Londons largest attendance of the season so far'i believe so from there point of view its not bad

I don't want to re-open the debate about the benefits to SL's status of having a London team in the comp, but anyone who doubts the merits of promotion and relegation should look at whats going on at Leigh & Featherstone and compare the running of the clubs in question.

I'd love to see a vibrant London team in the upper echelons of SL because it [idoes[/i improve the profile of the sport, but they need to take a step backwards, re-invent themselves and start again from the bottom-up in order to start moving forwards. At the moment they are going through their death throes in public and it's painful to witness.

thankfully they are going down..feth leigh fax sheff will all offer more than london both in playing terms and att wise..this dead horse has been flogged for years

Apparently, 4 times more people watch rugby league in London within the M25 than watch it in cities and towns along the M62 corridor.

Maybe, but they aren't watching the Broncos and as the face of professional London RL in SL the perception to the country is that the team is an abject rabble of journeymen who get thrashed in front of two men and a dog and no-one in the south cares.

50% of people who watch rugby on Sky live in the South............. So what, it is estimated that nearly 90% of people who watch programmes on nudism wear clothes.

It is impossible to say what proportion of this viewing statistic is "out of curiosity" or "well i like sport and there is nothing else on". The only reliable measure of how popular something is, is are there people making an effort to go out and pay to watch it live.

Why do we inherently talk our sport down, whilst also dubbing it the 'greatest game of all'? What is wrong with any of those categories? TV money makes far more than gates ever will and the ultimate gauge of that is viewing figures.

Amateur rugby league is thriving in London and without wishing to upset anyone on here, it probably puts Warrington as a founding member of the northern union to shame. Across the south of England the game is spreading and it is important to remember that until relatively recently any amateur union player who dabbled at amateur RL was banned for life. Still today, many councils and schools refuse to allow League sides to use their pitches. We are starting to see some great players come through, compare that to Melbourne who gave a debut to the first home grown player in their clubs history just last year.

Nobody is denying that London Broncos are a nonsense at the moment. But when properly run there us huge potential. After everything over the last 18 months their atrendances are still better than most in the championship and not a million miles from what M62 clubs have seen at times. The RLWC showed a huge appetite for the sport across the country. The non traditional venues were packed with people who admire the sport but had never been to watch. The problem for me is that the Broncos are now widely seen as a failure and people like to watch winners, in any sport.

So next year with either a 12 team superleague or a 24 team competition involving championship clubs as well what will happen to the magic weekend ?

With so many teams involved there is a chance to move away from the magic format by taking the same games on the road, but spread throughout the season ,to up & coming & non-heartland areas of the country & because the games would be league games they would be competitive & not just exhibition matches.

That would be the way to gauge reaction to rugby league in other parts of Britain including London.

Yeah some really great things going on at Featherstone. Hasn't the guy who made all the promises about investment (and no doubt has committed the club to numerous un-sustainable playing contracts) just done one?

Interesting point about Fev, who are a complete basketcase and whose major investor and CEO have walked out on the club in the last 24 hours.

I dont think fev are a basket case but they appeared to be heading that way the more involved nahaboo got

Has he gone ?


I blame the curse of Jarrod Samutt

Agreed

The sad thing about Fev is they were doing everything properly and slowly building solid foundations within their means. They were wooed by that awful man like several other clubs and he seems to have now left them in a shambles.

It's not just Featherstone he has done it to, he's also done it at Castleford and 2 other clubs apparently.

Very surprised that Fev even entertained him considering his past history. He's held 13 appointments at 13 companies and each company has been dissolved.