Quote Fishermanscap="Fishermanscap"I have never believed in Toronto as a concept. You simply cannot start a pro team in any sport without a domestic/junior comp to back it up. Toronto is in world terms a relative backwater. It has its own sports but more importantly it sits on the border of the USA, do I really need to say more!
It’s a million miles away from the two centres of RL. In fact if you were to go out and pick the most unlikely city in the world for RL to thrive in, Toronto would be up there. So much money wasted that could have gone elsewhere rather than SBW bank account. Another RL tragedy in the making I’m afraid.'"
On wednesday last Martyn Sadler opined from his editorial position of Total RL .com that
[i"It is clearly in the interests of rugby league as a whole Toronto Wolfpack are successful to the point at which they create a significant market for rugby league in North America.[/i But from the point of view of the other eleven Superleague clubs the Wolfpack are seen as a [ithreat to their future".[/i
That was the wisdom handed down from the great man himself, but I am a loss to understand what on earth he means? Is this Success:-
1. Business Profitability
2. Player production
3. TV deals
4. Actual Canadian investment as opposed to an Aussies dollars.................all four? Not that I can see any of that from where I stand?
What is the [i[u"point at which they create a significant market for Rugby League"[/u[/i again is this 50,000 Canadian RL fans, is this Canadian TV companies signing multi-million deals?
Or is it when half of Superleague contains Canadian and American clubs and the English clubs they replace are down in the championship?
The business plan is in it's fourth year with the club itself admitting they haven't come up with the players or the TV money, admitting that importing players is a massive expense, and neither New York nor Ottawa have made any attempt to even put a toe in the calm waters of Championship one. On what basis does he believe English Superleague clubs are quaking in their boots? The man has a whole website to explain it, he has a whole Newspaper to set it out, but not once have I seen him articulate the complete business plan or define "success" or explain his vision.
Same for Danny Lockwood - all those pages to fill but he never gets past a sentence declaring how important Toronto Wolfpack are, and how horrible Superleague clubs are. I would not mind had actual Canadians in numbers come together to build a professional Rugby game in Canada........... Oh hang on they have, they've a network of junior and senior clubs and Toronto Arrows are now in the MLR...... only problem is this is union NOT league?
However if the
"significant market" was achieved in Canada, and the frit and backward English Pro RL clubs fought off their fears, stood down their own pro-ambitions and released their playing roster to emigrate to Canada for the good of Rugby League as a professional game how would that be "success"?
This week RL & League Express was 36 A4 pages and approximately 40,000 words, it's this big every week, same in League weekly, every year what 80 million words are churned out , enough volume for these editors to actually use some of these words for once to explain to the likes of you and me how we are wrong? and why we don't get it?