Club name change survey

Quote: jaybs "Do you mean don't upset The Fans! who back the club instead of whining all the time! '"

For crying out loud! It's not about the 2,000 fans who regularly follow the club already, it's about getting thousands more on board. (And you've done your share of "whining" on here about other people's suggestions you don't like.)

At the recent HKA game I was poised to note down the team line ups when, just as our team was being announced, the PA was drowned out by half a dozen or so people a few rows behind me discordantly chanting "Broncos, Broncos". Very helpful - Not! So everyone else in the vicinity had to wait until the match got underway and work out the teams for themsleves. Assuming of course they were regulars; in the remote event that a few newcomers unfamiliar with our players were present they wouldn't have stood a chance. Great first time "matchday experience"! Even though we lost 0-34 a fair minority of people around me almost seemed to be creaming their underwear over the possiblity of travelling back in time to once more become London Broncos. I found this both extraordinary and depressing. A masterclass in flatcappery that would put any former mining or mill town club to shame.

There are people on here who seem to want to preserve "London RL in Superleague" as some sort of minority sport for a fanatical elite. Those of us who express an interest in other sports are ridiculed, especially if they sometimes miss a home game because they're watching football, cricket, speedway etc. (As if Leeds or Wigan is packed out every week with ever-presents who never miss a game come what may - they just have more of them, and more fairweather fans too.) I often feel some of us would rather revert to being an underdog club punching above its weight and scraping into the play-offs once every three or four years, and would rather supporters less fanatical than themselves stayed away altogether - except there's no sustainable future in that, and instead of punching above our weight we now find ourselves as an underdog club in the sort of position you can reasonably expect an underdog to be when everyone else has bigger crowds and greater resources.

We're in the biggest conurbation in the country, we're potentially the biggest and best club in rugby league, but in order to achieve that we need to bring loads of new supporters on board, who, for at least a few years, will have little understanding of and appreciation of the finer points of the sport and its history and traditions. So what? It's a bit like county cricket clubs launching Twenty20 a decade ago and filling their grounds with people who, until recently, never seriously considered watching the sport live, except that we're the only club in the league trying to do that.

To be perfectly honest I don't really care what the club is called, where it plays within Greater London, or what colours the shirts are as long as it moves forward. But I can't see us in a situation in 5-10 years time where we're playing in front of 10,000+ every week purely because we've reverted to being London Broncos, playing in a nondescript red shirt, squatting at a crappy lower division Football League ground. Any progress made could still have been made under the Harlequins name at The Stoop.