Are you joking? The article says that the players can't get food at Underhill so walk to the local butty shop to get a feed.

The Foundation, may it rest in peace, was the biggest provider of curricular and extra-curricular sports in Richmond, Kingston and north Surrey and second only to the Football League Trust-funded Brentford FC in Hounslow. The schools programme was the biggest outside West Yorkshire, the staff and the programmes won numerous awards and the results of the schools and community club system fed through into the academy which a load of local kids play Super League. Every school in the London Borough of Richmond played Rugby League. They coached RL to about 40k kids a year, ran women & girls programmes, learning difficulties, young offenders, holiday camps and got the first southern winners of a national Rugby League schools competition.

(They also had data on and routes into all these people, passed on to the club who then did absolutely nothing about getting them to games as paying customers as Gus didn't believe in it).

The article you linked to says that some players bought some sandwiches and were asked who they were. How on earth are you comparing the two? What was disbanded in West London will take 5-10 years to rebuild in Barnet. That's a lot of buying sandwiches.

I suppose you could count Offiah too as London born, I think he was anyway, but unfortunately not a product of the junior league system, we have Doug Laughton to thank for him!

Martin Offiah was a union convert and although from London, went to School at Woolverstone Hall
( ILEA ) Ipswich on the banks of the river Orwell. He played for Ipswich Rugby Club, Rosslyn Park, played sevens rugby union and for the Barbarians before going to League.

No, it was stated that the people drawing up the lease never expected to have a Pro RL club. I think the councils view of local playing fields with a couple of non-league sides that have 100-200 supportors was very wide of the mark of what TK had in mind. I know he had been in talks with RU clubs, top level netball (odd I know!!) and trying to get professional boxing matches arranged for the hive and I'm fairly confident that he has been looking for a summer sport to dovetail with the football season ever since the stadium build started, hence the formation of the London Bees.

Nothing odd about Top level netball!

I knew I spent time in Ipswich, I'm guessing because his father was involved in politics during times of instability and it is a boarding school, however this is a guess, just wasn't sure if he was born in London. I wonder if St Helens were kicking themselves when he went to widnes. One thing Laughton was good at was spotting a good union convert.