OK, I worded that badly.

Yes, Perpignan is a heartland. The point I was trying to make was that there were plenty of posters on here banging on about how <enter Northern slum town here> was more deserving of a place in Super League than Perpignan.

As a visiting supporter, I've noticed a hell of a lot more enthusiasm for Super League than I have in plenty of towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire that we "couldn't possible leave out because of history / tradition / blah blah blah".

Both!

Most of that anger was because a club was displaced rather than the league expanded to be fair

Although your northern ' slum ' analogy isn't very nice is it , it was these northern ' slums ' that invented the sport you claim to love and support

The fact that most of them were and are slums seems to have passed you by.

They game was set up by people who lived in mill, coal and engineering towns. Most of the players lived in those towns in slums and not on the big house on the hill.


however Bramley Rhino is wrong in that it is not the fact they are slum towns that hold the game back but the parochial attitude of those who live in them.

If people really cared in these towns they would go and watch their local teams. even in SL the attendances at all bar Leeds, wigan and Hull are poor compared to the populations.

I would argue that most of them are not as real Rugby towns as leicester and Limerick

The fact that you cannot pick where you are born seems to have passed you by

It was the bloke in the big house on the hill that set up the club and paid the players

It is not the Parochial attitude that has held anything back , for the vast majority of the 115 years the sport has done quite well , what has changed is society in general , to watch sport you no longer have to put your big coat on and spend the best part of the day outdoors , you just click the button

As for the rest of your points I wont disagree

I dont agree with this, Leeds has a population over 1 million, Hull over 700k and Wigan well over 300k. St.Helens is around 170k, but gets at least 70% of the the attendances of those 3. By population i believe Cas is the best suported team in the league.

I didn't want to mention that [ as it seems like nit picking , and all statistics can be twisted to suit ] but yes many of the ' smaller ' clubs do much better % wise than some of the bigger ones

Doesn't change the fact that Perpignan is clearly a rugby town ( league as well as union ) and is definitely 'heartland' for RL. Anyone who's been to the bar opposite the ground will see instant French RL history - pity the Wire game is at the union stadium this year.

london is RL heartlands too

I think for about 78 years from 1896 to about 1974 the game was doing well.
the problem is it never pushed on. We obviously did not develop better coaching, facilities, awareness of the international game etc which is why Australia dominated and ruined the international game because they were so good and everyone else was crap. Only now is there an awareness that the international game is vital to the longer term.

For years RL went of TV after the floodlit trophy and that programme on ITV etc.

Yet no one seemed to notice the significance of it. Rl goes off the telly and soccer takes over.

Other sports have changed faster. RU saw what league was doing and played games against Wigan to show the parochial / ' Traditionalist' RU types that the game had to change and it did. We have had no one with any vision in RL until recently.

RU has changed more in the last 15 years than RL has in 115.

Things that have been obvious in soccer still seem to be debated in RL now.

You will not find one big soccer team saying how they missed the old ramshackle grounds with 200 foot of terraces open up to the elements in place of bright shiny new stadiums except in bloody RL where they still argue why do we need a new stadium.

Here's a slightly bigger picture of the design.



I'm not sure if that is still the plan as that looks to be more than a 1,500 seat expansion.

It is at the Union ground to facilitate the rebuilding of the RL ground as shown above ....

As for boosting the local economy, the first season was supposed to have put around Eur.5 Million in to the locality (around £3million in sterling at the time with exchange rates).

I take it for the whole campaign for the return to terraces in football has completely passed you by, then?

glad they've removed the caged end and made it a square stadium. The atmosphere when I was there was great and that was with only 2 1/2 stands.

not even close...
rlhttp://www.citypopulation.de/php/uk-england-yorkshireandthehumber.phprl

Hull 243,000
Leeds 443,000
Wigan 81,000
Castleford 37,000

St Helens 102,000 but with a hinterland of 469,000 (scousers)

Perpignan 116,000 (2.5m in the departement (hinterland))

Yours pedantically