We judge them on whether each and every decision they have made have been good ones. You have to give kudos to Lewis over many issues especially I'd say for the huge amount of cash league was given from Sport England but his handling of the Crusaders "affair" was woeful.



Not at all. If the break-even point is 4,500 (as Samuel claimed) then improving from 3,000 to 4,000 isn't significant progress unless the owner is prepared to take the loss.

Whether you are bankrupt with a 3,000 average or a 4,000 average makes very little difference.

If we accept that the paranoid conspiracy theories are just that. How could it have been handled different, from an RFL point of view?


well i would argue cutting your loss by 66% in a year is pretty significant. I would also argue upping your income by 20% was fairly significant too.

And in the event they went bankrupt (which we should make clear they arent and never were) then it wouldnt have mattered if they got a million people attending every game

By giving them another three years to be ready.



No, it doesn't. If they had ten billion people watching it would still be a failure.

I don't think very many people consider the London Monarchs to have been a success story but very many people paid money to watch them. Now they are a mere footnote.

And what would have changed in those three years?
They wouldnt have got more fans than they did last year, or more sponsorship, or more exposure

so in three years time, what would they have had that they didnt have last year?

What is worrying is that when clubs were ' on their booty ' in the 80's/90's we didnt have a salarycap to prevent clubs overspending , we now do have a salary cap and most of SL let alone the Championship are still overspending and running up big debts

We can compare ourselves with football and Union all we want , but it doesn't matter what they do , what does matter is how our sport performs both on the pitch but more importantly off the pitch if it is to grow , having 70/80 % of our clubs reliant on large personal input is not good

This is what I said on the other thread, I think the next TV deal has to be all about consolidation

Yes, they would. Attendences had risen over their three years in the NLs.



An academy that had been going longer than 5 minutes for one thing.

it does matter im afraid, we dont live in a vaccuum. The bigger football and RU get, the harder it becomes for us to attract sponsors, fans and players.

Sport always has and always will have a large part of it reliant on Individual investors. There isnt a sport in the world that doesnt have the same pressures and the same outcomes.

Whether your the NFL or NRL or SL no sport is entirely self financing

higher than they were in the NLs, but not higher than they are in Super League. There growth has been boosted by SL not held back


their academy isnt dependant on which league they are playing in though. Or were you expecting in 3 years of NL rugby Crusaders where some how going to produce and a team full of SL players?

But surely it should be an aim to get as close to it as we can , as for how big Football and Union get , I would say they are fairly close to reaching the top and falling back down at the moment , when we have a situation where the biggest club in the world is paying a million a week in interest , things are close to popping

With the greatest of respect , any comparisons of Celtics growth of crowds has to be taken with a huge dose of Salt , you really had to be there to understand

They are what they are , and will be what they will be , The club , not it's fan base

If we get to a point where we are entirely self financing then we havent tried hard enough to expand the game.

We should get to the point where a well run club will some years make a profit, some years a loss, most break even. And as a game we arent miles away from that. We just need to have more clubs in that position

I'd have said that we need to get to the point where all clubs can operate without extra investment if they so wish , but all owners are then encouraged [ via ' matching ' of investment ] to spend their own money on growing their clubs/infrastructure and their fan/sponsorship bases

So your agreeing with him? Because that is what he has just said.

Now, where did Littlerich blame anyone else about Fax's problems?