I was converted to RL many years ago after growing disillusioned with the direction of top flight football under Sky.

After realising that pound for pound the entertainment was better, I actually started following Saints home and away trying to get to as many games as possible.

It was probably the most enjoyable time I've had for enjoying live sport (been to many football major events etc) and I thought the fact that there was little travelling to do only encouraged me to visit more away grounds.

The one thing I never understood was RFL's attitude towards it's traditional clubs and support. I'm an outsider to the RL family, but I always got the sense that for some reason Featherstone, Leigh, Hull KR etc were somehow seen as expendable in the pursuit of pots of gold at the end of rainbows in Paris, London and Wales.

Seems to be happening again and it's sad to see.

To me the RFL should be looking much closer to home and ensuring that there are no more Bradford style meltdowns.

There are numerous RL teams within 30 mins of either Manchester or Liverpool who have seemingly not tapped into their potential big city support base.

If you want football fans (lapsed or active) to start following RL in the summer then you might need to simplify the league system into a format that is universally understood.

Featherstone is expendable. It is a tiny location built around Post Office Road. It is a little red pimple on the bum of the United Kingdom.

Leigh is a suburb of Wigan and deserves no respect other than for the Leigh Sports Village where, at the behest of Nigel Wood, important international are held before a crowd of less than 10,000.

Hull KR does deserve respect because it can mobilise over 8,000 fans to home games.

They all deserve respect and the opportunity to compete.

Each have played some part in the rich history of the game on these shores and could do again.

Not a fan of this idea, it just isn't part of the British sporting culture. Yes Wasps have done well so far, but its early days and who's to say what a downturn in form would do? despite all the hype, great ground MKDons are still in football's 3rd tier and are currently one place below the re-born Wimbledon team who started from the very bottom.

Best to keep following the strategy that Toulouse and now Toronto are following IMO, start low where costs and risk is lower, build a winning team (nothing brings the fans in like a winning side, regardless of the standard of opposition) and grow from there. We've been there and been burnt several times with the 'throw the team in SL, hand out free tickets and hope for the best' model.

I do agree that we should be looking to build in Manchester, Liverpool & Newcastle though, but not convinced on Coventry, the crowd at the 4 Nations game was mediocre for a double-header, Wasps have taken over the town, and it is a massive ground to fill (32k)

I like the sound of the Wolverhampton Warriors

I think it's the former rather than the latter. I assume it's in response to some of the West Yorkshire clubs struggles with their local councils over stadiums at the moment.

I don't think there are enough gimmicks in Rugby league me.

Are you completely insane, what a stupid response. Leigh deserve no respect, if it wasn't for them and others, Catalans, Toulouse etc would have a game to play, idiot

It's almost 23 years now (1994) the "Framing the Future" document was in draft form. The game is no further on, lots of Superleague don,t own there own stadiums, rely on imported overseas talent and exist on stagnant insufficient funding.

Relocation, how much money figure would you put on it, should we start at 30 million over a 5 year plan. Say 20 million for a new stadium and 2 million a year for player relocation and fan base instability.

We,ve had these nomadic aspirations for decades now, the expansion idea looked promising at one point for the Newcastle area and the West Midlands area.
Maybe send Leeds to Newcastle and Warrington to Coventry for a season experiment!

If a business wants to relocate I don't see why it shouldn't be able to though I'd be mightily peeved if it was my club.

I'm in favour of expansion and believe it is vital to the future of the sport. I think the current idea with Toronto and Toulouse working their way (hopefully) up the leagues is the right way to go. The clubs can then be built on decent foundations and hopefully set up a decent youth development system to produce their own players, that imo should be a condition of being allowed into the leagues (and for those already there but that's another debate).

All the talk of setting up a decent youth structure is just nonsense.
So you take a club from the heartlands, where they are surrounded with a host of amateur clubs all feeding players towards their local club (notwithstanding the face that Wigan and Leeds will hoover up just as much of the talent that they can) and drop that club into a new area, where RL may not even be played at school and where there are no amateur clubs.
How the hell do they set up a decent youth structure ?
The only way that they can succeed is to be given plenty of extra cash to sign "ready made players" or retain a strong base where they previously were and literally just play their SL games in the new location.

They could start the grass roots stuff but, as we have seen with London, this takes decades.