true to form bazza, true to form

I want 20 clubs in Super League.

The 18 I would think would be the most important are:

[iWigan
St Helens
Warrington

Leeds
Bradford
Hull FC
Hull KR

London
Newcastle

Catalans
Toulouse
Avignon

Toronto
Ottawa
New York
Boston
Philadelphia
Chicago[/i

That leaves space for 2 more clubs. One should be:

[iParis[/i

The final one could be another French or non-French European team.
Either:

[iLyon [/i
or
[iMille[/i
or
[iBarcelona [/i

Where will these players come from?

The French clubs' players would come primarily from France.

The north American clubs' players would come mostly from north America -- either rugby union converts or NFL rejects -- supplemented by a mixture of NRL players and Super League players to give the clubs top flight experience.

Pro RL came to France 14 years ago and still Catalans run with a largely English/Aussie first choice X111. Shane Richardson commented this week that the quality of players available here is such we can only really have 10 Superleague quality teams. He was the instigator of Gateshead, he knows the game here.You may dream out loud of what you would like, maybe resurrecting last years idea of 2x10 SL clubs, but that second division was not meant to be professional, the lack of private money & quality players being the twin elephants in the room.

Brian Noble scoured Canada RU for potential SL players watching the CRU international team. He concluded there were none. As for NFL rejects you do not seem to have taken on board that Eric Perez tried this and drew a complete blank. In promoting the idea of a 10 club Superleague Richardson suggested TWP, Les Cats and Toulouse should be in there. That would result in no SKY TV deal as they want 9 English clubs and I dread to think which two English SL clubs have to fall on their swords, resulting in the game here contracting further.

So despite you being castigated on here my friend you are in good company with Mr. Richardson, whose original Gateshead club were very impressive but financially collapsed at the end of their first season. I think what we do in England is best decided on by the English, not the Aussies and with respect to you not the French either!!

Donners, He's a WUM. It's his job on here to get reactions. What he suggests above is an obviously preposterous idea isn't it?

Well the Mods on here require respect, so I took the opportunity to politely reply that Jean's idea was IMO preposterous, but the Gentleman is not alone, you can find people across the game including a number of RL journalists who should know better, talking about the explosion of Rugby League. What are us mere fans to think when we are fed a published diet of Trans-atlantic and Pan-European expansion stories?

I can accept we maybe need to talk the game up as big as we can to outsiders (or do we?) but on places like this these fantasies do warrant a challenge because people start to believe it.

The game is expanding rapidly.
20 years ago it was played in 5 countries.
It is now played in 45 countries.
You can't make it a major sport overnight in new markets, but we have our foot in the door.
I don't know what you would call successful expansion, but I've followed the international game pretty closely since the 2000 WC, and it's expanded beyond my wildest dreams.
The difference between Union fans and League fans is that Union fans have turned their game into a big deal by outrageously talking up the success of their code, and people brought into it and the code has thrived. League fans talk down the code as much as they can for some perverse reason.

Toronto is a wildly successful expansion story. It's bizarre that people are slitting their wrists over all the negatives they can dream up. In all honesty, if Toronto never win a game again and disappear completely in 2021, the worst case scenario, they will still have been a brilliant success story for the game, just for the column inches they have generated for the game.

Jean, I fear that you really haven't thought this through at all.
Unless you are advocating SL 1 & 2, whereby SL 2 is actually the Championship by another name, this is too daft to actually register.
Where on earth are the players going to come from to fulfil your dream of a Transatlantic League ?? and on what basis are you picking the clubs ?
This is more fantasy than your usual "vivid" dreams, I'm actually a little bit worried for you.

No he is not. You have no answer to the proposal so you just abuse the messenger.

This is exactly what Donald Trump and his supporters do.

That should read "=#FF0000No i'm not" Have you forgot who you signed in as?



BTW - YOUR proposal is nothing but fantasy old bean.



And leave politics and Trump out of it, you are going off topic, and derailing the thread.

Thank you very much for replying.

The only measures of expansion I have used is Mr. Perez's on record avowed intention at TWP to expand the player base of the game and expand the take from TV rights. Recently after TWP gained promotion to Superleague, Mr. Mcdermott talked candidly about how the club isn't going to be developing any pro-players in the near future, and how despite SL entry there is no North American TV deal to put into the pot here. Mr. Perez's attempt at expansion failed on his own criteria and cost Mr. Argylle £5M. I however take your point entirely we can look at it on other criteria and of course you are right, the publicity thing has to be good for the game.

For Rugby League historically we were the big deal going professional in 1896 whilst Rugby Union stayed amateur. All our money went on wages and all the Union money went into the infrastructure of clubhouses and grounds. Only the northern clubs went pro- elsewhere Union grew the schools, amateur grass roots and facilities geographically, so when they went professional in 1996 we nearly died. We must remember that the TV deal saved us and to sustain that deal we need such as Les Catalans, Toulouse and Toronto to also get TV deals and produce quality players to play in front of the cameras to keep that life saving deal going.

A world cup needs to be a special event and in RL we really need to give some more though on how to get the best out of the international program.
The 4 nations was a great idea but, even that was being played too frequently.

The emergence of Tonga as a "top tier" international side should give some additional options and it's important that we try and make the most of their new lofty status.
Could more be done to help France improve as a national side - the inclusion of Toulouse in SL would have been a sensible step forward but, it was another chance missed.
The real difficulty is having any kind of local competition for England.

Australia can always have games with NZ (and Tonga) and of course their top players are already battle hardened in the SOO, which leaves England having to arrange annual fixtures with NZ, Aus or Tonga, just to keep them "ready".

Why?
Genuine question by the way.
SL can't support the 12 it has currently and the NRL has 1 of 16 not making a loss.
You fanning the flames of the misguided fools who think League is anything other than a minor sport and those who think that all it takes is one person to watch a game and they will be hooked for life is just inane trolling.
Tonga are a team if ANZACs and Toronto a rich mans team of mercenaries who play in toronto for 4 months of the year..... They are neither proof of the games growth or potential, but they do paper over the cracks in the administration of the game.
Toronto replacing london will see attendances rise in 2020 and no doubt rimmer et al will pat themselves on the back, but SKY arent as gullible as you and the rest...... Its what they pay for the rights which will dictate the direction the sport takes, not aussie trolls in the shire