https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/im ... comparison IMG break their silence......

https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/im ... comparison IMG break their silence......

I'm not confident Lobster will sort anything out in the time available. Hughes has basically taken his ball and gone home.

Ain't that the truth.

Most rugby league clubs and their fans don't give a monkey's about the the game overall. Success of their hometown team is all that matters. Reduce it to three clubs? Cool. We finished in the top three.

And before someone accuses me of hypocrisy....

I'm not from London and have never lived in London. I moved south in my early twenties, always loved rugby league, missed going to live games. So drifted into watching my new "local" team, 60+ miles away. (When my car got written off it was an all day trip!)

Hooked. Hometown team immediately despised (they're easy to despise).

Luckily (or not) for me, this was the Tank Gordon team.

Still, if we do disappear, '96 and '97 were amazing!

They were indeed Benny & will never be forgotten. Nor Tank's wonderful side either.

How can they centrally fund London when the Super League organisation does not have a pot to in. IMG does have millions but it looks like they are putting no money in.In fact it looks like they have taken the clubs for a ride. https://www.totalrl.com/talking-rugby-l ... questions/ I said years ago, the club should have approached the NRL, offered to take 2 up and coming players from each club in the NRL and put them into the London side.Then hit the ex pat market hard. During the days at the stoop the amount of expats sat in the crowd was huge but then we had a good side with well known Australian players. You had a successful team full of aussies and the crowds would have come but the northerners didnt like that and said it was unfair. You dont get chelsea fans moaning saying there are not enough Londoners in the Chelsea team. But dont forget a lot of the RFL money has gone on bankrolling Bradford over the last few years.

How can they centrally fund London when the Super League organisation does not have a pot to in. IMG does have millions but it looks like they are putting no money in.In fact it looks like they have taken the clubs for a ride. https://www.totalrl.com/talking-rugby-l ... questions/ I said years ago, the club should have approached the NRL, offered to take 2 up and coming players from each club in the NRL and put them into the London side.Then hit the ex pat market hard. During the days at the stoop the amount of expats sat in the crowd was huge but then we had a good side with well known Australian players. You had a successful team full of aussies and the crowds would have come but the northerners didnt like that and said it was unfair. You dont get chelsea fans moaning saying there are not enough Londoners in the Chelsea team. But dont forget a lot of the RFL money has gone on bankrolling Bradford over the last few years.

Toulouse working hard to keep Broncos legacy alive by signing Butler to add to their list of ex Broncos. Wouldn’t be surprised to see Campo there and a couple of others. We appear to be to Toulouse what Leigh are to Hull.

Londres Olympique ?

Yesterday, London Rugby League Limited filed its overdue accounts through 20-Nov-2023. The only real thing of note is that the creditors falling due after more than one year has fallen substantially from £27.5m to £21.6m. Since this must represent the loans made by directors (primarily Hughes) perhaps some of this was written off during the financial year. No explanation is given in the filed accounts.

I'm not an accountant, but given how little money came in, that would seem the most plausible reason.

I'm sure Gardiner, you will recall that Fulham/Crusader/Broncos were most northern fans 2nd favourite team until probably 96 when we finished 4th & 97 finishing 2nd. Once we started beating them, is when they got the hump & said we had too many Aussies (or was it just too many good players?)

Interesting I see at the start of this season Dragons had 14 non French players in their 35 man squad but rarely do they get the criticism London did.

over 20 years and a number of user names after gutters was banned here and on the other site for being "too confrontational" about the future of the sport and London in particular, it makes me seethe that IMG are getting paid to say what i was saying 2 decade ago.
Hughes, the owners of RLFans and Total were all wrong and little old Gutters was right......who'd have thought it?

IMG will deliver SFA, whilst the likes of Derek at Leigh are the only hope the game has. When Ken pops his clogs, Huddersfield will be next to go, with any number of other clubs next in line.

10,000 fans is the minimum needed.....15,000 once SKY offer less next time and it really is now a northern niche sport.

As for Hughes? I feel nothing but disdain for the man. He constantly messed it up and never admitted his errors. Arrogant man.

So which team next season will end up with the most Ex-Broncos?

Don't disagree with this other than to say most successful people tend to be arrogant including dare I say it yourself. Unfortunately, Hughes & success where rugby league are concerned were never in the same bed.

Mr H was and is the only game in town for Broncos for several seasons. Where we are now was inevitable, only the timing was in doubt. Many teams are built on similarly shallow foundations and many are at risk. Many may have to cut the wages and standard of their squads which will lead to smaller tv deals- an anti-virtuous circle.
DH’s money allowed fans to have a bit of fun and for that he should be thanked but now sadly it’s done.

I wonder if the Covid situation is where our fate was sealed. The termination of the 2020 season spaffed our parachute payment down the toilet. The 2021 season was a mess - 7th with a full time squad was pony. Did he feel after he treated staff right over lockdown (as I understand) that they were all a bit quick to do one. The complete loss of momentum and pitiful crowds when they were allowed back was depressing.

There can be no excuses for the move to Plough Lane with a PT/L1 squad. it was the perfect example of a last incompetent throw of the dice and of someone who wasn’t getting good objective advice or not taking it. As I said at the time if he’d wrote down what he planned to do and had shown it to a grown up they’d have explained why it was total pony. It’s like he guessed what would be enough for IMG and assumed they’d just accept it rather than stick to the criteria they had developed (sh xx as some of them were). Let’s be honest Last year was going nowhere until we bought a couple of players late doors, Fev collapsed and we were in SL on the back of a string of away games that almost none of us saw. Then the brutal announcement came that IMG weren’t playing games and we’ve blundered through another sub par season albeit one where the side developed from poor to competitive but again the damage for crowd growth was holed below the water line in our 1st few games now. One positive is we no longer need to worry about crowd growth.

In fairness to him and his family he’s probably given up enough of his money the situation isn’t going to change London and rugby league aren’t really viable.

The next couple of weeks will be a daily litany of players leaving and then we’ll hear from love rugby league or Matthew Shaw that the club has folded. Sad.