agree totally, it isnt working in london no matter how people spin it, agree with maybe dropping them into the championship, enough is enough it just isnt working atm, maybe they can build up over the years, hopefully so,

Who would you replace them with, just out of interest? Or would you reduce the number of clubs?

To be fair, that's not really the whole story. Moving the London ground from Fulham to Brentford to Crystal Palace to Twickenham is like starting a club in Hull and then moving it after a couple of years to Cas, then on to Wigan, then on to Leeds. You can't really expect the supporters to follow it round all the time, can you?

IMHO, there are three big problems with a London club:

- you can't think of it as a whole-of-London club. It can take longer to travel from one side of gresater London to the other than it does to go from Hull to Newcastle. You have to put it in one area of London and think of it as a club for that area. In that context, putting the club in the leafy Sth West of London, about as far as you can get from the other SL clubs, and right up by the HQ of rugby union, is plain stupid.

- if you do draw people to support a team in London, and if you managed to get decent crowds for home games, then it's tough to expect many of them to travel regularly to away games. It costs too much and takes too long.

- London is a place where, typically, a lot of the people who live there are only there for a short-ish while. For a lot of "Londoners", it's a place they come to for a few years to try and make some cash and then go back "home". It's harder to find people with the same loyalty to an area that you might have in other towns and cities.

well sl is gonna be restructured anyway so if relegation is brought in there may drop out anyway or not, i would rather have leigh halifax feth,and the cumbria teams being helped more, nothing against london but it just isnt working and there have had the timescale for it to work,

If you seriously believe that Leigh Fax, Fev or ANY Cumbrian team would bring more to Superleague than London, then you're away with the fairies.

i thought the question was to ask us our opinions and thoughts on london in sl, thats what i have given, sorry if i appear to be playing with the fairies ,

He's right though, Fax, Fev, Leigh etc have had 100s of years of time between then, London only 30 odd.

The RFL and Sky should have taken them over years ago, and grown and built them before letting outsiders take over again

What is all this "its not working". How do we define "working". If its simply bums on seats then granted its not "working". But I would argue its not working in most of SL by that standard. Hull FC alone should be averaging over 13000. HKR want 10000, Huddersfield should be relegated as well, winning team with no fans.
Or is "working" the development of grassroots rugby league. Would you rather tens of thousands play the game or watch it? Look at the "stars" of SL coming through the system from clubs in the SE.

Now in the time since they were placed in SL London in all its different disgusies have NEVER finished bottom of the pile. They have NEVER been docked points for salary cap infringments. Yes they have had financial problems but that does not seem to be a route straight down the leagues. So other than diminishing crowds (which teams have crowds on the up) and no away support (something that riles me about HFC fans who seem to think thats the be all and end all of a club, as we have a few that travel) what exactly is your definition of "not working". I suspect its a phrase that is often brought out as its easy to say but lacks any real substance.
I can tell you what is wrong with RL in London imho. I moved to the city in 1990 a time when the game was on the up. We had a great international squad and we were able to hold internationals at Wembley without gimmicky £10 tickets. The sport was being talked about in London. We had recognisable stars (many of whom are now in RU) Edwards, Offiah, Davis, Lydon etc etc. But then we decide on SL and draw up the bridges and become a closed shop and reject international rugby totally. We have internationals in our own backyard in small stadia and we now call it England and tinker with the other home nations. We sold out to Sky which I accept keeps the sport alive at Pro level. We got rid of county cups and JPS Trophy which were screened on the BBC and we as a sport disappeared out of the country's conscience. Add in the total disregard we had for the Challenge Cup when it was relegated to a more pre season cup competition and you now have an under performing sport.

The product is fantastic. If we got out and bigged it up in London it would work to a certain extent. But as I stated before even RU struggles to attract crowds in London. Only Harlequins is based in London atm. Saracens moving shortly but they are nomadic and in all honesty make massive losses despite their gimmicky £5 a ticket Wembley games. Yes they get big crowds at Wembley with very little in the way of gate receipts, but how many of them turn up week in week out? The rest moved out years ago or went bust.
Cricket has p poor crowds for what is our national summer sport (traditionally). The T20s (non International) are attended by an average of about 10,000 people. Not massive in the scheme of things. Football is the only game that matters in London.
But if we ditched LB we would lose alot of the grassroots stuff and the development which is now starting to pay dividends both nationally for RL and for the LB themselves.

Finally I would add again, that the population may well be 8 million in London, some say its alot more. But in the 20 odd years I have been down here the demographics have changed massively. The population is transciant at the best of times, but in the past 10 years your traditional "Cockney" has moved out. Now we have a massive ethnic mix of people. Many of whom do not speak English and as has been said many of whom do not stick around long enough.
London is unique to any other city in the UK. You can not compare like with like. Millions commute in daily. I can't see many wanting to commute in on a Saturday to watch a losing team in SW London. Other than Football I can not think of a single sport that attacts crowds within the confines of Greater London. I can think of many that are played by thousands and one of those is RL.

So is it "working" ?

No

A well rounded, detailed and reasoned response to the questions posed.

oh, hang on.....

London are good for SL, they're no worse off than Salford, Huddersfield, Wakey et al.

Have to say I agree with lot's of this. I moved to London for work reasons about nine months ago and in that time I've been trying to spread the word amongst people I meet about what a fantastic entertainment sport RL is.

Last Friday I quite by chance happened to be watching the England game in the same pub as a number of guys who actually worked for the Broncos who I won't name. I was actually taken aback by how little respect these people had for the figurehead Mackay. It seems clear to me without going into detail that until there is a change at the top then there will be trouble ahead.

What Graham rightly points out is that the game is being played by youngsters all over the capital and there will soon be some excellent kids coming through at not just the Broncos but the Skolhars too.

They need to move it from Twickenham though as it's such a nightmare to get too. When I attended our game back in March it was quite depressing to see how few people where there. But if they could persuade someone like Leyton Orient to use their ground then I'm convinced the attendances would improve as that stadium is better connected tube wise and I genuinely believe it would be easier to attract people to the game who live in and around the East End.

There are so many kiwis and aussie's down here and a few have said to me, league might not be there number one sport, most seem to prefer aussie rules, but if there was a successful and accessible team to follow in London they would go.

It's not rocket science. They just need to try and find 8,000 more regular followers to make this London team something to be taken seriously. Be interesting to see how they market a potential Challenge Cup semi final with Soward in tow?

So in short are you suggesting the location within London is the main problem for attracting fans??

London have had several 'homes' over the course of their existence and I don't recall them having anything above poor attendances at any site they have been based at??

Maybe not the main problem. It's certainly *a* problem. Especially when the location is across the road from the headqurters of RU.

As for the "had several homes" thought. I'd say that the fact they've had so many homes (and none of them for very long) is quite possibly their main problem.

They were starting to build a club feel at Brentford, but these things take time and they were only there for 3 years (I'm pretty sure it was only 3 yrs).

(Possibly irrelevant to whether there should be a SL club in London, but) two things that the Broncos should definitely get credit for are:
(1) they have had some excellent cheerleaders over the years.
(2) they really go out of their way to attract families and to put on pre and post-match entertainment for kids. A lot of other clubs could learn from that. FC included.

Potentially 9 local lads in their 17 this weekend as well. If it was any other club we would be singing their praises.

Something is clearly working when they get that level of development.

As for location. The Stoop is wrong that is the bottom line. When they were at Brentford and Charlton things were starting to progress. But with every move means completely new beginings. In an area as big as Greater London it means a completely new start. Its not like when we moved from the Boulevard to the KC. In every case it means a whole new area and a whole new community to start to attract and hopes that the previous ones that they attracted follow.