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.

Unfortunately most southern teams are based around one or two key individuals and rarely survive their departure. There are some very impressive exceptions but it's a legitimate question to ask what legacy, say, Crawley Jets left.

Sadly I'm hearing both Oxford and Hemel have dropped out of the U18 league this season. The former is particularly worrying as the whole ethos of the club is to build local participation and the first team this season have often included 14 southern based lads and I think it was 15 at least once. (Admittedly injuries have forced their hand a little here.)

Clearly the more juniors playing the more good players will be uncovered to play at the highest level available down south, currently Broncos.

As an aside, if the York press is, to be believed a RU player who made his debut for Oxford in Sunday had a rugby league background that amounted to four training sessions. Not exactly evidence of a sport thriving down south. (I should add a conversation I had with someone who is likely to know suggests he had been around the club long enough that he would have attended more than four training sessions.)

On general survival think next year may be OK. I don't think the Hive will turn down the money until they can get rid of Underhill. The team my well be supported by the increased Sky money and parachute payments (both worryingly vague at the moment). So with 'free' ground and 'free' team don't see the urgent need to fold. ( I'm sure free can be defined by others)

Future years more worrying.

On a venue, London Welsh have signed up for a 3 year deal for the Kassam stadium in Oxford. This leaves them paying the Council for the Old Deer Park in Richmond. Advantages, Zone 4 underground/overground/fast trains, great club house and facilities. Disadvantage one poor 1,000 seater stand, but you can stand another 1,000 people round the outside of a rugby field do we need more?

So many negative viewpoints on here and most of them sadly true. Re-entry into SL anytime soon looks no more than about a 5% or 10% chance.

And, even if we do, does the "club" have any prospect of being able to manage its affairs any more successfully than it has in recent years? Can't see how unless somebody new with commitment, bottomless pockets, and lots of savvy appears over the horizon. Chances of that? Almost nil.

I agree with you GF their is no pathway for players into the top flight, thats why Tony Clubb is playing at Wigan, LMS at Saints, K Dixon probably soon to go to a SL team MCB just been picked up, where did they come from?

Louis is an example of how fragile the system is. From memory a cover teacher, who is an RL fan, suggested he tried it out. Had that teacher not gone to that school it is unlikely Louis would ever have played rugby. Tony meanwhile started RL a club who no longer exist.

It would be daft to say there is no pathway but the state of it is worryingly fragile. Throw in the fact the Broncos academy could be a target for the cut backs that will be necessary post relegation and it's difficult to feel optimistic unless the RFL get involved. We don't want to return to the days we had to loan Tony,Louis and Ade to Hull FC as we didn't have anything to offer down south at that stage in their development.