Top down hasn't really worked either , why / , as you say it takes time , that means money , lots of it

Has it been tried at lower tier properly ? , thing is you get 4/5 times as long for the same money , or you get 3/4 times as many goes at it for the same money

You're pessimistic ? , we're suicidal

The RU competitions are facing the identical problems we are - if anything on a bigger scale. The size of losses in their premiership dwarfs anything in SL. The broadsheets have been full of stories about the decline in crowds in the premiership so far this season - a cumulative 43K for the opening round of matches in September, for example. Three of the clubs are looking at potential location changes in the next couple of years.

The second tier seems to be struggling even more than our championship - only Bristol & Worcester seem to have any chance of bridging the gap and Bristol were very close to administration in the summer and axed most of their squad. If (as seems likely), the top clubs pull up the drawbridge and form a closed shop, I'd say it was just as likely that some of their clubs would think about jumping ship.

Funding cuts from Sport England seem absolutely inevitable - that's going to hurt RL before Sky do.

I'd be happy to have another expansion team in the championship as long as they are there to play in the championship and not to just hang around until they are shoved into SL. If they are there with the same rules and on the same merits as the other teams then I would be happy with a new away trip, new ground, new fans etc. Brilliant!

If however, they are just there to be fast-tracked into SL it is hard to get excited about and is damaging to the league.

Be interesting to see how Tolouses attitude to spending money / signing players changes when their exemption from relegation runs out as they have lost several of there better players from last year and don't seem to have replaced them with any quality. Can see them finishing bottom 2 this season and getting somebody relegated from 9th.

Would you be ' happy ' with this ?


Quote capacity non/lower league football stadium maybe 40/50 miles from the heartlands [ maybe the west midlands , somewhere like Stoke ] they set aside 300 K per season to set up and run a club , they encourage some Lancashire/Cheshire SL clubs to provide 4/5 dual reg players , they give the club a 4 player oversea quota , find and pay a young ex SL player as a general manager/coach and enter this club into Championship 1

They commit to 3 seasons with a provision for another 3 financially , but they make this club excempt from being promoted to the Championship for as long as they are providing over 100 K funding Expansion sensibly all out in the open without rushing things and without upsetting your existing members

?

I guess, to make my post shorter, a sceptic might say that if we can't run a workable club in Blackpool, or get any decent crowds in places like Oldham, Swinton and Featherstone, when they're playing in a semi-pro competition, what chance would a similar club in a new area have, given it doesn't have the history/culture that these older clubs have ?

Yes I would perfectly happy with that situation. I could also see it working even if it takes a while. However if crowds didn't take to it and they continued to need extensive RFL funding even after 5/6/7 years, how long would they continue to get this before they either remove the funding or try again in a different area?

But yes, I do like the idea.

Yes, we need to prepare as a game - particularly amateur clubs - for the sudden disappearance of a lot of our development officers in the next two to three years. I think one huge achievement which Lewis isn't given enough credit for was getting us onto the list of major sports for Sport England funding. I wonder whether, when the funding is cut, we'll see proportional cuts across the board, or whether they'll just trim the sports so that the usual favoured establishment games are protected while everyone else, including us, goes hang.

Is there any real ' marketing ' of those clubs going on , or are we all just expecting people to turn up ? , which then brings me onto another ' Rant ' , ' pet initiative ' , ' moan at the RFL ' , depending on your outlook

Sometimes ' history ' can hold you back , which then brings me onto another ' Rant ' , and so on and so on

By "favoured establishment games" do you mean sports like Union and Tennis that the BBC etc seem to show favour to?

Olympics.

I dont know , but unless you try , you'll never find out , dont forget , we're not trying to produce a SL club here , just one that can stand on it's own two feet in Championship 1

I agree and I do think it would work. Even if the club still needs funding after a few years, as long as the required amount of funding is going down and not up that will show progress and, over time, they will (hopefully) increase support and become self sufficient allowing them the chance to progress the same as any other team.

Stoke Stallions for Championship 1 2015

You could say the same for SL at the moment

I used to work at one of the Sports Councils until 2004. It was abundantly clear that the majority of people who worked in the sports councils had an entirely traditionalist/establishment view of relative sporting value. The "big" male sports were rugby union, cricket, tennis, athletics (incl swimming's Olympic end) and soccer. Soccer was actually seen as the poor relation, but couldn't be ignored simply because of its sheer scale. The "big" female sports were rugby union, tennis and athletics, with substantial support for hockey and netball. They didn't bother with women's soccer much, but the Sports Councils gave women's RU more funding annually than the whole of RL, men's, women's and children's, put together. When Lewis got RL onto the "major sports" list of Sports England, he plugged us into a cash cow which the establishment sports had been sucking on for years, despite the fact that RU, tennis and cricket are actually very rich sports comparatively.

But I digress. Back to the thread.