I'm about to pop out so won't have the chance to reply to most of this till later, but one quick one

The argument that Wakey, Cas & Fev fans don't want it.

Some of them-mainly the ones crazy enough about RL to spend large amounts of time talking to strangers they've not met about it-don't want. I am at best unsure that RLFans is a representative sample of the fanbases.

But even if they don't want it, I don't care. There are people on those boards who have said they'd rather watch Cas in Championship One than a merged side in Super League. If that's their wish, grand. But they participate in a competition which involves other clubs, and that means doing the best for the majority even when some are worse off. Of course they don't want their club to be worse off, who would? But we shouldn't allow Cas to make decisions for the entirety of SL.

If reducing the number of teams would allows us to increase the Salary Cap & have a more competitive SL, that's what we should do. And if Cas fans really would rather watch Championship 1 and be Wakefield's feeder club than support a merger team, the RFL should grand their wish. It's as simple as that.

Im sure we would find the same happening now as happened 20 years ago. 20k would march and scream and shout, then forget about it and not attend those clubs.

Whilst after the announcement, and probably in the first year we would see some squealing, 2nd/3rd/4th years no-one would even care.

Of course I think it would work, that's why I am pushing it.

Hetherington built Sheffield from nothing, and into a much bigger entity than they are today, before they were ruined. Doncaster has facilities that are the envy of most super league sides. The catchment area of those areas is huge, they are covering an area the size of Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Wakefield.

It needs something to invigorate that area for Rugby League. A newly formed merged club would do that IMO.

Have we collectively decided that particular merger is off now?



The viability of professional RL in South Yorkshire is not something I've given a lot of thought to but again, as above really, it's entirely a matter for the clubs involved and their followers how they take the game forward.

Reducing the number of teams in the SL may be short termist but the quality of games we are seeing when a low positioned team is involved is dreadful.

Concentrating the League’s better players into, say, 10 teams will improve the overall standard of the league. The clubs that have already played in the top fight that move down a league will be of a better standard of those already in that league, thus forcing standards up as well.

Who wants to go see a team that is getting slaughtered on a weekly basis? Look at the home attendance figures for Castleford their past few home matches. Attendances have massively dropped off, and why? Because no-one wants to see their team get a pounding each week.

The reason that standards are dropping is because the top clubs don’t have to play to their true potential each week. Leeds are testament to this over the last two seasons. We can afford to let standards slip a few times each season safe in the knowledge that there are a few ‘easy’ points to be picked up when playing the bottom feeders.

I’ll admit that reducing the number of clubs in the SL is a short term solution but we simply don’t have the luxury to sit and wait for long term strategies to kick in.

The continued decline in SL standards will equal a continued decline in attendances/viewing figures which will equal reduced revenue from our pay masters at Sky which will equal a decline in SL standards which will equal… well you get my point – ever decreasing circles.

Size of area isn't enough though is it? It's an area not really showing much appetite for RL. The fact that Sheffield were ultimately ruined raises at least the possibility that it wasn't a sustainable model.

I live in Warwickshire. A club based around Coventry, Solihull and Birminngham would have a vast catchment area. Doesn't mean it would be a viable proposition for a SL franchise. I am, of course, being a little silly here, but the silliness underpins a serious point that the market for a product in an area is not necessarily indicated by the population of that area.

I'm not saying categorically that you're wrong, but I just can't see anything compelling in the arguments that you're right.

Indeed. Size of catchment area means begger all. People need to identify with the club they're going to support, it must represent something they can associate with.

Would the populace of Donny and Sheffield associate with a South Yorkshire club? Likewise would people from Fev, Cas and Wakey associate with a hybrid?

I remember when London played as Fulham, there were loads of people saying they should play as "London" as being Fulham turned off loads of potential fans from other parts of the city. When the name change came along with some success there was no massive increase in support. Despite 10m people living in the city there was no real increase in support.

Just creating a new club in the middle of a large potential support doesn't guarantee anything and runs the risk of either being dismissed as an irrelevance or even worse turns away existing RL fans who've seen their own clubs removed to aid the birth of a club that is resented.

I can see an argument as to why Sheffield and Doncaster wouldn’t be able to build an identity. Doncaster and Sheffield are relatively large and disparate places. We are talking about 800k people there. Im not sure that necessitates a merger. Where I could see worth is in those two working together on the community and youth development aspects, and marketing of the game in south yorks. With some overall over-arching South Yorks RL authority, with additional RFL funding, working with and on behalf of both clubs to improve the game there.

Id think that situation is different to fev/Cas/Wakefield which aren’t large and disparate places they are essentially small towns in the smae city, or FC/KR which are in the same city.

There isn’t a catch all solution to mergers, it is individual to the situation.

People seem to link mergers, and specifically Wakefield, Cas and Fev, with better quality for overall superleague.
There is no evidence of that at all.

If making 10 teams will make for better teams and games then great, let's pick the best 10. If Wakefield are not one I'll watch them in a different league. I don't watch Cas or Fev. I don't see why that should be an issue to any other fans from other clubs.

Pick the 10 best. No mergers.

Personally if you are going to try and do a county team a la north yorks south yorks etc then these would work better in an area without established teams. Areas like wakey have teams with a long history and family's have been supporting their team for generations, alot harder to sell a regional team to these fans

Personally, the reason i want to see a merged WMD side is that I want to see a strong side in that area, to do that whichever club it is needs to leave behind the parochial nature of the game in WMD and be a team for the entire area. The situation as it is, is like having smaller versions of Bramley, Headingley and Cross Gates playing in SL

It would be ridiculous for a city the size of Leeds to be looking at 3 12k+ stadiums for Rugby League, its just stupid for a city the size of Wakefield.

And I would think it self-evident that another strong club, whether that be the Wildcats, tigers or rovers or a merged entity of all three, would improve SL, i also dont think people really care if it is the Wildcats, tigers or rovers, or a merged entity of all three. Just as long as it happens.

OMFG!!!!! If Croggie had a Superleague team! That is the greatest thing I've ever heard! I never imagined another team could mean more to me than the Rhinos! Fortress Manston Park!

I thought about this randomly last night. The one assumption that has gone largely unchallenged through this is that the local populations are too small to support separate clubs in Cas and Wakey. Is that really true though? Surely Cas is a club built on the power it had to draw an obscenely large percentage of it's local community into the ground. What happened to that? Can it be recaptured? There are 40k people in Cas (give or take), another 30k or so in Ponte Carlo. 80k in Wakey, then places like Normanton etc. With no football league clubs, and all that heritage is it really impossible to get 20k or so regular punters through 2 sets of turnstiles?

Granted it isn't happening at the moment, but could the imagination of those communities be re-captured? Or have times moved on too much?

I have a sense that Wakey's fan base may have been a little more disenchanted and drifted a little further, but surely as a sport we should at least make a push to get those fans back before we write them off?

There are parallels in other sports where relatively small populations have been rallied behind a sports club. Lens, Hoffenheim and Green Bay spring to mind. Obviously very different contexts, but that's OK, we need smaller numbers and much smaller revenues than they do.

Just a thought.

Its proving so. Shouldn’t we really think the other way. Cas and Wakey have existed for nigh on 100 years, and in that hundred years never, ever, even in their ‘glory days’ attracted that many people. Why would we assume that is suddenly going to change?

As for the clubs you mention, well yes Green Bay is a pretty small area, but the Packers aren’t a green bay only club are they. They aren’t a small parochial club surrounded by the bigger boys, they just happen to be named after a small town. Its only relatively recently that they stopped splitting their games with Milwaukee and is the team for the entirety of Wisconsin (pop.6m),

There is about 250k people in Lens, and about 550k in the metro area, and only one club. Im not sure that classes as small.

Hoffenheim on the other hand are a small regional club in Germany, which nobody had heard of for the first 60 years of their life. They were an amateur club languishing in the lower reaches of the German football pyramid until a German billionaire decided to make them his plaything. Im not sure that A) that’s a business model Wakefield or Cas should chase, and B) how many billionaires there are who want to throw money at a small northern mining town.

I did note some differences of context, but Cas have certainly proved able to nudge into 5 figure crowds in the not-too-distant past. 8-9k would be plenty to average to sustain a SL club at the moment. With 80 or 90k people in the immediate area to target, that doesn't seem imnpossible.

Their record home gate is over 25k. (albeit a very long time ago)

10k is the figure. It’s the magic figure at which as club should be able to sustain itself, right now and spend the cap. But that figure is going to and should change. It will go up and then what? Cas have never averaged 80% of that figure even at their best a few years ago, they are closer to 50% of that figure. They have a crumbling ground which they need to move out of, whether that be now or in a few years, they don’t have the money to improve it, they have a limited scope for sponsorship and even smaller for corporate.

They are being left behind.

In isolation you could probably argue about Cas potential ( I wouldn’t agree but I see the argument), but they aren’t in isolation. A lot of the people who are moving to the surrounding areas do so because of the easy commute to Leeds, so they are in competition with Leeds for them. Not to mention all those places you listed are in Wakefield, so Wakefield are going to go for them as well.

The argument you are putting forward, if we were being particularly pragmatic, is that with a fair wind, a bit of luck, a bit of success, Cas might be able to grow their attendances in the next couple of years to a level which they could possibly be sustainable in the short-term if they spent below the cap and cut their cloth. A few years after that we are going to be in the exact same position.

Whats going on at Wigan. Rats leaving a sinking ship www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/22306797

Whats going on at Wigan. Rats leaving a sinking ship www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/22306797

Quote ="The Eagle"Whats going on at Wigan. Rats leaving a sinking ship www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/22306797'" The Wane Effect

Quote ="The Eagle"Whats going on at Wigan. Rats leaving a sinking ship www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/22306797'" The Wane Effect

Quote ="The Eagle"Whats going on at Wigan. Rats leaving a sinking ship www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/22306797'" Wary of reading much into this. This is a return home to finish his career. From that point of view the chance to keep playing in the NRL until he's 34 is too good to turn down. May well always have been in his plans to do this in the end. There is an absence of any real indication that the ship is sinking.

Quote ="The Eagle"Whats going on at Wigan. Rats leaving a sinking ship www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/22306797'" Wary of reading much into this. This is a return home to finish his career. From that point of view the chance to keep playing in the NRL until he's 34 is too good to turn down. May well always have been in his plans to do this in the end. There is an absence of any real indication that the ship is sinking.

Quote ="The Eagle"Whats going on at Wigan. Rats leaving a sinking ship www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/22306797'" They're a great success story apparently - a club to be emulated by all others. Indeed, their chairman's words are worthy of a zen master.

Quote ="The Eagle"Whats going on at Wigan. Rats leaving a sinking ship www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/22306797'" They're a great success story apparently - a club to be emulated by all others. Indeed, their chairman's words are worthy of a zen master.

If SuperLeague was made up of 14 clubs in the same predicament as Wigan (or Leeds), then the league would be in a much, much healthier state.

But Leeds and Wigan are not interchangeable examples. Sure, they both enjoy excellent support and are located within the best catchment areas for youth development. But only one of them got all the plaudits this week: the one with scant recent success, an exodus of their best players and a gorilla for a coach. Bizarre.

it's interesting to note that we still have 10 players who played for us in the 2008 GF coming up to 5 years later on. Barely 2 years on from Wigan's 2011 CC success and only 7 of the team that played in the final will be at DW next year (at the moment).

When was the last season that Castleford and Wakefield averaged >10k a game during a season? has it ever actually happened? We need to be realistic about what is possible

The Wigan production line, as good as it is, cant be endless. There has to come a point when they feel the effects of all these departures. Tomkins,S will be the interesting one to replace.