Quote: SmokeyTA "How on earth does it? Harrogate and York are nt in Leeds. It is entirely irrelevant to my point.'"
Leeds get support from Harrogate and York despite being called Leeds and being based in Leeds. Obviously there aren't as many fans from those other places as there are from Leeds, but based on your argument there wouldn't be any at all.
In relation to London, the argument is the same, they also wouldn't get a huge amount of support from outside the local area. A team called London based in Twickenham would still get the majority of its support from Twickenham and not from East London or North London.
Quote: SmokeyTA "it doesnt need to have more than there is in Hull. Just more than there would otherwise be and it is the obvious right way to go. '"
Obviously if the net gain was higher then it would be the right move, but I don't think that would be the case at all. You're neglecting developing a local base in favor of targeting the huge area of London and getting completely overwhelmed. RL in London is a drop in the ocean, decreasing the size of that ocean is likely to make a far bigger impact.
Quote: SmokeyTA "And to repeat, Them making a conscious decision to target large populations with city or region teams were one those catalysts for that growth which made them the most popular sport. '"
They haven't gone from clubs the size of London (or other RL clubs) to huge entities overnight because they 'targeted large populations'. American sports are operated on a franchise basis by billionaire owners, many of them have been relocated thousands of miles to opposite ends of the country. It's nothing at all like RL and completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Quote: SmokeyTA "
But you are arguing that those who want to watch RL, but were one of the 13.2m people in London but not Barnet would watch Barnet anyway even though they had no affinity or affiliation to Barnet. So Why wouldnt they watch Rockhampton? If the name doesnt matter and they would watch anyway why would you rename the Auckland Warriors the NZ warriors if it wouldnt attract more people?
If the name didnt matter and those in north queensland who were going to watch the cowboys would watch anyway, why are they the North Queensland Cowboys and not the Townsville Cowboys. '"
There's a huge difference between Rockhampton and Townsville and Barnet. Townsville and Rockhampton are relatively remote, isolated places that probably couldn't support clubs on their own. Barnet as you've said is a suburb, with a population more than big enough to support a club and also a huge population in the immediate vicinity. Your argument is completely ignoring the different nature of these places. It's like trying to compare Fulham and Whitehaven.
Quote: SmokeyTA "
Its irrelevant how big they are. We want the club to be as big as possible. The principle is the same. It doesnt change with scale.
Every other sport in the world doesnt look to clubs representing suburbs, every major sport in the world looks to its biggest sides to represent cities, larger regions or are none-geographical, the only exceptions are those which grew out of amateur sport and we are talking centuries old.
Why are we different? What are all they doing wrong?'"
So this entire argument is based not on logic, but on the arbitrary measure of whether something is a 'suburb' or not. And the fact that 'other sports do it' despite the only relevant examples (soccer in London and RL in Sydney) being operated with clubs based out of suburbs.
Quote: SmokeyTA "And? are we in a position of Londons Club being too big? Why wouldnt we want each club to be as big as it can be?'"
We do, we want as many strong clubs as possible. But 13 million people is far too big a catchment area for just one club, especially in a sport the size of RL. Even the aforementioned New York Giants and Jets playing in the biggest, most prestigious and well-known sports league in the world don't market themselves to that many people. For such a club to grow to a level relative to the likes of Wigan or St Helens would mean they were playing in front of hundreds of thousands of fans every week. It's just lunacy.
Quote: SmokeyTA "Everyone else in the world seems to manage pretty easily.'"
12 clubs all called London FC. Great.
