GAME ON: Toulouse Olympique v Toronto Wolfpack. Sat 14:30:00

Quote: Him "My own clubs problems will get sorted, our fans just need to learn a bit of patience and to accept we can’t win every year.

I get frustrated however at the bitterness often shown toward any non-heartland club in RL. The “there shouldn’t be any foreign clubs”, “they’re taking heartland clubs money”, “the RFL are helping them at the expense of heartland clubs” arguments are rife and consistent and then the delight and glee on display when they lose. These are often the same people who wonder why there aren’t more people with big money in RL backing clubs.

Wrencat in his latest post puts some reasonable concerns about when Toronto will be able to develop homegrown players. It will be some time. Yes they could have played 1 or 2 in League 1. That wouldn’t suddenly have turned them into Championship standard players and then another year or 2 in the Championship wouldn’t have turned them into SL standard players. They need to setup local roots as he rightly says. Well that takes a lot longer than 3 years and certainly takes longer than that to produce any quality players from it. However Batley have had 100+ years to do that and aren’t producing any at the moment. Someone said there are some Batley products playing in SL, I’m struggling to think of any.
This isn’t an anti-Batley post or criticism. Well not solely them. They are the same as the vast majority of British clubs below SL. Some people sometimes ask what benefits clubs like Toronto bring over British clubs. But I look at many British clubs and see these zombie clubs producing very little, sometimes nothing, for the sport and just staggering on from year to year.'"

I thought that you would be familiar with Walmsley (he's at Saints

) and Keegan Hirst (at Trinity) and they're just from the top of my head and of course any top players that they do develop would move on to SL clubs etc.
The point is that new clubs, dropped in to new non RL playing territories and without a network of junior rugby are 100% reliant on the rest of the RL world to provide their players and whilst it's admirable that a group of very wealthy investors want a RL side in their city, the questions over the long term future of the game in these places is massively worrying and its absolutely essential that there is some structure underneath.
It's like having the bowl full of cherries but no cake underneath and it needs both.

Aside from that the logistics with travel and climate make it impossible for clubs to play a balanced fixture program and again, this is not a one off (as it would be if there were ground improvements, it's always.
Dont get me wrong, it's great to be taking their home games on the road but, the cost for them, especially in the long term, makes this venture even more financially risky.
OK they will very likely get their hands on a slice of the SL TV cash but, while ever they exist, it just wont be enough and will necessitate huge subsidy .
Interestingly, if there were another 3/4 clubs over there, the level of subsidy would reduce but, at what cost to the domestic game in the UK.
Toulouse are the polar opposite.
They are in a RL heartland, with junior development etc although they would be battling with Catalan for the signatures of any up and coming French youngsters.