Look I realise you are keen to see SL in Ireland but you exaggerating the number of Quins season ticket holders won't wash ok?

right heres the plan...

first stick the ireland & scotland 'A' teams (players from the irish & scots leagues) into the northern rail cup

then those group of domestic players/squads would evolve into dublin & Edinburgh teams to be placed in the championship 1.....and then let them develop...

crusaders went from nothing to SL in 5 years....maybe that was a tad quick...maybe work to a 10 year plan? cos maybe having a full team of irish/scotsmen playing in the championship would do more for the development of the game there than have a couple of irish and aussies/kiwis in super league....

So we're gonna introduce third level rugby into Ireland?

I'm all in favour. The only way for RL to grow and compete with other sports is to grow the international game. We NEED a 6 nations style international tournement every year. I would like to see a scottish team in there as well, but not to replace existing teams.

So is trying to market a losing team-which is what will happen, they'll get hammered every week, the fans won't watch an the club will struggle financially because they have started with absolutely no foundations whatsoever and overheads that will cripple them.

Lets hope they don't follow the Crusaders model of expansion!

If RLI want a Super League team, they need one thing over everything else-money.

Feels like it should be a longer term plan.

Why are you talking about Widnes getting back into SL?

How did they manage that, oh yes, they were granted a place, not the same as earning it.

They were within 30 seconds of winning the Championship Grand Final so would have gone up regardless.

Because that worked so well with Cardiff in 95. Work to get an established amateur setup, not a semi-professional one that enters the fray with a wimper rather than a bang.

Melbourne Rebels seem to be doing okay in a sports congested city, where union had only played as an international game.

What non-league people want is to go and see a big game, take a fixture like St Helens vs Wigan fixture to Dublin, promote the hell out of it and test if there is an audience in Dublin. Take a Challenge Cup semi-final there and see if anyone is interested beyond the English fans traveling. I am a fan of the league on the road concept as it is in Australia, we seem to have gone away from it here, and perhaps times of austerity is not the best, but people want to do things that seem big; union is good at this, so we should up the ante and tell them how big the Challenge Cup is, or how seriously a Wigan vs Warrington game is.

Surely worth investigating, but Sky would only want to lose their big TV games if there was a good chance of a full house elsewhere in and around the British Isles.