Let's put to one side the idea that any Championship club is going to get promoted. The format is clearly, and hugely, weighted in favour of the SL clubs and it would need one of them to implode for a CC club to take their place.

But to the Broncos, we've spent the last couple of years watching effectively an U19s team with a sprinkling of below-average Aussies. Result? A weekly demolition. But on the bright side we thought we were developing our own players. Now we see these lads are all of to northern SL clubs.

So next season, we'll have a team made up of Championship-standard Aussies and a stack of U19s. Does anyone expect to see a different set of results? If you do, then you're nuts.

These kids just aren't ready for senior RL, against battle-hardened pros. If you think going to HKR was hard, try going to Keighley with a team of kids and seeing how they get treated by the locals. Every week is going to be a war zone in that division, those of us who were around in the Barnet Copthall days (and prior) will attest to that. We'll be lucky to finish mid-table.

Just listened to Purdo's interview on RLDS. He thinks that's it!

There are plenty of RU and a few non league football grounds that may well pass the ground grading for the second tier. There are options there in terms of who they can approach. It would certainly be a step-down from The Hive never mind Twickenham Stoop.

I don't know how West you want to go, but Hayes & Yeading have almost finished their ground and would probably welcome a tenant to help share the cost

Emperor's New Clothes......£900,000 of central funding next year is paying for that. Come back and tell me we're full time in 2016 and I'll ask to see where the cash is coming from.......the announcement that we are full time next year is nothing other than flannel to paste over the relegation from SL.


Really? Before Hughes employed that Chimp Mackay, we had out highest ever average attendances spread over 4 seasons.......we had an opportunity to build ties with the landlord and we were in a purpose built Rugby Stadium paying £220,000 a year and taking £100,000 more than that in ticket revenue.......the venue and match days were not the loss making operation



Hughes total ignorance of how to run anything other than his own brokerage destroyed the relationship with the landlord, the sponsors, the fans and most importantly, the RFL.

There was SFA wrong with the Stoop.......I have REPEATEDLY posted the financials that show regardless of the lies perpetuated by the Broker and his Gimp the Stoop were not charging us the earth......but you persist with this myth anyway. Send my your email and I'll send you the P&L for the club 2008-2012 inclusive.........then you can see where the money went and how much EXTRA we got from the RFL.......but stop saying the stoop wasn't right for us. We've sent Buck and Dusty out marketing to the locals in Harrow and we've ridden the train........the idiots employed by Hughes handed out travel pass covers in East London



You're not stupid Jaybs, but sometimes I do wonder if your account has been hacked by a monkey

Sorry Paddock.......back on thread.

Nope. Not in it's current guise. £900k in central funding pays for 2015's "full time" squad of teens and 3rd rate Aussies, but thereafter, with crowds in the region of 500 (and god knows where those crowd will be watching our home games) paying £15 a pop will bring in £112,500 a year.

For this club to get back to being anywhere near ready for SL? Hughes needs to man up now and write a cheque for another £15,000,000.........employ a proper sports administrator and then off (except on match day). This money needs to be used frugally to keep the kids coming through and eventually.....in maybe another 10 years, the London Broncos will have a squad capable of challenging the bottom 4 of SL........AKA...where we were in 2010 before Hughes employed the idiot.

www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/30 ... ll-time-in just for anyone that missed it. RL was played down south before the creation of super league, I know as I played in Bath and Swindon, to say the sport will not continue to flourish down here because we are not in SL toup tier is an insult to folk like Martin coyd at medway, the folk at Elmbridge, Croydon, skolars etc it's good to hear we are following the northern lead though! The new system will create a 12 team cartel, errrrr excuse me what was the franchise system? All be it 14 teams. Saying we are being locked out makes us sound just like every Leigh, Fev, fan, even widnes a couple of years back. maybe next year winning a game or 2 might tempt a few bums back on seats its not the end of the world, it looks like our backer will be sticking with us, which will upset gutters but hey if he was not on the scene then we would not have a club, harsh but true. Think back all those years ago when pro rugby was first muted in London, it will never take off they said

www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/30 ... ll-time-in just for anyone that missed it. RL was played down south before the creation of super league, I know as I played in Bath and Swindon, to say the sport will not continue to flourish down here because we are not in SL toup tier is an insult to folk like Martin coyd at medway, the folk at Elmbridge, Croydon, skolars etc it's good to hear we are following the northern lead though! The new system will create a 12 team cartel, errrrr excuse me what was the franchise system? All be it 14 teams. Saying we are being locked out makes us sound just like every Leigh, Fev, fan, even widnes a couple of years back. maybe next year winning a game or 2 might tempt a few bums back on seats its not the end of the world, it looks like our backer will be sticking with us, which will upset gutters but hey if he was not on the scene then we would not have a club, harsh but true. Think back all those years ago when pro rugby was first muted in London, it will never take off they said

Micky, what bothers me is the state of the amateur game here. Of three games I have tried to watch in the last month, on two occasions only one team has turned up. This doesn't bode well for building up from the lower tiers. I certainly don't know the answer to this problem

Not sure what games you are going too mate, I did 2 at the weekend u 17 skolars v Croydon, standard of kids rugby in the south has improved massively in the last 2 years btw.
Hemel on sat eastern region finals day, ok one game a bit one sided, the actual final was close run and a cracking game.
St Albans played the Army first team not so long back and gave em a good game, same Army team that played Chorley Panthers a heartland team, the standard was not that different.
Am RL is pretty healthy in London and the South

Michael. List the amateur Open Age teams in London and the SE with say a 5 year+ pedigree. Kids is all well and good, but the reality is that teams come and go with terrible frequency and are predominantly based arounf ex-pat northerners and Aussies.
I'd love to know how many of the kids that won at Wembley a couple of years back are still playing competitive RL?

Park RL is great.......but it doesn't deliver a pathway for professional athletes to progress in the game.

The Northerners have taken their ball home.......and the RFU didn't have to do anything to make it happen.

I think we can, because we almost got there on our own before the SLE "franchise" nonsense. As London Crusaders we finished 4th, 5th and 3rd, just missing out on the big time, even when Brisbane first re-christened us we finished 4th.

That was despite a period of direct RL running of the club, financial squeezes on salaries, nomadism and no facilities etc etc et-al.

Don't get me wrong, I'm just as frustrated as anyone else that the "gift" of top flight footie was wasted, but reality is, it has been and we have to start again, right back from were we started.

According to the handbook of the Southern Amateur Rugby League (as it was called then) for 1985/6 it's members were Aberavon, Bexley Heath, Cheltenham, Ealing, Fulham Amateurs, Fulham Travellers, Hemel Hempstead, Hounslow, London Colonials, Milton Keynes, Peckham, Peckham Pumas, Queen Mary College, St. Mary's College, Streatham Celtic, West London Institute, Wokingham and Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Obviously at this level clubs come and go (in Hemel's case to better things), but to lose all that is bizarre. No strong amateur base just makes our problems worse.