While were at it lets move Catalan to Barcelona, for the same reasons.

Not a stupid idea if the circumstances were right.

If Catalans Dragons could guarantee at least 15,000 fans every week in Barcelona (they got 18,000 there for a one off game against Warrington), then moving there, assuming a decent stadium, would be a great development for rugby league.

The original club could be renamed Perpignan, and hopefully have great Super League local derbies with the new Barcelona-based Catalans Dragons and Toulouse Olympique.

If the potential for RL in France is so great, then why in the last 80 years hasn't a home-grown league managed to flourish to the extent that we're not now talking just about how SL can catch up with the NRL, but also Elite One? And looking forward to a nailed on Australia / France world cup final?

What's different now compared to the last 80 years+?

What's different now is the rise of a French-player based club named Toulouse Olympique, which will soon be in Super League. That rise to SL will put in motion a local derby that will attract fans, and a growth in the junior structure already in existence at Toulouse, and thus the growth of the French player pool divided between Catalans and Toulouse. Should Avignon in southeast France also join Super League, given its rich junior history, then the player pool will expand further, giving the French national team a world competitive roster of players by 2025-2027.

No Vichy Government?

Rugby league was banned in France 77 years ago. Clubs had all of their facilities, kits, equipment and money handed over to rugby union and volleyball clubs. French RL spent decades struggling after the ban was lifted. They weren’t even allowed to use the word “rugby” as part of their sport until 1991.

Whereas now RL is looking like it’s as strong or stronger in Southern France as it was in the 1930s when it was becoming highly popular.

I’m very pleased that Catalans stayed up and look forward to Toulouse’s rise. I too think the rivalry between those two sides will be great for the game.

So basically what you are saying in response to HXSparky's question is...

The home grown French league is dire at best as French teams are desperate to get into SL.

For those who like a decent read rlhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Forbidden-Game-Untold-French-League/dp/1901347052#reader_B006X38B1Irl

There's no doubt about it, this will happen. People may laugh and joke but give it 10 years and the majority of players over here will be from part of America.

And that's the millon dollar question, right? Because what this forum regularly shows is that supporters have vastly different views on what they want from the sport, and how to achieve it (not that that's necessarily a bad thing).

From my own personal view, what I would like to see from the sport is competitive fixtures, involving the best possible players, playing in front of full and modern stadiums, developing in modern facilities and earning a good living from the sport.

The way to do that is to increase the level of money coming into the sport - from commercial, television and from supporters. Thats the reality of modern, professional sport. Where I think I disagree with some people in this forum is how to do that.

To achieve the above, the game needs to be talking to new audiences - the audiences that advertisers and broadcasters want to reach - and my belief is that expansion and licensing is the best way to do that.

If we want to achieve the above, we need to change the fact that the sport in the UK is strongest in the areas where the economy is amongst the weakest. When we insist that the future of the sport lies in small towns and cities where the High Streets are made up predominantly of bookmakers, pawnbrokers and takeaways, we have no right to be surprised or outraged that the only brands that want to support the sport are online bookies and canned mushy peas.

North America, whilst I agree it should be approached carefully, represents a very real opportunity to do that. Canada and Amercia represent new audiences, in big cities, big media markets and big commercial markets. Yes, they're crowded markets, but I believe RL does offer something of a USP in those areas. A small slice a big pie can offer us more than an big slice of a small pie.

The heartlands of the sport are and should always be important, but we can't continue to permit a situation where clubs can continually vote to make it harder to retain our existing talent by voting against even inflation-linked increases to the salary cap, or where clubs cannot sell tickets without pricing them at rock-bottom prices, where clubs opt out of competing in the World Club series because they don't think they can sell enough tickets, or where clubs don't produce elite talent through their youth structures, without that being challenged.

Different people may have different views on what they want from the sport, or they may have different views on how to achieve those aims above, but that's why I support expansion and licencing.

A very sensible and thought-provoking post, bramleyrhino (unlike the original that started this thread). What you say makes a lot of sense, but I'm not sure that the world at large will ever want to welcome the game we love with enough enthusiasm to make it work? It's not that we shouldn't try, but the game's administrators have demonstrated a large degree of ineptitude to be able to progress in any meaningful or strategic manner for many a year. Everything we do seems to be a knee-jerk based on who has a few pounds/dollars/euros to flash around.

I still maintain (and I've said this before) that expansion and licensing is the bees knees for many fans... just so long as "your" team is included in the party. What would a poll of all SL fans be if the question was whether they supported licensing or not if their own team was deprived a licence? An easy response here of course would be "of course we'd be in support", but if it was for real...?

As an example, if we take expansionism to it's extreme, let's assume that West Yorkshire has just one licence in the new world order of rugby league. Given recent history, the RFL may decide that Odsal is where the West Yorkshire team should play. Would Cas, Leeds, Wakey and Huddersfield fans all be happy to abandon their team to trek over to Bradford? I think not.

"Assuming that west Yorkshire had only one licence" is not what expansionists are aiming for. Serious expansionists want to see a strong roster of west Yorkshire teams like Leeds for certain, and some out of Bradford, Huddersfield, Castleford, Wakefield. But we don't need all of them, esp when there are two strong Humberside teams, and strong teams at Wigan, St Helens and Warrington to be accommodated. Expansionists can tolerate 8 M62 teams, but demand at least two French teams, and two north American teams, with more to follow.

Ideal 14 team Super League for 2021Wigan, St Helens, Warrington,
Leeds, Huddersfield, Castleford,
Hull FC, Hull KR,
London,
Catalans, Toulouse,
Toronto, New York, Montreal[/i

Ideal 16 team Super League for 2025Wigan, St Helens, Warrington,
Leeds, Huddersfield, Castleford,
Hull FC, Hull KR,
London,
Catalans, Toulouse, Paris
Toronto, New York, Montreal, Boston[/i

The latter will provide the ideal setup for the 2025 World Cup, which will have to start in mid-October to avoid the snow.

Whilst I accept that previous expansion attempts have been, shall we say, flawed at best, I would argue that we really don't have much to lose as a sport if - and again, it's an IF - what we want from the sport is something akin to what I described in the post earlier. If what we want is something different, then there's a different approach to be discussed.

Sticking with what we know, sticking with a formula that we know doesn't appeal to new audiences, doesn't appeal to new sponsors and doesn't appeal to new advertisers, is only going to get us going backwards. People on here openly criticise the RFL for only pulling sponsors of the ilk of canned mushy peas, online bingo, Big Soup and bookies but look at where the game is played - those are the prominent businesses in many of the towns that the game is strong in. The RFL can only sell the audiences that the club's provide.



I accept that some people will look at the team I support and say "well it's easy for you to say that...." I'd fully expect Leeds to get a franchise in an expanded league.

But again, I bring it back to my original "wants" from this sport and to continue to take your scenario to its extremes, what if a West Yorkshire franchise at Odsal meant that I could see the next Cameron Smith or Jonathan Thurston, in a new and redeveloped stadium, competing against other high quality players in high intensity, competitive games? I don't think that would be the worst thing in the world, to be brutally honest. Yes, I have an affinity to Leeds, but it's not some sort of tribal fervor. If the future of the game [iwas [/isuch an extreme (I don't necessarily think it is or has to be), but that is what it offered in return, I'd probably be prepared to make that six mile "trek" in order to see that.

The reason I prefer licencing to on-field P&R is simply because it puts a bigger focus on commercial failings and, at this particular juncture, I think that's the biggest danger that the sport faces. We don't have the foundations there yet to build a thriving sport based on a P&R model and, so far at least, there's not really enormous evidence that suggests that it brings us any added interest in terms of supporters in stadiums. Additionally, franchising doesn't necessarily mean the end to smaller town clubs in the top competition. There are models which can allow smaller clubs to compete with with bigger clubs competitively but I accept that these models would probably make it harder for these clubs to still be clustered closely together.

The RFL's gets called out for its marketing of the game, sometimes fairly, but I have always maintained that the biggest responsibility for marketing the sport lies with the clubs. They're the primary point of consumption, they're the people who engage with the audience more than anyone else, and they know their local markets better than anyone else. The marketing tactics and proposition that will work with an audience in Leeds may not necessarily work with an audience in Widnes, and that's why the club's carry the biggest responsibility - they should know who they are talking to, what those people want, and they should be actively going to get them.

The RFL is responsible for marketing the sport on a wider and on a largely commercial level, but what it is selling is nothing more than "access to an audience". If the club's are providing an audience that is difficult to sell, then the fault lies with the clubs - we can't keep using Nigel Wood and his team as a convenient lightning rod.

I guess in a nutshell it's whether RL goes for a single league (aka Super League) and leaves the rest (down to amateur level) to manage themselves in a separate structure, or whether we have a full pyramid structure across all leagues. Do we not have this perennial problem and arguments about licensing and P&R because we're trying to accommodate both strategies in varying hybrid ways?

If SL split off from the rest of the RL world (still governed by one set of rules, both on and off the field though), then we could have the expansionist vision encapsulated there, with the rest competing in a totally separate competitive structure. Applications for SL licences could still be considered from ambitious clubs, and hence potentially allow movement between the league structures (both ways), but there would be no competitive matches between SL clubs and the rest.

That would work better for me, so long as the licence criteria were clear, fair and rigorously applied (both ways).

This is how it should have been applied imo. Licensing done properly works. Maybe an independent body for licensing needs setting up to monitor and implement it. It should be a separate entity to the RFL and SL.

Absolutelty. The big problem in many respects is that the Championship is a league where so few teams actually want to be. Next season, we have Leigh, Halifax, London, Toronto, Toulouse, Featherstone and arguably even Sheffield who all, in one way or another, would argue their case for a Super League place (and you could also throw Bradford into that mix). But we simply don't have the room, the players or the finance for all of them.



Agreed. US Soccer potentially offers a good model to follow here. The NASL is still growing as a competition despite it being secondary to the MLS and no direct P&R, but teams have been "promoted" to MLS franchises (Montreal and Minnesota being two, and I think Atlanta may be another).

Now, the current NASL is a fairly new concept so it's doesn't provide a long-term blueprint just yet, but it's an example of a competition successfully co-existing with a seperate "premier" league above it and no P&R.