Ottawa, according to the genius Canadian entrepreneur Eric Perez, is planning to put systems in place to produce a significant number of quality players. Hopefully New York and eventually even Toronto, as well as the north American teams that follow, will see the wisdom of doing the same thing. In the meanwhile Toronto needs to pursue a strategy of recruiting rugby union stars (which they are doing) and more good NRL players.

How many clubs do you want in SL and just where would all of these new clubs be getting their players from ??

Not so long ago, there were some, at the top clubs in SL advocating a cut to 10 clubs, when, anyone with half a brain can see that we should have actually expanded to 14 clubs at the last re structure.
You are advocating 10 "new" clubs to go into a 12 club league - out of interest, which 2 current clubs do you deem worthy of keeping


And, just to repeat, where on earth are these clubs going to find their players.
You could actually be Nigel Wood, with your grand plan built on quicksand.

Hi Jean,

That strategy is one ex-Rugby League star. That still leaves us with 249 players to find for your Transatlantic dream. Please be careful about calling Mr. Perez a genius. He's personable, charming, enthusiastic and above all an RL fanatic, but don't forget he was the one who restarted Canada RL in 2010 after the game had died out in Canada because it had been overwhelmed by soccer and Rugby Union (exactly what we are fighting against in England and the south of France). Eric persevered for several years but didn't get anywhere.

He switched to TWP knowing there were no quality RL players in North America He attempted to convert very talented and athletic Grid Iron players to Rugby League and again didn't get anywhere. I am afraid our Eric isn't a genius at all. He's a great salesman and currently he's sold you on the idea despite nobody being interested in launching a junior & schools Rugby League in Toronto, Ottawa will be different. Why would it?? I suspect junior sport in Ottawa like Toronto already is crowded out by Grid Iron, Ice Hockey, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer and if anyone fancies Rugby then Rugby Union Canada will be there to pick them up (they have 12,000 kids playing RU). Canada may never produce SL players, certainly not in the remaining lifetime of Mr. Argyle so he doesn't bother trying.

true to form bazza, true to form

I want 20 clubs in Super League.

The 18 I would think would be the most important are:

[iWigan
St Helens
Warrington

Leeds
Bradford
Hull FC
Hull KR

London
Newcastle

Catalans
Toulouse
Avignon

Toronto
Ottawa
New York
Boston
Philadelphia
Chicago[/i

That leaves space for 2 more clubs. One should be:

[iParis[/i

The final one could be another French or non-French European team.
Either:

[iLyon [/i
or
[iMille[/i
or
[iBarcelona [/i

Where will these players come from?

The French clubs' players would come primarily from France.

The north American clubs' players would come mostly from north America -- either rugby union converts or NFL rejects -- supplemented by a mixture of NRL players and Super League players to give the clubs top flight experience.

Pro RL came to France 14 years ago and still Catalans run with a largely English/Aussie first choice X111. Shane Richardson commented this week that the quality of players available here is such we can only really have 10 Superleague quality teams. He was the instigator of Gateshead, he knows the game here.You may dream out loud of what you would like, maybe resurrecting last years idea of 2x10 SL clubs, but that second division was not meant to be professional, the lack of private money & quality players being the twin elephants in the room.

Brian Noble scoured Canada RU for potential SL players watching the CRU international team. He concluded there were none. As for NFL rejects you do not seem to have taken on board that Eric Perez tried this and drew a complete blank. In promoting the idea of a 10 club Superleague Richardson suggested TWP, Les Cats and Toulouse should be in there. That would result in no SKY TV deal as they want 9 English clubs and I dread to think which two English SL clubs have to fall on their swords, resulting in the game here contracting further.

So despite you being castigated on here my friend you are in good company with Mr. Richardson, whose original Gateshead club were very impressive but financially collapsed at the end of their first season. I think what we do in England is best decided on by the English, not the Aussies and with respect to you not the French either!!

Donners, He's a WUM. It's his job on here to get reactions. What he suggests above is an obviously preposterous idea isn't it?

Well the Mods on here require respect, so I took the opportunity to politely reply that Jean's idea was IMO preposterous, but the Gentleman is not alone, you can find people across the game including a number of RL journalists who should know better, talking about the explosion of Rugby League. What are us mere fans to think when we are fed a published diet of Trans-atlantic and Pan-European expansion stories?

I can accept we maybe need to talk the game up as big as we can to outsiders (or do we?) but on places like this these fantasies do warrant a challenge because people start to believe it.

The game is expanding rapidly.
20 years ago it was played in 5 countries.
It is now played in 45 countries.
You can't make it a major sport overnight in new markets, but we have our foot in the door.
I don't know what you would call successful expansion, but I've followed the international game pretty closely since the 2000 WC, and it's expanded beyond my wildest dreams.
The difference between Union fans and League fans is that Union fans have turned their game into a big deal by outrageously talking up the success of their code, and people brought into it and the code has thrived. League fans talk down the code as much as they can for some perverse reason.

Toronto is a wildly successful expansion story. It's bizarre that people are slitting their wrists over all the negatives they can dream up. In all honesty, if Toronto never win a game again and disappear completely in 2021, the worst case scenario, they will still have been a brilliant success story for the game, just for the column inches they have generated for the game.

Jean, I fear that you really haven't thought this through at all.
Unless you are advocating SL 1 & 2, whereby SL 2 is actually the Championship by another name, this is too daft to actually register.
Where on earth are the players going to come from to fulfil your dream of a Transatlantic League ?? and on what basis are you picking the clubs ?
This is more fantasy than your usual "vivid" dreams, I'm actually a little bit worried for you.

No he is not. You have no answer to the proposal so you just abuse the messenger.

This is exactly what Donald Trump and his supporters do.

That should read "=#FF0000No i'm not" Have you forgot who you signed in as?



BTW - YOUR proposal is nothing but fantasy old bean.



And leave politics and Trump out of it, you are going off topic, and derailing the thread.