Quote The Silent H="The Silent H"The crowds in Toronto suggest otherwise regarding appetite.
It is what choosing Leigh represents attitude wise, not the club itself.'"
The crowds in Toronto were artificially inflated, see fiction !
With the exception of the MPG there were always empty sections, lot's of 'milling about' which in the UK means wandering & even one of Toronto's own suits admitted to giving away many tickets.
Report's that gates were left open & passers by beckoned in are numerous, as are reports that many local businesses had many tickets thrown at them. British fans visiting saw this. The beer garden was always busy I'll give you that !
It is interesting that Derek Beaumont was able to furnish the RFL & SLE with confirmed ticket sales for all Leigh games home & away with hard evidence but Toronto & Livolsi could not ! D.B also furnished the RFL & SLE with full financial accounts for Leigh Centurions showing a very small operating profit & his own personal wealth accounts yet Livolsi refused !
Despite all of the above & the many sly underhand actions of TW under the watch of Toronto's/Australia's wealthiest racist, Toronto Wolfpack for me had value, that value was to at least attempt to knock down doors & attract fans & more amateur RL players in Canada & the USA.
I have said it before & will say it again, even if Toronto only averaged 6/7/8 thousand in actual verified body counts they still outperformed many U.K clubs in that regard, the problem arises when many are not paying, it is a flawed & unsustainable model, mass cheap ticket sales at Bradford Bulls & a big wage bill was also their undoing if you need an example of how broken that model is.
Yes, Toronto attracted many fans, yes there was an appetite for R.L & Toronto's fans all appear with the exception of the occasional extreme *as usual* to be a great bunch even if their singing/chanting is a bit feeble. Toronto fans didn't deserve what happened, fans almost never do.
Toronto *again* was a new frontier & Wolfpack was something that could have been very, very good but it was poorly planned & badly executed !
Maybe *hopefully* Toronto & therefore RL Canada can rise again & grow, maybe more organically, though the problem with this is if the time taken to do this is beyond the patience of Canadian RL fans.