. There are pros and cons with the system. But a lot of you are forgetting that the Super 8's are under review this season. It may get renewed or it may get scrapped. So we just have to wait and see in that respect. Personally I'd give it another 3 years.

And to be fair I think a lot of people are not giving League 1 a basic level of respect here. Let's no forget Toulouse weren't the Champions last season. It was Rochdale.

And since 2003 the league has seen 12 different winners with only York and Dewsbury winning it twice. With 6 different winners in the past 6 years! Granted the likes of Hemel, Gloucestershire, Oxford and Coventry probably won't be competitive, but they are expansion clubs and spreading the game in their respective areas which can only be good for the sport.