The Catchment score is defined as the population of the Local Authority District where the club’s stadium is located divided by the total number of Tier 1 and Tier 2 clubs in the same area.

Ealing alone would have gained the maximum 1.5 points for catchment since population is above 260k. Richmond and Merton have relatively small populations (for London Boroughs) both falling within the 130k-260k bucket that awards 1 point.

Even if points were awarded on a sliding scale (rather than in rather crude buckets), we might get a more sensible score.

Just be thankful we aren't playing in the City of London.

I bow to your superior knowledge Buzz, but it's still bonkers. Mind you if we played at the HAC regularly, we might not be short of money.

In fairness to IMG it is a bit tricky.
Ideally we like to claim the whole of London and indeed some of the outlying counties. We could probably make a decent fist of providing ST holder evidence that fans come from all over. I suspect LB Merton doesn’t figure in the top 5 of hives of Broncos support but I’m not sure where does. I suspect they feel that the whole of London is too big a weighting anomaly for such a modestly supported team so they have picked the areas we are based in and are targeting with player/staff interaction. I think we could make a case for Merton and Richmond on the basis we train at the latter and perhaps if we stepped up our community engagement there with a nod from them we could capture that catchment area but let’s be honest we are likely to be doing much, much less so, basically we’re stuffed.

Quote: BigTime "In fairness to IMG it is a bit tricky. Ideally we like to claim the whole of London and indeed some of the outlying counties. We could probably make a decent fist of providing ST holder evidence that fans come from all over. I suspect LB Merton doesn’t figure in the top 5 of hives of Broncos support but I’m not sure where does. I suspect they feel that the whole of London is too big a weighting anomaly for such a modestly supported team so they have picked the areas we are based in and are targeting with player/staff interaction. I think we could make a case for Merton and Richmond on the basis we train at the latter and perhaps if we stepped up our community engagement there with a nod from them we could capture that catchment area but let’s be honest we are likely to be doing much, much less so, basically we’re stuffed.'" I doubt think they really think about how the criteria affects one place of another. The criteria has to be written so it applies anywhere in the country. Not sure what could be used other than local authority district. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_E ... population

Quote: BigTime "In fairness to IMG it is a bit tricky. Ideally we like to claim the whole of London and indeed some of the outlying counties. We could probably make a decent fist of providing ST holder evidence that fans come from all over. I suspect LB Merton doesn’t figure in the top 5 of hives of Broncos support but I’m not sure where does. I suspect they feel that the whole of London is too big a weighting anomaly for such a modestly supported team so they have picked the areas we are based in and are targeting with player/staff interaction. I think we could make a case for Merton and Richmond on the basis we train at the latter and perhaps if we stepped up our community engagement there with a nod from them we could capture that catchment area but let’s be honest we are likely to be doing much, much less so, basically we’re stuffed.'" I doubt think they really think about how the criteria affects one place of another. The criteria has to be written so it applies anywhere in the country. Not sure what could be used other than local authority district. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_E ... population