Thank you for stating the bleeding obvious. Maybe one day we can make it work.




How is stemming the flow of losses insular? How is making the sport viable and more attractive to investors wishing to expand the game insular? How many investors do you think would be happy to take over Quins right now? Would the likelyhood of further investment be increased or decreased if Quins were breaking even?



The RFL highlighting the poor crowds at Quins is fact, you can stick your head in the sand all you want. And Quins have had as long as anyone as a full time professional club, so it's no good you blaming your woes and the state of RL on the "heartland" clubs, your club is as much responsible as any and more than most "heartland" clubs.

Still the RFL is being expansive, it's got North and South Wales covered with one club. Way to go!



Maybe the UK sports market is more competitive and commercialised now, it's a shame RL isn't.

No one is suggesting a return to a part time game played oop north, what is your problem?

Crusaders? PSG? Gateshead? All good ideas under your viewpoint

another pro expansion post

RL has to take risks to develop into a game which can make a proper claim to being a national professional sport, with a real international system on top of that. I'd love it if the RFL (and the RLIF for that matter) had substantial resources to put behind expansion, but the flatcappers would only scream their heads off, they already indulge in fairytales about London being "bailed out" with millions of pounds of imaginary money, what would they be like if real money was put behind investing in expansion?

Besides the whole flatcapper arguments for softly, softly expansion, not too far away and not too high up the league structure so it doesn’t compete with their own interests are just rubbish, they know as well as anyone there’s no point in doing it at all if the results aren’t even going to trouble the little fish in the little ponds. If many of the flatcappers had their way we’d be trading SL expansion clubs for a few more mediocre “traditional” clubs nestled conveniently in the “heartlands” who don’t bring anything new to the table except maybe a romanticised view of RL “tradition”, and this in return for an implicit admission that RL should just settle to be a small time regional sport.

PSG and gateshead actually worked fairly well given the limitations of each model which were stupid.

but the anti expansionist wont recognize these unfair penalties

for those that dont know :

1. gateshead got good crowds for the comp back then but had to survive on hardly / no Sky TV money.

2. PSG got very good crowds but the players had to play for their local LER clubs at the same time. when the club failed they eventually joined union and become Stade Francaise.

but all you hear from the anti expansion bridgade is it failed in these areas.

mention the failure in widnes, or leigh or other places and there are valid excuses

some people behind PSG saw the idea, the crowds at that stadium (charlety) and so became Stade francais.

unions gain was RLs loss

but hey, all i hear is how it was never meant to be for either

the evil flatcappers make excuses for widnes and say it was never meant to be in gateshead,

Stade Francais have been around since the 19th century. They are older than the Northern Union.

Another Paris team did merge with them in 1995 but PSG didn't collapse until 1997. It is nothing to do with rugby league.

theres a bit i read in a book somewhere about the collapse of PSG and a person behind it being impressed with the crowds they got at the charlety stadium and then Stade Francaise taking advantage of that

perhaps they meant moving their games to there or sometrhing like that

the reference clearly said Stade francaise benefitted from the demise of PSG.

You do realise that PSG got a number of crowds less than 1,000 at the Charlety, don't you?

a leigh fan asking that question! lordy me.

what were PSGs crowd average for their 2 years in SL vs a heartland club like Leigh?

being the bedrock of the game im sure Leigh had higher crowds than Paris?

To my knowledge Stade Francais have never played at Charlety.

ill try and find the book where i read it.