Cutting out the bull**** according to Mac
rlhttps://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/10672245/brian-mcdermott-says-dropping-the-bulls-was-key-to-torontos-promotion/rl
Personally, id have put it down to spending CA$21,000,000 in competitions over 3 years....thats more money spent in 3 years by St Helens 2019/St Helens 2018/Leeds 2017 combined..... So if youre going to spend almost double the amount it takes to win 3 SL grand finals,, but do so in the lower divisions, you can hardly claim it as proof of future success..... They're re at ground zero now. No more buying titles.
Do the wolfpack management believe that they have done anything other than buy promotion so far?

"""Another stick Toronto are beaten with is the lack of Canadian players in their squad but former Great Britain boss Noble, who admitted talks over Williams had been going on for two years, told critics to ‘grow up.’ He said: “It might take 20 years. If you look at the development in London, it’s taken 25 years to get players through".

Grow up yourself McDermott London RL operated the Southern Amateur RL way before Fulham came along and way before that there were professional teams in London like Acton & Willesden, streatham and Mitcham and London Highfield.

London first hosted the Challenge cup in 1929, but the first internationals there were in 1908. It's taken London 112 years to have a London team with a Squad of mainly Londoners, but even then imagine that young side playing in Superleague this year, they'd be slaughtered without M62 players bolstering them.

And so McDermott yet again it's you, Perez, Argyle, Hunter and the dreamers who don't really like Rugby league for what it is that need to both wake up and grow up. Or to be fair to your clear maturity and mental capacities, stop treating RL fans like they are stupid.

Give it 1,000 years Macca and TWP will never develop players simply because they have no junior game to do it from and have no will to start one, and TBF can't start one whilst Union tightly controls the Canadian junior rugby game. What an immense piece of phoney nonsense your speaking, London kicked off RL in 1908 and it's been 112 years for championship level players to come through. That is the fact of the matter, and speeches like yours only serve to get people willing them to fail.

And finally of course you know you can get away with this as the RL press will lap up your stuff without any analysis or question. I thought journalism was about seeking the truth, but there's very little "true" about TWP. Some journo should have the bottle to point out Argyle never bothered to even try development when membership of Canada RL was on offer to him by Bob Jowitt let alone "25 years"..... The more the journos here stuff North America down our throats the more the number of people indifferent or against it will rise from the current 80%

Is there not enough anti TWP content on other threads?

Donnyman, was it Noble or McDermott who told the critics to grow up?

Like it or not, TWP cost the game nothing, not talking a penny away from the other clubs. I like the concept, just fed up ofcertain posters always bigging TWP up.

I think you're taking the comment out of context.

Yes, the money is certainly an aid, but I think the point McDermott is addressing is that his challenge was to deal with the issues that Paul Rowley-coached teams have long been critiqued on - that their idea of "tough" was about niggles, cheap-shots and ill-discipline. Teams coached by Rowley often looked good when things were going their way, but the cracks showed when it came to the crunch. Last year's Toronto team, with the same money thrown at it but coached by Rowley, may not have got through that Grand Final against Featherstone, such was the way they were frustrated (and even bettered) by Rovers for so much of the game.

As for the other comments, I again can't find much to disagree with. People know my views on TW, and I'm happy for people to disagree with them. But there is a section of the UK support base that wants to insist that Toronto cannot possibly succeed, that they will not succeed and that, even if they are wrong on the first two, that they should not be [iallowed [/ito succeed.

Believing the first two is fine. It's not unreasonable to suggest that it can't or won't work given what we know about the challenges involved, but I think that believing third one is just rancorous.

What angers people is how the facts are managed as regards TWP, and you could not get anything more to provoke the anger of any level headed English fan than to have to listen to people constantly blathering on about how successful TWP have been.

I've just read that Argyle has tipped up $21 million dollars so far in terms of supporting a business plan that promised to deliver TV deals and NA players as the measure of their "success".

I not long ago read that McDermott admitted there will be no NATV deals and no NA players. So come on then how can they succeed when by their own words they admit failure??

The problem here is with respect to you.... people dream of RL expanding all over the place, and they dream it so hard and so passionately that they lose all sense of logic.

Let me go again $21,000,000 invested and rising, and not a single cent from TV or a single NA player in the matchday squad, and an admission there will not be for 25 years

But even the 25 years is yet another piece of jam tommorrow nonsense that angers people and should not sustain any clubs SL status.

Those of us who are just as keen to see RL expand but who don't pretend it's happening whether in North America or France (no player development of any note and no TV money either) do not want the English game to be eroded by living with the failures of these two clubs. The politics of it all stinks, but maybe I should be doing a bit of dreaming - ah yes - a last minute withdrawal of Catalans and Toronto to be replaced by Bradford and Widnes. Watch crowds go up and SKY get some good subscribers back?

If you insist on expansion then put London back and offer Newcastle a place. I aren't against REAL expansion at all.

I don't think I have lost sense of logic. I've said previously on this forum that the first generation of Canadian SL players are, at best, still in pampers. I have also said previously that securing a TV deal is far from a sure bet - but being present in North America does at the very least give the sport an opportunity to knock on doors and make its case.

The comments about converting gridiron players to RL were, I believe, made by Eric Perez rather than Argyle. Perez is no longer involved with the club, so to hold any business to the ideas of a former employee seems, to me, to be "losing sense of logic".

Even if that were still the agenda, if TW have tried to develop players via that route and concluded that isn't viable, do we hold that against them? Theories, hypotheses and ideas are proven wrong far more often than they are proven right. Again, do we continue to hold that over their head for all eternity? Where is the sense of logic in that? How does that encourage new thinking?

For me, there is no inherent reason why RL cannot be sold to an audience in most markets in the world. There isn't something genetic about being born within earshot of the M62 that gives you a predisposition to liking RL. If what we have is a product that people want to buy, whether that is in Toronto or Thatto Heath, that should be celebrated and encouraged. The history of RL expansion shows that we've done neither more often than we've done either and TW is just the latest chapter in that story. In their three years of existence they've been shaken down for TV money, Challenge Cup bonds and business class flights, met resistance from almost every quarter of the game and decried at almost every juncture. Is it any wonder RL struggles to attract investment if that is how we respond?

And we shouldn't be trying to impose British sporting culture onto those markets. I highly doubt many people watching TW care that there aren't any Canadians in the team. I think they care even less about going to every away game, yet these are, for some reason, sticks to beat them with. North American sporting and fan culture is different to ours. Not better, not worse, just different.

What is frustrating about this whole debate is the rancorous opposition that I talked about above. The idea that Toronto shouldn't be allowed to succeed, even if they could, because people are worried about it taking food off the plate of the club they support. It's fear of change and it's not a positive mentality for any professional sport to have.

It's the same logic that sees people placing unrealistic expectations and demands on Catalans Dragons, rather than allowing them to be a successful club in their own right, just so that they can decry their achievements. If the measure of success for Catalans Dragons is "yeah, but is the French national team still crap", we should be applying the same logic to English teams and throwing plenty of them out of SL because England can't beat Australia.

To be clear. I am not willing toronto to fail, simply pointing out that if Argyle had bought Bradford or Halifax then spent the millions he has, then that team would now be in SL...... The difference being that hed not have to give away tickets and the club would be a lot closer to self sufficiency already through TV cash and Gate receipts. As it is he has neither, nor to date a major sponsor either and if he's dropping $7 mill a year for a hobby, then let's hope he doesnt get bored and looks both ways when crossing the road.

Slightly off topic.

I see that they've got their perspectives right over on toiletrldorcom With a thread started wondering if the national natural disaster befalling australia at the moment will impact the NRL season...... To call them shallow is to say they are too deep?

The difference is, if Halifax or Bradford got into Super League, it wouldn’t make mainstream media. Nobody outside of the same old would care, even many in RL circles wouldn’t bat an eye lid. Gate tickets earn nothing. If you think your club survives on tickets you’re deluded. It’s sponsors, screen time, corporate support and wealthy providers.

We’ve all moaned for years about the lack of coverage, if you have to buy column inches then so be it. Wigan bought names, actually they were attractions, in the 80’s. They were, and are still, a brand because of that.

If someone wants to plough in their money, good luck to them. Stop moaning and enjoy getting a bit more coverage, enjoy seeing SBW included in your season ticket price and enjoy a trip to watch your team in one of the best sports city’s in the world.

If the average price of attending a game in SL is say £20, then the 2019 season saw in excess of £30,000,000 taken on the gate at SL games including play-offs and the Grand Final.
£2,500,000 average gate income per club is more than £1,800,000 TV money that those clubs receive. I am all for off the cuff remarks when they are accurate, but yours is not...by any stretch even remotely that.

Sponsors you say?
HKR are sponsored by a local company who specialise in Domestic and Commercial Drain Cleaning in the Hull Area......Wigan are sponsored by another local company, as are LEEDS BUILDING SOCIETY on the shirts of the Rhinos....do you really think these firms are trying to grab customers in London by sponsoring the local RL side ?

I'll give you wealthy owners and the occasional corporate bone being thrown in, but gate receipts are a key part of the turn over of successful SL clubs. If you doubt me, look at the NRL or even super Rugby Union clubs that are frantically trying to replace the fans they alienated a decade ago when they all thought the TV cash could keep them afloat.

All I did was disprove this. £30,000,000 on the door is about £8,000,000 more than the clubs get from SKY....no PRO/ANTI wolfpack rhetoric, just cold hard data.......

clubs like Leeds, who turn over good money will still earn more on the gate than any other single avenue of funding......£3,300,000 on the gate is going to be more than any other avenue isn't it?
London only took 600k on the door last year and their #1 source was Hughes, but other than them, salford, Hudds and Wakey, the other sides all took more cash on the turnstyle than they did from SKY.....

It also costs more money to get that income. Top line, that’s correct, but to open the doors costs money. Banging on about away teams not bringing supporters is irrelevant. I’d rather have a progressive club with ambition getting the game coverage that an age-old plodder who bring 500 fans.

I for one will be looking forward to watching Toronto. Regardless of the away end is empty. And the media interest in them, and hundreds of pages of debate on here, proves it is worthwhile for the sport, given that they are not taking any handouts from the game.

Well said! You are right on the money, if you will pardon the pun.