Really short sighted by the people at the RFL.

Toulouse are double the size than all clubs in lg1 and as big as some top champ clubs.

Yet by putting them in lg1 they will again see Toulouse be crippled by losing players to a decrease in the salary cap and travelling expenses.

Only way it would work is to do what Catalans were able to do and give them a SL place with a full time professional squad and a chance to find top sponsors and a TV deal to fund the club.

Good on Toulouse for giving a go again

I don't know, what is Toulouse' current wage bill? Can't see them spending £400,000 as is, so why would they be having a salary cut!

I find it weird that in 2006 the took a massive gamble to include Catalan into SL without any way of knowing how it would turn out. With no prior club from the south of France ever playing in English club rugby and the only other French club being a disaster.

Yet fast forward ten years they are only willing to let Toulouse into the third tier even with Catalan being nothing but a complete success story. And Toulouse arguably have everything you would think to even surpass Catalans successes

I'm sure the RFL doesn't think it ideal. In an ideal world, they'd go straight into the Championship. But imagine the cries of "queue-jumping" from English RL fans! Not least on here! I suppose the RFL is following the path of least resistance, and trying to keep everyone (more or less) sweet.

Yes, and that is what people with no leadership qualities would choose to do.

I guess London and Wales has dampened there enthusiasm for the wing and a prayer approach to expansion? I am pretty confident if Toulouse had an iron clad business plan, big corporate support, modern stadium and latent support worthy of SL and added value tot he SL TV money that they wouldn't have to jump through so many hoops. As none of us has any idea what they have or don't have in these areas I guess we have to trust the people that do know?

Hey.....

Why don't we take the top 5 from the French League, along with Catalans and the top six English Clubs???? and voila!!!!
Half the money going abroad!!
Half the jobs available for the English talent pool!!

Brilliant!!

You mean London the Challenge Cup Finalists and Super League runners up?

Even if only entered into League 1 if their recruitment was right they could be in SL within 3 years. While that would be quite a challenge this may be part of their thinking.

Yes the London that is no longer in SL and struggled to get 2500 people to games.

And Toulouse's average???

Yes, clearly a better bet, all 900 of their fans will make a huge splash!

Are you seeing any of the "big picture" or are you focused on the small detail in one corner.

IF RL does not at least maintain it's profile or, preferably improve it, the sport will fail to attract any increase in external sponsorship.
But, if income isn't important, we should stay as we are or, perhaps have a northern based pub competition.

RL fans are generally blinded by the tag line "the greatest game" when, unfortunately most of the country doesn't even know that RL
is different from Union

The current plan seems to involve dropping clubs from the top flight in order to improve average attendances in the top flight, so
that we can pretend that the game is in rude health, when the real situation is the virtual opposite.

There has to be a strategy to grow the game but, right now, despite a "successful" world cup, the game is almost on its , despite the
regular fanfare coming from the RFL.

This is probably the way we are going at the moment. The game needs to grow nationally before experimenting on foreign shores, we have sunk into a "3rd world sport" with very little stature. We have put all our eggs in the "Sky Basket" because our leaders at Red Hall have very little marketing expertise to go after the big global sponsors and have resorted to lots of subsidiary sponsors and tell us they are our partners.

We don't get "big global sponsors" because of RFL shortcomings but because we aren't the market they are looking for.

You could put the exact same marketing team and execs from the RFU into the RFL but we still wouldn't get Moët, Range Rover or Hilton Hotels sponsoring us. The RL supporter demographic isn't what they want to target and we don't get anywhere near like the national media coverage to make up for that.

In order to change that we need to alter the balance of RL away from small northern towns. This can't be done quickly. We can't just dump a new team in SL and hope it'll take off. UK sport doesn't work that way. The "new" teams in League 1 are a great start. I just wish we'd take some of the new TV money to help fund these clubs to a better degree. Hopefully Koukash at Salford can finally wind his neck in and start actually running a sports club instead of playing fantasy RL badly. A strong club in Manchester would be great.
Personally I think we should be targeting Manchester, Sheffield & Newcastle as big cities in which RL could develop a presence. Unfortunately, due to the inherent financial weakness of the clubs, the RFL will never have enough money at its disposal to target these places effectively and to subsidise the clubs in these places.

If we develop a bigger footprint in the country then more of the national media will take notice of us. Though we'll always be fighting against the London, middle-class centric nature of the national media.

The other way to garner better sponsors etc is the international game. We always get our best media coverage when England play, especially if it's in London. Companies also take notice.

So more internationals and a bigger national footprint in order to get a less narrow demographic is what's going to get us more/better sponsors rather than some mythical "top marketing team".
Whilst I don't think the RFL are brilliant (partly due to underfunding) it's still very difficult to sell a relatively poor sport, with a relatively poor supporter demographic, little national media exposure, little national profile, no household names and incoherent international aspect.
Which is why we generally get local companies sponsoring our clubs and 2nd tier national companies sponsoring our competitions.
Off the top of my head the only "major" company to be involved with RL for any period of time is Gillette.

Silk Cut! John Player!

But yes, you're spot-on there, I'd say.