Are you sure they haven't? I understand they were given financial assistance with a large number of development officers paid for by the RFL. Something which was denied to Bradford.

by the same token bradfords ground was bought to help them out of the sh*t. the RFL didn't do this with wakefield or london.

the number of players coming through and the amount of teams/schools in london playing league shows it a shrewd decision

one would assume there should be more development officers in London than Bradford, one is a city of 8m people, one has 500k.

Development officers are also focused on the junior and amateur game more than getting people through the pro clubs doors.

I would hope that whatever was been done at junior and amateur level in london continues as great success is being seen there independently of the pro club.

As for the pro club. A good pro club in London would be invaluable to the game. As it is we havent had that choice for a few years. To say they have been run potically over the last few years would be an insult to pots. They have been failed in all areas by successive owners and central governance.

Pro RL in london is probably dead now. This club will probably limp on for a few more years, at best they will probably level out at Skolars level. Without long term planning and central support it is impossible for expansion clubs to survive in a regional competition like the game is currently contracting to. Especially under P+R.

People will pay lip service to their survival, say how they hope London will regroup and come back stronger through 'organic growth' but in reality there is a faction of the game desperate to see it remain a small regional competition which is why the only method of growth they will accept is one which has been responsible for a grand total of 0 clubs making it to the pro level in the entire history of the sport.

Bar the venue and name bit, you could hurl those same facts at Wakefield. Or up to the Ken Davy era, Huddersfield.

What have Hull KR done in terms of trophies or producing players in the last 25 years?

London seems to attract a lot of vitriol from chip on the shoulders northerners that they don't feel inclined to throw around closer to home.

I wouldn't say I have a chip on my shoulder as that suggests some element of xenophobia, it's more wasting valuable resource on a hiding to nothing.

The RFL have continually bolstered teams that are outside of the traditional heartland areas and to date all of these follies have proved fruitless. My point is that elite RL always has and always will be confined to these traditional areas, history has taught us this so why bother trying to expand the sport?

Oh and comparing Hull KR, who have only been in the elite league for 8 years to London, who have been in SL since its inception is hardly apples with apples is it?

Hull KR were an elite team before London existed. You can remember that far back, right?

You said "in the last 25 years". You can remember that far back, right?

No, it shouldn't be the end of the London project.

Within the last few years they've produced Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Tony Clubb, Dan Sarginson, Mason Caton-Brown and Keiran Dixon - all players worthy of top-level SL. By rights, that should have been a core around which a succesful London team could be built.

There does now need to be a retrenchment. Find a home for the club and keep it there, if not as landlords at first then at least as long-term tenants. A club can't survive without a support base, so one needs to be built within that locality. Focus on developing the youngsters, building up the amateur scene and passing them along into SL. Only then will London be a goer in SL.

Personally, I'd like to see a carve-up of London. Get Broncos back to Brentford or West London, let Skolars have North London. Look at building up to a semi-pro side in East & South London, and try and develop the area around Hemel and the Medway towns.

Tad and AG make valid points, Bradford had their ground bought by the RFL, something that didn't happen with London. One of London's main problems aside from mismanagement, has been that they did not have a permanent home. If only the RFL could buy into a club such as Harrow Fc or Wingate and Finchley Fc for example then that may have provided some permanence (Harlequins/yawion connection was always doomed IMO).The other thing that I think should have happened was that London should have had first dabs on dual reg players on offer from any super league club who are outside the first team squad 20 (with a minimum of 3 months loan).I do also think the same mistake is being made with regards to a Cumbrian Super league team.

This 'it isn't in Yorks / Lancs heartland, so why bother' thing is a bit closed-minded for me. I appreciate it is hard to sustain and grow the sport and teams outside of this area, but it should be perservered with in my view.

The thing about them having a different 'home' all the time will have a massive effect. I'd be interested to see how Rhinos' attendances would be affected if (for whatever reason) they had kept moving around Leeds to play.

How many would stop / start going if it moved from Headingley to Horsforth? How many would stop / start going if after a couple of years it then moved to Holbeck? If it then moved again to Harehills?

I suspect for many of you (wherever you currently reside) part of the reason you follow Leeds (and not one of the other teams close by in the top league) is because either i) they were your 'local' team when younger or ii) you are following in the footsteps of past friends / family who introduced you to them, maybe because of reason i).

Now, how might that be affected if when you first started watching / enjoying RL, Leeds were going through a period of moving around all the time - realistically it can not grow and develop when you don't know where your 'home' is, apart from in the short-term.

I know it isn't the same thing, but I play in a social sports league in Leeds for one of the American 'big four' sports - though more a 'fringe' sport in the UK. For several years it was based at the same location, and year by year, more people got involved - partly due to 'word of mouth', partly locals who were interested to find out more, seeing the same people around doing the same sport week after week, that they knew little about.

Anyway, the last 4 years or so, the league has migrated around Leeds each season. In the first year, certainly it lost some people who used to go to the original place where games took place. It probably gained a few people though, because new people were seeing what we were up to.

However, it then moved again the next year and the numbers went down again - the new 'community' it had been in hadn't had it around long enough to get inquisitve about it (and therefore involved).

The facilities were better in the place it moved to (a rugby club) but the regulars there went there to play rugby and thus weren't really interested in getting involved in our sport that appeared at their place twice a week. In the end, the league had to move again as it got in the way. It moved again (further out of town) but even fewer people went as it was so far from town and in a place where non-players would never really 'stumble across it'.

So it moved again and is now up at Roundhay park and has been there a few months and the numbers have stopped dropping off. The reality was though that the number of people who were involved grew the most each year when it was consistently in the same place.

'Part-time followers' are less inclined to blindly go wherever the game goes each year and 'regulars' will start to get weary when they have to move around all the time.

I'm probably wide-of-the-mark with my understanding, so apologies if this has been irrelevant...

The London 'project' in top flight terms is over for now.

They had their hand held for a number of years to give them a kick start. But it has been a slow decline in recent years when standing on their own two feet. With the previously mentioned poor gates (not helped due to constant ground changes) it looks like the battle is lost in driving interest to their cause. If they can't people to pay their money to watch the likes of Tomkins, Hardaker etc along with their own players how are they going to market a battle against Keighley!

I do tend to go a bit off-topic and get all philosophical and rambling at times, so apologies for this. Will try and keep it a bit more succinct next time!

One last thought on the moving grounds point.

The relocation that London have undertaken isn't remotely comparable to any other SL club moving to new stadia. From The Stoop to Barnet is a journey of 18 miles. It's equivalent to Leeds relocating to somewhere like Tadcaster.

If you're doing that every three or four years you have no chance of building the consistent customer base that is the foundation of any business. If the landlords of your favourite pub moved that far away, you wouldn't follow them.

Agree. London has become embarrassing to RL and the sooner some people give up on the dream that will never come to fruition then we can concentrate on making sure the heartland of the game is healthy (yes, this includes the Bulls).

The assistance was marginal. The RFL should have been a lot more involved, financially and organisationally. The most important thing they should have done was to acquire or build a moderately-sized RL stadium with adjacent training pitches in an optimal location which would have become the fulcrum for the sport in South East England. This would have been expensive, no doubt, but the amount of rent the Broncos and Skolars have paid to parties outside the sport over the years would have made a decent hole in a mortgage whilst the potential payback on the investment could have been immense. The critical thing is the club has never properly planted itself into any community - they've always been tenants, endangered by the whims of their landlords or owners. Years of work in one segment of London would be immediately undone when the club upped sticks and moved to another.

London would probably never have been the biggest RL club, but to claim that people away from the so-called (ha!) heartlands are inevitably disinterested in Rugby League is foolish and not proven by the facts. But away from Yorks/Lancs/Cumbria you have to work harder at it, make people curious, invite them in, make them believe that this club somehow represents them and that, if they are going to become involved, it will be there forever, just like any other sports club. In Leeds, people know that Leeds RLFC represents them because it's just there, people known about it, talk about it, are already emotionally involved in it or can, with little stretch, become involved. That involvement is a construct though; it's a long-embedded cultural tradition but it doesn't mean that's the only way fans of sports club come to be.

London was, and is a great club - the atmosphere at London games in the late 90s was quite unlike that at Leeds, more friendly, more dedicated, more intelligent. Those fans, those kids who had just started to get interested in Rugby League, were betrayed by a trident of failures: the indifference of the RFL, the tery of heartlands fans and clubs and the disastrousness of some of the key decisions made by Lenagan and, especially, Hughes. If ever there was an example to be cite against people who say these genius "successful businessmen" who run the clubs should be given a greater say in running the sport, David Hughes is the one. A more successful businessman than any of them, and a worst sports administrator than any as well.

The [url=http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/the-swift-and-painful-return-to-reality-1241757.htmlfinal sentence of the second para of this article[/url reminds me of the great days, when almost anything seemed possible. London was, back then, a very special club, supported by thousands of people for whom simply being a Rugby League fan was about twenty times more difficult than it is for any Leeds fan - and twenty times more rewarding. The chance was there then to plant roots and invest in the club. It was missed then, but it doesn't mean it has to be missed again in the future.

Failed by the indifference of the RFL and Feckwittery of heartlands fans and clubs?
Really? Rather than rant about anything and everything Care to explain how fans of other Clubs &indeed these Clubs themselves are in any way to blame for the farce and terminal decline that has been the Broncos over the last decade?
Also how much money do you think the game as a whole has to throw away after the Crusaders losses and ill advised purchase of Odslum?

Agree totally. I think people come up with an argument that they think sounds good, and makes themselves something different to everyone else, rather than actually believe what they are saying.

London's problems are London's making only. Other than that key city name, they have not contributed anything to the competition. I have never witnessed any atmosphere at London games approaching anything close than what you get elsewhere.

Hard lines to them, would have being great had it succeeded, but it never came close and probably never would.

Bit harsh to call that a rant. I read someone who was/is passionate about RL in London. Makes some good points and maybe a few contentious ones, but it comes across as someone who really cares.

My view is that London lost their way because they haven't had somewhere to call home that provided the kind of atmosphere and location that made it attractive for people to visit. Away fans were never going to contribute much so everything should have been focussed on getting as many London based fans as possible into the matches. I'm sure there are many reasons why London have gone the way they have, and I can't comment on any of the alledged mis-management etc. that may or may not have been part of that because I don't know details. But for most "fans" it's about having somewhere attractive to go (and attractiveness is based on many factors) and watch a quality side. How you provide that or fail to provide that is how RL clubs succeed or go under.

I don't doubt there is "passion" in amongst it mate but I do question some of the blame thrown around and to me that comes across as a rant that literally blames anything and everything hence the questions I raised.
Don't get me wrong there is obvious blame to be made i.e the lack of a settled ground ,mis-management and continued failing squads littered with expensive overseas flops are where I put it which in turn had the knock on effect of poor crowds from wherever they played.
What I don't accept and would like Mjm to explain is HOW "Fekwitted Fans of other Clubs and the Clubs themselves" are in any way to blame!

This is what annoys me about this forum the most - if you have a contradictory or unpopular opinion you are accused of tery. Granted there are one or two opinions that would genuinely fall in the category of tery but if you can give a balanced and reasoned argument that someone else doesn't like, suddenly you are a fekkwit.

For 120 years RL has only flourished at an elite level in it's heartlands. EVERY attempt to expand the sport at this level outside of this area has failed. Why am I a fekkwit to think that it will be like this for foreseeable future?

Is it just simply that the RFL have got it wrong on every occasion and there is a much simpler formula that hasn't been tried or is it as I suggest simply that RL is a parochial sport and isn't palatable for the rest of the country?

Every attempt???

Catalan seems to be making a fair fist of things despite all the travel they have to do?

I believe London could have a good chance of moving forward but like all clubs they need the financial backing. Once they have a decent team, in a decent location the fans will follow

Speaking as a Londoner as well as a Rhino's fan

But they did and they did and they didn't.

I said "outside the heartlands".

I don't know who has called you a t, I agree it's getting to be a pain, you can challenge opinions without calling people idiots.

What I would say is that "Heartland" is very much an artificial term when it comes to RL. It's a real matter of opinion as to exactly what the Heartland of our sport is. I would say that as the sport is played all over the world a geographical limit placed around the "M62 corridor" (which I am assuming is what you call "Heartland"icon_wink.gif in the UK is fairly meaningless. There are clubs within the heartland that have failed even more spectacularly than London seem to be going and I'm not just talking about Bradford. Older supporters could probably reel off a list of clubs that are either gone or effectively never going to challenge for honours again at the top level. They could all be classed as being in the heartland.
There either is or there isn't a market for a well run RL club in London. I believe there is, and for a while it was proven to be the case. I can remember rugby in or around London all the years I have been a fan of the game - starting with Fulham. To be able to have a club of some sort active for nearly 40 years is a sign that there is an interest.
Another example would be RL in Australia. In the early 80's when I started watching Leeds there was no top grade league in Queensland, top class RL was tthe Sydney competition. There was no RL in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth etc. Now look at the competition. local supporters are parochial, not sports.

I think the thing which ultijmately killed London was consistency.

In order to stand a chance of survival they need financial clout to be able to compete, and attract decent players.

Coupled with that they need a salary cap level which is appropriate for the part of the world they live in. Looking at the quality of life you would have on 80k in London compared to Castleford, and its no reason that they lose all their promising youngsters, and struggle to attract people to move down from the heartlands.

They also need to put roots down somewhere and grow a committed fan base.

It has often been mentioned that the sport needs the Broncos for a media perspective. I'm never that sure about it to be honest, but if the RFL believe it they need to put the work in to make it happen, and some leg ups off the pitch is entirely fair.

Where the RFL seems to struggle is that it has ideas of expansion, but does not plan it on a long term scale. The Welsh team could have worked, but it wasn't given the time and resources to succeed. This is probably in part due to the RFL not being a cash rich operation that can invest in the future of the sport at the elite level.