Quote: snowie "It does show the promises from around 35 mins in and 4 years and still not achieved them'"
Yes it's full evidence of the business plan upon which TWP were allowed to enter the Championships.
The application was made at a time when Nigel Wood was chasing an RLIF job so he was really stuck in terms of making a judgement on Toronto. If he said "no" even on the basis the plan was totally ridiculous then that would still make him look far from an Internationalist/expansionist. He was effectively ambushed and he conceded TWP's entry as guests.
TWP never once asked Superleague if they could enter that competition. The answer could easily have been NO so they never asked. What they did was check out the current agreement between the RFL and SL on league structures and note that guest clubs were allowed to enter Superleague if they won promotion to Superleague.
They promised home grown players via grid iron conversions but dropped that very quickly. I would not have minded that because they put in their team several USA/Canada players, and people like myself were pleased at that and hoping for more. But of course TWP were never about player development only about the wish of one man to own a professional Rugby League club wether in be in the RFL or IIRC in the NRL. On promotion to the Championship.....
They sacked their American players off
Now of course the application also said that they would get a paying TV deal to add to the pot here. The game gave them time for this but it never came. When challenged Perez said that he could get a massive NATV deal but Superleague had to have "
at least 5-6 north american teams in it to provide the content for such an NATV deal
Given the state of the player pool and TWP's clear intention not to bother with development by sacking the NA players they had, 5-6 North American clubs could only enter Superleague at the expense of 5-6 clubs here. In short a Transatlantic League was impossible because such a set up would have lost us the SKY deal once we got down to only 8 English clubs.
The bottom line is we all crave expansion wether the casual speccy or visitor to this site, wether Martyn Sadler or Danny Lockwood, or Ian Lenegan and his colleagues........We all want to see a club bring us new professional players and new media money......
but TWP failed to be that club...... and we should not go on pretending they are, and trolling away on websites like Silent H is doing or writing pieces in the RL press Editorials about how wonderful TWP are without a scrap of credible evidence.
In a few hours TWP may get their first win in SL - if so watch that be hailed as a great success for the expansion of RL in the Northern Hemisphere.
And I thought we were an honest game Snowy. Thanks for your input.
