10 TEAM SUPERLEAGUE?

Quote: luke ShipleyRed "
I still have reservations about the whole American thing.
If it works great.
But we seem to be thinking that a country that already has 4 mainstream sports (and that's just at professional level, not to mention the high school, college leagues), where other sports like RU have been trying to get a foothold for years. To be our saviour, and through all this money into the sport. Like I said great if it works, but it's going to take along time.
And I can't help but think, that by then they'll have there own league set up, and won't be needing us.'"

I'm fairly sceptical about the North American venture. I see why it's easy to be cautious about its prospects.

However, I think we need to view this in context: our game, as it is, is dying on its feet in this country. Participation numbers have crashed. Crowds are stagnant at best. Our paymasters at SKY are apparently looking to reduce the funding. We're struggling to find any sponsors, let alone blue-chip ones. And the showcase of the game - the super league - has seen a huge contraction, losing our only club in the capital, and one of our few genuinely 'big' clubs at Bradford. Along the way, we've also lost Paris, Gateshead, Wales and Sheffield. The single example of our sport growing, rather than shrinking, at the top level, is Catalans, and they were 80 minutes from being relegated last year in favour of a second club in Wigan. If that had happened, Rugby League's top flight would have been smaller geographically than at any time since we went fully professional in 1996.

There will be people who deny this, and I guess if you're a few streets away from Saints, Wigan, Leeds or Hull you might argue that you don't see what the problem is. But outside of those few spots (it's not even an M62 corridor any more - just a few areas along it), the only reason people haven't noticed the game is shrinking is that they don't notice it exists in the first place.

The North American ventures, the sacking of Big Nigel, the scrabbling around for new structures, and even the grumpy Hetherington attack on RL journalists, are all stemming from the same place: we're in deep trouble, and people are desperately looking for something - anything - which might save us.

There is a big tension here between different goals: clubs like Salford, Widnes, Wakefield etc are themselves struggling, and so their priority is to save their own advantages and position within the game, which means fighting to preserve their share of TV money, to retain P&R to save their position at the bottom of the league, and to place obstacles in the way of other clubs which might replace them. The clubs like Wigan, Saints, Leeds, Wire and Hull are not themselves in deep trouble yet, but recognise that if the game goes down, they go down with it, and so are much more focused on what can be done to attract more TV money, more sponsorship and more attention to the game as a whole. They are much more open to the idea of expanding the game to a North American market which, while risky, at least offers new income streams, and new potential, where there is none left in the so-called heartlands.

To me, the situation is a choice between a risky expansionist "Hail Mary" venture which may not work, or continuing to do what we've always done, which will inevitably continue the decline we are now clearly in. On the grounds that a small chance of success is still better than the certainty of failure, sign me up for Toronto, New York, London, Bradford and Toulouse.