I don't think four clubs are ready. Four clubs might be ready with "some RFL support" but I'm pretty sure that the RFL couldn't support seven such clubs plus all the additional troubles that the existing clubs get into.

You can guarantee that.

Barrow was part of Lancashire until the 1970's.

Darrell Griffin is a product of Oxford Cavaliers. St Helens and Wigan have players from Hemel and Northampton on their books, in fact Saints U20s top try scorer this season was a Northampton RL product. Hemel also produce numerous players for Harlequins U20s. Bristol Sonics had one of their products play in Super League last year. I fail to see your point.

It's up to clubs to produce their own home support. No clubs should be relying on away fans to get by, and if they are then those clubs aren't viable and need to change their business model, or drop down to a more suitable level.

Do Leigh get relegated to the bottom tier now they've been bailed out by the RFL?

You beat me to it. Well done the RFL in helping one of our great sport's oldest names to meet its commitments to the players and staff.

If they hadn't agreed to pay our central funding direct to HMRC , then we would have gone into liquidation , then we would have been relegated , is that ' bailing out ' ? , yes it is to a degree

Unfortunately there is no "more suitable level" and we need every club we can get. RL needs the likes of Oldham and Workington (and before anyone brings it up we need Hemel and Coventry too).

No, we don't need clubs artificially masquerading as being semi-professional when in reality they are not viable and rely on a few hundred traveling away supporters to pay the bills. We certainly don't need to halt the development of the game at a nationwide level for the sake of any clubs like this. FWIW I don't believe there are any clubs that are currently in this state, and if there were they wouldn't last very long regardless.

I do.

Clubs lurch from one crisis to another and the clubs that are probably most vulnerable are the expansion clubs themselves. Skolars / Gateshead average about 250-300 spectators. At that level every fans matters. Skolars have done very well in marketing a game every year just before the Challenge Cup where they sell out the stadium; doubtless they shouldn't be relying on neutral fans from M62-land giving them one big payday a year but they are.

These clubs receive virtually no away support anyway though, so your point isn't relevent. In fact the chances are that away support will increase for these clubs when the new teams are brought in, certainly you would expect it to increase for Skolars. Also, Skolars crowds showed an increase when their form improved last season, and Gateshead's crowds were reasonable when they won promotion a few years ago. Nobody wants to watch teams getting flogged every week. If these clubs are more competitive, there's no reason why attendances can't improve.

How would you know how many away fans turn up at Gateshead?

Gateshead might get more fans if they were competitive but in the meantime they need as many fans through the turnstiles as they can get, the same as all the clubs in that division.

I wouldn't know, but I would assume they get very little, especially as your own argument seems to be based on the fact that away fans are unlikely to travel very far outside of their own region in great number. I'm not really sure what you are trying to get at here, or what relevance this has to any of the new teams?

Gateshead isn't as hard to get to for Yorkshire based folk as say Cumbria let alone Wales or London. I haven't ever personally been there so can't talk first hand about how many of the supporters were away fans but I have seen Gateshead turn up at Keighley. They brought more fans with them than it would have expected, far more than Skolars do (think I've only ever heard the one chap shout for Skolars).

Workington and Whitehaven were part of Cumberland until then as well.
Cumbria didn't exist as a county until 1974.
People from the south of the county are every bit as much 'Cumbrian' as those from the West.

Sheffield are probably the only 'new' British pro RL team to make a go of it in the last 50 years - and even they merged, went bust and were re-admitted into the pro ranks.

Quite.

The word "Cumbria" predates Cumberland by centuries. It was the name of the Celtic kingdom that took in today's Cumbria and crossed the border into Strathclyde. It lasted until the 11th century.

It is unnecessarily pedantic to point out that Barrow wasn't part of the county of Cumbria until 1974. The Barrow (and Furness) area had been associated with Cumberland and Westmorland for some time.