But by that logic then there should never be expansion because it is a great fear to take any risks?

You are forgetting that the great pioneers who started off this great game took a huge risk when they broke away from the establishment.

Any success is often built on a series of failure, but the success comes from the determination to keep trying!

Yes, there hace been many failed clubs, but look at the pattern. Those failed clubs were often rushed attempts.

who exactly has misappropriated funds? London, PSG and Crusaders received less than £30,000,000 collectively over 20 years......so who has been short changed? The likes of Wakefield are the real waste of cash.......£1.8 million a year spent avoiding relegation........major franchises and identifiable cities,,,,,not the likes of Salford or Widnes.....

The rugby league public care for clubs with history and tradition, not major 'super clubs' or 'major franchises'

The rugby league public voted leave and are ageing and becoming extinct faster than the T rex......if we don't evolve, we will die!


Richmond......London Scottish.....these were major union clubs up to the 90's.........the rfu stepped over their corpses on the way to being strong comp......we should do the same with the likes of Wakefield and not shed a tear in doing so.

Making the argument about age or political leaning really isn't going to strengthen your point. No one up north cares about Rugby Union no one down south cares about Rugby League

Really.....you have stats to prove this do you? Guess what...I have loads of stats that prove you're wrong, but carry on with your opinion......

Then your foolish ignorance is the problem.

It will always come back to the same choice: expand or die.

Print this off, drive to SL HQ and, like Martin Luther, nail this on Elstone’s office door.

only as a blueprint of what not to do....if you can't fill a 10,000 seat stadium then you really shouldn't be getting close to £2,000,000 in handouts each year.......RL fans.......and make no mistake, there are maybe 70,0000 of them left, are getting older and more selective as to where they spend their pensions....so it is time to forget pandering to them and to start finding a new audience.

This.

The "traditional RL fan" isn't going to keep this sport going as a professional entity. No amount of Eddie Hearn or demanding that the RFL "do something" will ever change that.

This doesn't have to be an issue of expansion of we don't want it to be, but the inaction of the clubs to grow, to promote themselves and to engage new audiences is what is necessitating this expansion drive. If Salford were successful in engaging Yuppies in Manchester and if Widnes were successful in reaching those affluent audiences in Cheshire, the expansion debate would be a very different one.

You can cling to intangible measures such as "atmosphere" as much as you like, but that atmosphere is going to decline anyway for as long as we keep listing to our dying breed of supporters who resist anything that we try and do to find the next generation of fans to replace them.

We cannot afford to risk the magnificent magical atmosphere that can be experienced at the AJ Bell Stadium or Belle Vue Wakefield, by bringing in either Toulouse or Toronto, there is far too much to lose and we will never get it back. Apparently.

For me, I’d love to see RL expanded as much as possible. Living in the Midlands, I want to pick up a newspaper and see it on the back page, walk into a pub and see it on the screens, and walk into the office on a Monday and have people talking about the weekends games.

But, whenever people talk about expansion, it’s always seems to be at the expense of the more traditional clubs, or that Super League is the be all and end all, yet it really shouldn’t be. It’s the grassroots structure of the game that needs supporting and expanding.

We need a two pronged attack of actively establishing teams in non heartland areas, but we also need a stronger Championship and League 1.

You look at football and you have at least 15-20 teams outside of the Premier League capable of being in there. The Championship is the fourth highest attended league in Europe, with the money to boot. Outside Super League? Two, three, four clubs at a push, and half of them would be around the bottom not adding much to the competition.

I thought we were going the right way with adding teams like Coventry, Oxford and Hemel to League One and giving that route to success, whilst allowing them to build at their own pace. But we need to close that gap between Super League and the Championship so that it’s not like dropping off a cliff edge, and that year in year we can have a healthy competition with promotion/relegation to keep it fresh.

If you have that sustainable route, then given time you’ll see ambitious and well run clubs rise to the top, whatever part of the country (or world) they are in.

Firstly though, we really need to get the RFL run in a more commercially astute manner, particularly regarding marketing and contacts, but if we can get that right, then we’ve got a game that has all the potential to go from strength to strength. Look at the rise in popularity of NFL over the last few years, it’s not all about football. If we can get the right league structure in place, alongside pushing the boundaries of the game into new areas, then it’ll be up to the ‘traditional’ clubs themselves as to whether they want to sink or swim. It should never be a closed shop where mediocrity is allowed to flourish.

I also agree with a post earlier, that the richer clubs need to be allowed to spend. Intoduce something like FFP in football to protect clubs from themselves rather than a cap that puts everyone to the lowest possible denominator. That in itself will force clubs to improve themselves off the field if they want to compete.

You do love to live in the past, do you not ? Wakefield have every chance of finishing in 5th place this season, same chance as last season. Trinity, a founder member of the Northern Union, have never been relegated by their performance on the field.

]




Yes they have

Name me a ground that has "magnificent magical atmosphere". I shall then visit said ground and compare it with Belle Vue, Even then, to mention the AJ Bell and Belle Vue in the same context is rather silly.