we shall watch this space with newcastle thunder!

I think the partnership with the union team will be good. Would think there should be some sort of ticket deal to try to get union fans to go to league games and Newcastle is a bigger market to tap into so yeah, we will see.

Anyone else get sick of the M62 references. The clubs were there long before the M 62 was thought of. And for a hundred years or so Widnes were the southern most club, the original "expansionists" !

I know exactly where Bradford is. It is a slum development on the M-62 that deserves a place in SL because of its size and the size of its fan base. I believe however that smaller entities like the ex pit village of Castleford, or the chemical polluting town of Widnes, are small presences that cannot pay their way in terms of fan base size, TV appeal, or junior recruitment. They belong in the Championship.

Larger non-traditional areas like Newcastle and London, may not yet have substantial fan bases, but that will change and meanwhile they make up for that by their great TV appeal and great potential expansion of junior recruitment. That translates into more sponsorship opportunities and more players being brought into the game.

Trolling much?

Widnes is 7 miles away, St Helens 4.5 miles away, Warrington 2.5 miles away, Wigan 11 miles away, Salford half a mile, Huddersfield 4 miles, Leeds 6 miles, Wakey 4 miles, Castleford 2 miles, The Hulls about 18 miles.......so how better to describe a "national" sport that has it's top 11 sides all situated either on or a short distance from a single motorway?

I've heard Union referred to as an M4 corridor game, even though Newcastle, Leicester, Northampton, Sale, Exeter and now Wasps aren't anywhere near the M4, but with League, it's pretty accurate.

I know where it is I was born within your geographical description. What should they do,draw lots and fold half of them?

I blame the ministry of transport. Really, I do.

Since these clubs predate the M62 by 80 or so years - how on earth did they know there was going to be this major road typecasting the sport forever negatively?

If the motorway went a bit more diagonal or vertical, we could class ourselves as a broadly spaced out sport. But alas.

You can always find issues with a geographical spread. I cannot follow the argument RL needs to be in where most people are. Take football.
Like it or not, the most successful football teams tend to be in three areas: the London conurbation, Greater Manchester, and Liverpool. In other words: no. 1, 3, and 7 the ONS list as the most populous urban areas in the UK.
No 2 is the West Midlands area. No 4 is West Yorkshire.
So let's expel Liverpool and Manchester United to input Leeds and Aston Villa as priorities: silly.

RL clubs are organic. JC risk game strategy ignores this.

From the same doc.: "Greater London Urban Area dwarfs the others. It has the highest population, greatest area and highest population density of all urban areas in the United Kingdom. Its population is over 3.6 times and its area over 2.7 times that of West Midlands Urban Area – the second most populous and largest."
London RL? Birmingham RL?

P.S. Coventry is not in the West Midlands Urban area and nor is Gloucester.
Oh, and the population of the West Yorkshire urban area was the fourth in growth: these "pit villages" must be doing something.

Have a read of your history book Gutters and you will then know why RL is mainly northern based.
Strangely, if the RFU had dealt with the Welsh and some of the clubs in the Midlands, in the same way as they dealt with Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria the geographical picture would look significantly different.
It would either be ALL rugby union or a north south divide but, along the M42.

Remember, everyone walked to watch the games in clogs and flat caps, whilst walking their whippets, so it's a good thing that most games weren't too far away



On a more serious note, had the RFU dealt properly with the issue of broken time payments there wouldn't be any RL played in the UK and for this we are eternally grateful.