Why just north of England? It doesn't matter where you live.

Not as long as RU exists, it's the just the way it is.

Criteria lol.

Let's not forget SL demanded clubs have up to standard stadiums and could fill 10k seats and that lasted all of 5 mins.

Great Britain is dead and rightly so. A GB side full of English players 1 to 13 is not great Britain.

Not sure this adds up with respect, Most of the SL applicants are in the North of England so if we give places to French teams then there are less English teams....

The stark choice in a debate in principle seems to be would Bulls and Leigh be better for Superleague than Catalans and Toulouse?

Their fans don't attend SL matches in the north of England, a five figure number of Bradford and Leigh home fans would attend and several thousand away fans would be attending as well. Add that up and it's a lot of fans and a lot more money through the turnstyles............

The Bulls already have the youth structure, they were made to keep than going despite the horrendous collapse of the club itself and the move to Dewsbury.

It's as if the idea of getting them back into Superleague was cooked up by those who run Supeleague the minute they collapsed. Kind of [i"well we'll have to let the Bulls go for now but keep the academy as we will need to get them back"[/i

In 1996 at the creation of Superleague Lyndsay & company spoke of the following potential clubs...Toulouse, Barcelona, Rome and Paris

So they added the word Europe to the new entity "Superleague". Only Paris joined but collapsed in 1997 so I don't agree that that original name confirms there is any policy to become a European League. I suppose they could have changed to name to "Superleague (Transatlantic) Ltd" last year if that had been the case

People have constantly suggested that we may see a French TV deal if both Catalans and Toulouse were to be in Superleague. The first issue is do we block Bradford and put Toulouse in instead on a wing and a prayer that a French TV company can see the value of two French clubs playing mostly English clubs?

It has been noted that SKY will not countenance any less than nine English clubs in Superleague, Adam Pearson said this when he was interviewed by the RL press when TWP won promotion. They understood our policy to try to expand the game. However North America failed, and France has failed as Les Catalans aren't a French team any more and Toulouse only got 2,300 crowds, before their last two play off games attended by only 1,000. It's clear there isn't enough interest in France for their TV companies to provide a paying TV contract

Look at it this way. If we only had Warrington and York in a French Superleague what contract would SKY give us then? Giving SKY 12 English clubs would be excellent business at a time they are looking to reduce their contract with us.

As for your assurance all the Bradford people who were paying for SKY when Bradford were serial trophy winners and big time charlies, are all still paying for SKY then forgive me but a crowd drop from 15,000 to 4,000 probably indicates they are not?

Do we block Toulouse for a historically mismanaged club in Bradford?

yes

Serious applications are in, see the applications thread soon.......

"Block", stupid word to use, be frikin serious.

We need to convert some soccer fans in the north of England into RL fans. That's the only way IMO.

I'm not sure about "conversion" I've taken soccer people to RL games and they really like them. They just like soccer better, and nobody switches. It's maybe at a young age when a choice is made, I feel that some people prefer soccer as it's easier to play but others prefer Rugby league as it's all action unlike pro-soccer which is like a chess game to me?. Certainly Spurs.v.Arsenal yesterday was a bore-fest

Now I would say that the biggest conversion may have come when SKY paid for a professional Superleague. An average 5543 fans a game watched the old top ("first"icon_wink.gif division. Once we professionalised that rose to as much as 9833..........

The first part of your post is utter nonsense or maybe it's a Yorkshire thing? Plenty of people on this side of the Pennines actively follow both sports

It's not. You won't be surprised that plenty of people on this side of the hills actively follow both sports too.