Bullies... no substitute common sense give me a team from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy, Belgium who get promoted but an 8 hour flight and no play before April at home, get real Toulouse would be expansion but yeah let’s let a club go to the wall to support Toronto who will fold as soon as the tycoon gets fed up.

If there’s noises about Catalans salary cap then looking at all the ins and outs etc what about Torontos ?

8 hour flight about the same as the Cowboys have to do play Warriors, like I say lets keep it all to ourselves in our little part of the world, we like it as a minority sport, where we can't be told to play games mid week as we need our weekends for the big boys like football and rugby union.

Lets get real shall we?

Reality is we have undersold the TV rights, the best looking games on TV tend to be local derbies as more people tend to go to these games and generate a better atmosphere, you can put a team in Timbuktu but as long as the NRL is awash with cash we will lose players and be unable to attract the better Aussies again so ok let’s have 12 teams each in different countries administered by a brainless organisation in Leeds yeah that works.

Sad to say RL is heading fast for the exit door call me a flat capper but our best option was to become the best minority game we could be as at the end of the day a great game/spectacle is what puts bums on seats and attracts TV cash just look at the NRL it ain’t much different....

This thread is an embarrassment to the Huddersfield club. Rather than worrying about the fact The Toronto Wolfpack could become a bigger club than Huddersfield Giants, try getting your own house in order.

Maybe even try copying some of the Wolfpack’s ideas to get fans to your games, they get crowds Huddersfield could only dream about.

If Toronto are going to be a success - and I'll be honest they've already been around for a lot longer than I thought they would be - then the league needs to accommodate their needs. It's as simple as that.

I have done a lot of long distance business travel across timezones - I once spent three or four months commuting between the UK and Australia (2 weeks in Adelaide, 2 weeks in Bristol, 2 weeks in Adelaide...) and I can assure you that it's not sustainable for much longer than I managed it.
Ten years back I actually turned down a really good job because it was based 50% of the time in the UK and 50% in the US. It would have killed me - I just couldn't face the travel.

The idea of maintaining any level of athletic performance with weekly transatlantic flights and permanent jetlag is pure folly.

If Toronto are to be in, the league has no choice to but to schedule their fixtures in blocks. To do anything else will kill them within a year.

NZ Warriors face a trans-Tasman trip every other week. Auckland to Sydney is 3 hours 30 and a two hour time difference. And I think NZW underperform as a result.

Toronto to Manchester is seven or eight hours - and it's a five or six hour time difference.

Again here, I speak from personal experience - long haul flying for short trips is possible but only North/South. A flight down to Johannesburg is a long day of travelling, but there's no jet lag. I could just about imagine it working. It will be interesting to see how the RU teams from Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth handle playing in a league based in Wales and Ireland - although they have set up the fixtures to help with travel as much as possible.

In my view long east/west flights are not sustainable for any length of time. If Toronto are in the league, the travel needs to be worked around.

So Toronto will need their season in home and away blocks. And the visiting team will need to play Thursday at home -> Saturday in Toronto -> Sunday at home to allow travel time and recovery over three weeks. They simply cannot play Sunday in the UK then Thursday in Canada or vice versa.

Agreed.

Ditto

I agree with what you're saying, and is why we should take onboard some of the things Toronto are doing to build the sport, because to grow something that didn't exist to something thats growing fast is something we could learn from, 7.5K fans last game in less than 2 seasons WOW.

The league should make allowance for the travel/time zone impact both from a players welfare view and a financial one - will they I'm not too sure about.

We have some stuck in the mud fans in RL who can't see an opportunity when its sat there in front of them.

Lets sit in our own little diminishing bubble sucking our sour grapes.

What ideas are these?

Oh and £2m Superleague money trotting off to Canada not the other way around and do they get a 125% exchange rate so they can have a extra players ?

I'm not one of the fans that want to see Toronto fail, In fact i want them and anybody else in an expansion area to succeed. I have big doubts about the whole thing though. One is i am not convinced that the S league clubs will let them in when it comes to the crunch. I know they are making all the right noises, but League is famous for saying one thing and doing the opposite.

As far as i know the reason for the " so called breakaway " by the s league clubs is because they need more of the TV money that they generate, which inevitably means less for the lower leagues, which i fear will be the end of some clubs " maybe quite a few. ( not in any way the fault of Toronto ).

At the time I thought PSG were going to be the huge boost for League that it promised to be but sadly it went the way of many many more attempts to spread the game, In fact history is littered with failed attempts to get league going in other areas, The sad fact is the only place there is any real passion for the game in Europe " with the exception of the South of France" is along the M 62 corridor,
How long has London been going now 30 some years, and they have a decent catchment area by anyone's standards, They just do not take to the game, end of.
So what is the story with Toronto, The hope is that the game will take off over there big style, and the dream is that we will all of a sudden have access to the biggest sporting market in the world, That is the dream and i'm not saying that it can't happen, and i have little info true, but it seems to me to be another PSG with a very wealthy man behind it " which may make the difference ".

My problem is that until such times as some of these other dreamed of teams over there come into being " of which as yet there is no sign but it is very early days " Till then it seems as though Toronto will just be adding costs to the S league clubs running costs at a time when they claim they need more money. They could of course be playing the long game and gambling that it will take off big style over there " and who knows " but playing the long game is a another trait that RL has not done well in the past.

So who knows, I certainly wish them the best of luck, I have watched the game for 60 years now " and there are plenty who have done longer " It needs a huge boost from somewhere because it is a shadow of the game it has been in past days. I have real reservations about Toronto but i will be hoping they can provide that boost.

I had a vacation home in USA for 10 years RL’s problem is that the NBA, NHL NASCAR etc etc and American Football is just the tip of the iceberg and fill the US TV channels and offer great day experiences to watch a live game.

College Football draws bigger crowds than Rugby League, minor league baseball draws half decent crowds and let’s be fair in a run in between the NRL and Superleague at the moment if you were a US TV channel which would you choose ?

jumbucks other comment ‘it’s a shadow of what it was’ speaks volumes to me as a ‘dinosaur’ as a lot won’t remember it as a winter game.

Lots of negatives but serious rugby at the major holidays at Xmas you planned around being at Thrum Hall for derby with Halifax.

At Easter you could spend two days and watch Wigan v Saints, Warrington v Widnes, Bradford v Leeds and Hudds v Wakefield travelling by car and except for the driver have a great two days with a few beers, meat pies that were things of legend, big crowds and good rugby.

Days that as Jumbuck says have gone but I think the cure for the game lies somewhere in the middle of taking the game forward with innovation but not forgetting that there’s an awful lot of good things we’ve got rid and still do of which people miss and the cure lies somewhere between both

Widnes had chosen to play their home fixture against Halifax on the Sunday before flying out to Toronto. They obviously didn’t envisage travel been a problem or they would have had the Halifax fixture down for the Friday.

The Halifax game has now been moved to Saturday by sky.