The money ran out, thats whats changed, once it became clear you can't really build an ersatz Grand Final Winner or top of the league team without losing money, the Branson's of this world got fed up of losing money and so buggered off, as did Lenaghan, Hughes will too!

You need to build from the bottom up, all those Broncos fans/believers/deluded-fools whatever, none seemed to grasp that the whole thing wasn't real, it was built on nothing. Even if we had of triumphed in 97 or lifted the Cup in 99, it would have made no difference to a club that had to be financially propped up and whose fanbase was full of fair-weather fans.

One bad season and the gates came tumbling down, as the crowds dwindled so did the best players and it became the inevitable unstoppable downhill spiral.

In 1994, when Brisbane hi-jacked the club, there were many who predicted exactly what has happened (ie right back where we were before), I thought 5 years, some said 10, some 15 and others said 20 (I was wrong it was twenty). But here we are, hurrah!!!

No one likes us....we don't care!

Well said Crusader Pete. People need to smell the coffee. DH money is a mirage which will one day evaporate. Then we will have to live on what we generate as any rational club should. All DH has done is create a Potemkin village RL club.

I have to disagree.

Firstly, running any sports club in the professional arena is rarely about making money. The losses incurred by our various owners over the 19 SL seasons wouldn't be enough to keep a premiership footballer happy for just 1 season. Then there's the manner in which this money was lost.
At no stage (since 2002 at least) has the club had a clear strategy to generate revenue, be that through fans or down a corporate route. Instead, the various owners have decided that a winning team is the solution and accordingly, all the eggs were placed in that basket, to the detriment of the "business" itself.
The attendances at any club that hopes to break even need to be 10,000. This figure has been declared by a number of chairmen and CEO's in SL and should be the minimum target for any club either in or aspiring to be in SL. It's not a mystery that the clubs who either make a profit or lose very little are the ones who average this figure. Even Hull FC, who have been pretty ordinary for a couple of years see the benefit of having that core supporter base.

As for those who predicted it would all end in tears after Brisbane came to the game, well done you. Problem is, the reason it's all ended in tears has nothing to do with Brisbane, nor Branson or even David Hughes. Brisbane had no concept of how minor a sport RL was in London, Branson thought all he had to do was put his name to it and it would work and Hughes has been led by his nose by a great number of freeloaders who took his cash and told him what he wanted to hear....they are culpable, but they are not the villains of this piece.
The main reason it's ended in tears is the lip service paid to the club by The RFL and SKY. The relationship between the RFL and SKY has, from day 1 always been about what sky wanted, when they wanted it and for as little as they wanted to pay. At no stage has the RFL ever "negotiated" as a business should, but instead hey have simply said thank you for the cash and circled their wagons to defend their position.
We were elevated at Sky's request, or that's what we are told, yet at no stage where we ever given extra resources to make sure we could put down roots and grow.

I don't disagree with your idea of building from the ground up by the way, but that will take 50+ years and there was an opportunity to short-cut that in London, if the RFL had had the gumption to demand a model similar to the NRL/FOX deal in Australia.
Brisbane, Nth Queensland and Melbourne were all at one stage owned by or propped up by the owners of the comp and it should have been the same with London and Paris in 1996. Failing that, once the club had started to wobble, the RFL and/or other SL clubs should have bought it, but the fear of annoying pit village club owners was too great.

As for the future? As I say, well done all those who predicted this back in 1994. I hope you're all happy supping soup from a flask at Chiswick Poly in a couple of years watching the Broncos v Hemmel Stags.......it'll be a good game, but it'll never be top flight. Not in this posters life time anyway!

Yawn!

Noone said we were happy GF, simply that we knew if the club wasn't financed in a way that ensured/insured we had a permanant base and a proper developement program, it would not work, we were right. The club has now been abandoned like a listing ship, only we the fans will ensure it doesn't shatter on the rocks and if that continuation is to be at a lower level, then so be it. We fully understand that the "fair-weather" fans will leave (99% of them have already done so).

I still go to games, I will go to my usual quota of half a dozen home games and an away game or two as I have done since Sept' 1991 (excluding the QRL period), I will buy my shirt and wear it with pride, yes pride, we are London RL, not SKY, not Soopah Leeeege or any bugger else!!!!!!!!

I remember the days at Charlton when the club said they needed 5000 average to break even (as an aside, that's probably the closest thing we ever had to a business plan). Of course we never got there, despite exceeding 4000 average for a couple of seasons.

I do recall sitting there just before kick off one week, looking at all the expensively hired in PA equipment and the Virgin Cola inflatables and thinking to myself "this can't last".

Here Rupe.

What did you do when we lost to Canberra in Canberra 66-20?

Did you sing?

I think I was drinking quite heavily during that game. I think I did sing but you can't compare losing away to Canberra packed full of Australian test stars to a professional London Broncos losing to part time Whitehaven!

As performances got worse and worse and thousands of Broncos fans began to disappear it was this misguided cheerleading from the clique who were desperate for the players to shake their hand and still are that will perhaps ultimately cause the club to die.

A true supporter would have had the guts to stick their head above the parapet and confront players, coaching staff and owner in an effort to stop the horrendous decline.
I can recall doing that by myself only to be met with a volley of abuse from fellow fans along the lines of 'F off then if you don't want to support the team'. Well I did F off as did countless others.

If you have a child who for example spits at someone or hits another for no reason then you discipline it, you don't praise it. You stand by your child but you damn well tell them when they have done wrong.

Again, I cannot fathom how David Hughes himself stomachs it. I would love to see the contracts the players are on this season and how much of their wage is performance related. Quite frankly if I was the owner I would have put them on the living wage alone as a basic but with a generous league position based win bonus. Sadly I very much doubt that is the case.

That's how you get the best players to come to the club. Why don't all clubs think like that. 'Contract inflation' and out bidding for players doesn't exist. But you're right lets go back to the 70's when every team won every week because if you didn't you didn't get fed.

Yeah right, and it was those same fans that stopped the players coming in the bar after the game, and the same fans that made the various poor recruitment decisions, and....

You're just trying to be provocative by having a pop at the people who still go. But actually what you're proving is that you're a half-hearted fair-weather fan. Trying to blame the clubs demise on loyal fans rather than those in charge is the kind of trolling we expected from gutterlies. Actually, come to think of it, you came back when he disappeared...

The demise of the club has been slow, public and painful. Few people would argue about that.

The idea that fans supporting players, the team, the club is somehow the cause of this is total nonsense. As is the notion in the opening post that if everyone had stopped supporting the club, things would have just been fine.

Rupe a question for you, if yr kid falls off his bike and hurts themselves what do you do punish em or give them encouragemrnt in hope that will provide encouragement for next time.
In answer to yr 50 0 question honest answer I applaud performance and effort so irrevent of the score if I thought the performance deserved it yep I would clap, on the other side I am more than willing and quite often do it will tell players and coaches exactly what I think if it'd rubbish
Yes I have walked out of a game in disgust that was Salford away but it'd only happened once.
Generally in any game there are at least a couple of positives
Brings me back to the first point, do you look at what went well and build on that or constantly critisise citing everything that went wrong?
Supporting any sports team is done in many ways, booing and throwing pies is one way, providing positive encouragement is another, as a fan it's yr individual choice.
But you have to be there in the first place

In 2012 We paid 210k a year at the Stoop rent. In 2012 we spent 1.6 million on "administration costs".......our demise isn't because we didn't have a proper home. Our demise is because for too long too many people have been able to steal a wage both on and off the field.
Yes, Central funding should have been greater, but the caravan trail that our homes took isn't the reason we got 500 to the hive a few weeks back.

As for your opening YAWN. If it bores you, don't respond to it. it's that simple.



The Club has not yet been abandoned, as Mr Hughes is still writing cheques. When he stops, the drop down the tiers will be too rapid for even the most die hard fan to stop.. As for fairweather fans, losses to part-time opposition on the road and scraped wins at home are maybe too much for many to bother any more.


Good for you. I too will continue to support the team and will catch games when I am in the country, but I will not watch the clubs demise in some form of smu silence, saying "I told you so", because that serves no purpose.

As for the last 19 years in SL. They were fun and we'd jump at another chance, but the reality is, unless we are invited back then we are destined to end up in Championship 1 once Hughes stops backing the club.

I opened with Yawn, because it's the same old same old GF.

We were gifted the chance of top-flight footie a good ten years too early, and those that took over the club never took the opportunity.

I am NOT going to abandon my club because of their mistakes!

I see both your respected views,on what could have been or should have been..Just curious to know with all that money floating around,was any of it used to promote youth development..