Quote Barnacle Bill="Barnacle Bill"This implies to me that you see this as an infallible blueprint for expansion. Strange then that you describe your frustration at the prospect of the RU coach about to poach the players from your school. This seems a bit of a contradiction but then my understanding of English is limited.'"
If you think that sentence is an infallible blueprint for expansion, then your understanding of English really is a very long way from anyone's I've ever met.
Can you really not see the difference between wanting to expand, and the method by which one does ? I'm quite happy to stand by a statement that says that I want RL to expand as far as it can as fast as it can. But the mthod by which one does that is precisely what is for debate.
As for your last point about the RU coach, I've read it twice and I still don't have any idea what point you're making.
On the Gallop point, all you're actually doing is saying that the RFL must be wrong because they tried something you disagreed with, but Gallop must be right because he says something you do agree with. As an point of argument, it's meaningless. Why would Gallop be any more prescient than Lewis ? Does the fact that a RL administrator says something mean that it's the word of God ? Really, after a century of some of the worst administration in sport, are you really saying that the fact that a RL administrator is currently taking the view that it's best to avoid any expansion means that is in fact the case ?
In which case, you might like some more Gallop quotes on the issue of why he doesn't want new teams elsewhere :
[i''It's highly advantageous for us in the competition for athletes that we can tell local kids they never have to leave their family and friends,'' he said.....''There is an increasing trend for youngsters to stay at home at age 18, and mothers like that."[/i
Ok, Dave, you've convinced me. The logic behind your desire to bury your head in the sand while the AFL set up shop in your back yard is flawless.
Here's another quote :
[i''There are obviously target areas we have our eye on - Central Coast, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and perhaps another team in New Zealand,'' he said. ''I think PNG is, quite frankly, a fair way off but our timeline now is to wait until the middle of 2011 before we have a real serious look at expansion again and whether it is the right thing for our competition.''[/i
Oh, hang on. Good grief ! The man must be schizophrenic. Maybe it's a different Gallop, and the other one was abducted by aliens ? What a mystery. Yet, if as you say the fact that Gallop says something means it must be right, then which of these are we to believe ? The one about how RL should expand to every major population centre in the south seas, or the one about let's not play the game more than ten minutes from Sydney's teenage boys' bedrooms ?
You've started off on the wrong foot. I don't believe in expansion at all costs. I don't believe, for example, that plonking a team on a point in the map would work because you need sufficient population and economic activity to support any pro club. I don't believe in wasting time in Liverpool or Glasgow because they're soccer-saturated cities. I don't believe in putting teams where there is no guaranteed moneyman as a backer. But I also don't believe that what's happened at Crusaders means that we should never try anything similar again. If you really think that's such a fantastic unrealistic opinion, then I can only suggest you give up now, because we'll never agree, and I'll never think you're right. But you're currently trying to accuse me of views I don't hold, and as your rather poor failure to provide "evidence" of my apparent view that there is an infallible blueprint for expansion shows, it's rather hard to do that.
