That's about right. Southall Vikings, New Malden Magpies, Southall Saints and a few others were all the result of funding bids to get DOs in place, who then started clubs entirely reliant on them to continuation. With other areas of London it was a similar story.

There was a culture of dependency from community clubs on London region - including Broncos - employed staff, but the other edge of the sword was that without the staff the clubs would have either never started or folded straight away.

The ones that remain in West London are the result of a change of tactics by the Broncos Foundation in 2010, when DOs were told to stop running the clubs and instead were focus on making them sustainable when the inevitable Sport England funding cuts came in March 2013.

The ones that remain are strong enough for now, but they were always fed by a strong local schools competition and the presence and support of a local professional club. It remains to be seen how they will continue.

In forum terms, this is what is called 'thread drift'. Sorry!

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.