I get a bit bored of all this talk of Skolars on our forum. All this rubbish about mutual benefits - we get nothing out of it and we have enough problems to deal with ourselves rather than doing Skolars favours all of the time. I have no interest in this poor excuse for a day out, it will do nothing for our team whatsoever like it has done nothing on the past few occasions that it has been played. I'd sooner we were warming up against SL opposition, not woeful NL sides.

Long term I think it will do us a favour if Skolars (and other lower level London clubs) are able to progress and grow stronger, so I'm happy to see us do them a few favours if we can.

I went to the first of these games at the HAC and enjoyed seeing a match in such a quirky setting, although the match itself resembled more of a glorified training session due to the disparity in strength between the two squads. However, we started that season with four wins from the first five SL games and would probably have repeated that sequence this year if the postponed Bradford game had taken place in February (we won three of the first four games played) so I'd say we appear to have got our pre-season routine pretty much spot on, while several other clubs who had a more punishing series of pre-season matches had a shedload of players out injured by the time the real games began.

A successful pre-season routine would have prepared us for the whole season, and not just a flying start.

What will we get out of Skolars long term? They are effectively competing with us if they have any ambition - why should we help them out when we are struggling as it is?

In the long term, if Skolars were to be a reasonably successful team, it would boost professional RL in London/the SE - which would only be a good thing for Quins.
It would increase the profile of the game, providing more media opportunities, potentially bring more people in through the turnstiles of both teams, raise the opportunities for bringing in sponsorship etc etc etc.

& in the short term, it would be very shortsighted for Quins to turn their noses up at opportunities to boost relationships with people in the City - as someone's already said, some corporate deals have come out of it already.

We need to establish one viable team before even starting to think about another. Currently, we are looking down the barrell of a loaded gun, we should forget about directing any resources to London Skolars. If we were fully established, great crowds, competitive squad, free up some resources to help them out then. London RL cannot support 2 teams at the moment and the 2 teams cannot grow together as they are competing for the same, very limited support.

Someone said one corporate box had come out of it wasn't it? I bet the city boys will pushing each other out of the way to sign up for another. This game does no harm but the hype is completely unjustified IMO.

The Skolars Paul Thorman works his socks off and is to be applauded for his efforts in forgingfurther links with the Quins and the HAC.This has led to not only the Capital Challenge being in the City for the last few years, but also to the Quins running the Team Cup for the City Slickers banking types this Summer and hopefully a Corporate knock on effect for us and the Skolars .It only takes one of these big fishes to take the bait and life ,buisiness wise, could become suddenly very rosey for us at the Stoop.

The main catalyst for our traditional mid-summer slump is usually a sequence of injuries to key players. I fail to see how a tougher schedule of pre-season matches could lead to better results several months into the season after we've already produced a string of early season SL wins. A different training regime maybe? But not additional matches against better teams. A lot of people think we play too many matches as it is without effectively lengthening the season by starting earlier with extra games against top rank sides.

Prepare us for the physicality. What about the theory injuries came about due to lack of fitness...?