Quote: Starbug "
Or
RL can either be seen as a sport that can pay its way and with proper well thought out and properly funded expansion a sport that will look attractive to investors in the long term
or as a sport that constantly keeps shooting itself in the foot by making badly thought out , badly planned and funded attempts to appear bigger than it is , which is not attractive to investors in any term'"
This scenario doesn't really exist, going to potential commercial partners in a highly competitive professional sports market and saying "can we just put you on hold for a few years whilst we indulge in a spot of insular, navel gazing driven by our parochical tendency's fear of ambition?" is not going to work. The sport is riddled with parochialism and small time fear of new rival clubs in expansion areas, hence the million and one nutjob conspiracy theories about expansion clubs, in such an environment there wil be no funding for long-term investment if the RFL steps back from being ambitious about expansion. I just can't see ambitious potential commercial partners being convinced with the argument that the bright future has only been temporarily postponed, so it's worth persisiting with RL because ambition will be resumed again at some point when the flatcappers have got over their fear of not being a local sport for local people!
To get the big deals with the big partners we have to show we think big, not that we'll think big in a few years time, especially when the parochial tendency is clearly scared to death of thinking big, that's not what partners want!
