We have that strategy, anyone who wants a go, and has the money can enter the lower divisions.

We have that club Newcastle Thunder..........Rejoice

I don't see the game is dying? As I say many clubs are aged well over 100 years old and still going strong....

Around 1970 it looked to be dying as playing numbers dropped sharply and crowds also dropped sharply.

You must remember those days??

does that include Toulouse

I should have used the word 'structure' instead of 'set-up'. French RL is about clubs like Pia, St Gaudens, Carcassone, Limoux, Lezingnan...not Catalonia, who are just a newish national/regional entity, some say Catalonia is a nation, is Wales is a nation I'd say Catalonia is as well. So in NZ the true srtucture of NZ RL are clubs like Mt Albert and Otahuhu. the NZ Warriors don't play in a NZ RL competition, and the Catalonia Dragons don't play in a French RL comp.

IMO we should let them develop their own domestic league instead of just dropping a full-time team into Auckalnd and Perpignan. Having team like Toronto, Celtic Crusaders and PSG makes RL look so desperate. If areas of the world don't want to play or watch RL that's their problem, don't try and force RL onto people.

I'd be genuinely curious to see how many French players played top level RL before Catalans? Only one I can really think of was Maxime Grésèque. Couldn't name one PSG player without googling it. The 1996 squad had a few French in it, the 1997 squad was pretty much Aussies/English. Since Catalans I could name at least a full playing squad of French players. So what was the 'French Game' doing before Catalans? Not knocking it, as it will have produced many amateur/semi pro players and put rugby balls in kids hands (which is the main point).



The Catalans job is to be a successful rugby league club. That's the goal of any sporting team. To be successful. During our most successful era the majority of our skillful players were Aussie/NZ. In our 2001 GF we had 8 overseas players (Withers, Vaikona, Mackay, H. Paul, R. Paul, Vagana, Gartner and Rigon). 9 English players including 3 academy graduate players (Pryce, Peacock, Fielden). Catalans in their most successful year had 9 French players in their 17 for the 2018 Challenge Cup Final (Gigot, Yaha, Simon, Jullien, Garcia, Casty, Bousquet, Baitieri, Goudemand). So Catalans had the same French players, than we had English players.....and I'm sure that's the same for a lot of teams.

The problem is France in general do not have a huge player pool, so the quality will be limited. They severely lack in halves. It wasn't so bad when Bosc was around because he was great to be fair. Now they have Fages. It's not Catalans job to better the French team. It's Catalans job to make the players they have better and if that improves the French team then great. The French team on paper has a half decent 17.

Catalans academy was shut because they can't play our academies and the academies they could play over there wouldn't help the Catalans as they wouldn't be good tests. There's loads of logistical problems with this too. Cost of travel, the players are still in education and they'd need to travel Friday or before for a weekend game so they'd miss out. For Catalans it would be money down the drain. That's why they now use Saint-Estève XIII Catalan as a feeder club from Elite One. They've already had Morgue, Romano, Séguier, Perez from there and have used them to give Di Costa and Albert game time.



In all fairness the French team aren't on our level and they never will be with only 1 professional side and 1 semi-professional side to choose players from. Let's be honest, French RL isn't going to pick players from Pia Donkeys or Avignon. France in general are years behind us in RL. It was banned over there and playing habits changed. It's getting better though. France should be competing with the likes of Samoa, Fiji, Cook Islands etc. Not the likes of Australia, NZ, England. Do you have the same thoughts about Ireland, Scotland and Wales who are absolute sh*t and barely have any actual Welsh, Irish or Scottish playing for them? I do agree that Catalans should have a moral obligation to try bring more French talent through their ranks. I'm a Bulls fan and we pride ourselves on our youth system. In an ideal world every team would have as good a youth system as we do. But some see a different way to be successful.



Toronto were never liked anyway. They had a huge backer at the time and people got y about that. Okay, hindsight is a wonderful thing but at the time a lot of fans were complaining about the travel (well it was paid for), people were complaining about not developing Canadians (well some of their clubs don't produce players even though they've had 100+ years to perfect it), they complained about buying their way to SL (they worked up the leagues rather than being parachuted in like Widnes, Crusaders etc or 'saved' by the demise of another club like Wakefield). SL chairmen were worried that Toronto would eventually take their place. Imagine if say Wakefield, Hull KR, Huddersfield, Salford went down instead of London? They never took a penny out of central funding either. But not one of the outcrys at the time were about a business model, or the financial state of the club. That only came much later.

Catalans don't need to be a draw here, we probably aren't much of a draw over there. As long as they are a draw in Perpignan which they are. They've had average crowds between 7-9k since moving to Stade Gilbert Brutus. With the most supported seasons being 2018 (9,806) and 2016 (9,764). They also took the game on the road to Camp Nou (31,555) which is the record for SL attendance. So as long as they keep doing that, they deserve to be in the top flight. That in itself could be an attractor for SKY too. In my opinion Catalan being in the competition is much better for the game as a whole.

The heartland clubs do need to strengthen and I do feel that a financially stable Bradford and Leigh would be great for SL and in a couple of years time York and Newcastle would be fantastic additions too if they keep doing the right things. At the moment those are the positives of the game.

Look, it feels like we are all going over the same ground over and over. We all have different opinions and we all interpret information in a different way, I'm assuming you're older as you referenced rugby in the 70's so I guess you were there, I'm 90's born so we are going to have different views on the game naturally anyway. So let's get back on topic and hopefully we can all be supporting our respective teams from the terracing soon. God knows I've missed the rugby!

The main reason I remember in 2005 ppl were saying Catalonia should be in SL was that they would improve the French national side like the NZ Warriors had, well that's a myth as NZ had at times a decent RL team in the 1980's. And as I suspected, Catalonia hasn't improved the French RL side.

Which people were saying this though? I think that was a question someone asked Donnyman. Was it SL who said this? The IRLF? Catalans themselves? French RL? Fans? All I know is that is wasn't part of the 'criteria' to allow Catalans into the SL. It might have been talked about in terms of a potential side benefit to having them in but it was mainly to have a French presence, French TV deal, French players, to really expand the game. And arguably they have done. There's more French players throughout the league and because of Catalans inclusion to SL there's now more eyes on clubs like Toulouse. There's more French coaches, albeit most are ex-players but by playing for Catalans it's given them the platform to coach.

I'd say French national side is in a slightly better state post 2006 than pre 2006. It's just that you see other nations progressing like Tonga but they have Aussies and NZ's playing for them who's 'heritage' is Tongan. France can only really chose French players. Until there is a couple of 'hotbeds' over there for RL (like there is here) then France only have a limited selection of players. In all fairness they won the 2018 European Championship to qualify for the World Cup too.

I've been trying to get a solid debate out of for ages but whenever you're asked the hard questions you disappear.

Super league has to grow the game which they successfully did in '06 who have also successfully stayed in the top flight for 14 years and given starts to so many Frenchmen who would not have gotten that opportunity without Catalan.

It was Elstone who ruined negotiating the new French deal and even with that setback were able to secure a free to air deal for the final games of the season, something you conveniently. So the absence of a tv deal has only been for a very small time of their existence.

As for international games, it is not their responsibility for the national team to be competitive. That is the governing bodies role of both England and France.

Do you blame the English clubs for their lack of competitiveness over the last 40 years against Australia?

Catalan were probably were introduced on the premise that their presence would boost the national side. Catalan job is to win footy games, winning the CC which gave great exposure to our game.

If you believe Catalan should be solely French, do you also believe that English clubs should stop signing the likes of Inglis, Coote, Hastings, Austin, Miller, Lolohea, Taia, Tuimavave, Mata'utia?

As for Toulouse they have a development team and system and in my opinion would be the best choice for team 12. What a boost to rl to have a couple French derbies each year which would inspire more French players in the years to come.

Lastly Catalan are one of the larger clubs commercially and one of few clubs which have grown attendance, including the largest super league crowd of 31k.

Keen to hear your rebuttal.

Sky, mainly on Boots 'n' All. But Catalonia is not expansion of RL.

I don't "Dissappear" and this comment is again more personal goading from you.

Gausch has serious money problems and you know it, and he continues to preside over a club that does not have a policy of developing French players, nor providing them with first team opportunities. Go on TRL and read Barnyia's posts about how French juniors are ignored and fringe French players only make the numbers up. Even if they get on the bench they get left there unless players are injured or tired. McIlorum tells the tale of how he'd feign tiredness to give French lads a chance.

My "opinion" for others as this isn't a private conversation, is that Gausch just wants to win games and that means not bothering with French players, and as for Toulouse if they go the nod they would strengthen by copying Catalans...

Lord help us if we are crazy enough to bring in a "French" Superleague derby where nobody on the field is French.....









Not to mention depleting the English TV deal we have by blocking English clubs from SL for that Charade over the channel......

Your absolutely right, but we have people who are somehow tickled by the idea of French clubs in Superleague as you see above. The only problem is these clubs will simply stop being "French" once in Superleague like Gausches "French" side who have been outed by French RL follower Barnyia. You can be sure if Toulouse got the nod out would go their French players for English and antpiodeans...

The fact is that for the game to survive and prosper we ideally need good International competition to attract attention. We could not get that from France, with the internationals ending up being annual hammerings of a French national squad blocked from playing at professional level and incapable of competing with games over by half time before ever lowering crowds. They were pulled.

We need to give English fans quality English content, not "French" content so that they buy the SKY subscriptions/ SKY have already warned the game if they go down the path of overseas sides then the SKY contract goes down the plughole. The game itself had to take a long hard look at itself and where is was going. The American dream was looked at and declared a dream and of no value to us here, France was also looked at and again no value there.

And it really isn't a complicated analysis, the game needs......

Paying TV contracts only the English clubs can get
Pro-Player development systems from junior to Superleague which only the English clubs run
and like it or not away fans - hence the SL are chasing the Bulls return

Three solid business reasons to go forward with SKY 2022 with an all English league which Lenegan indicated.

Big thanks for the well considered interesting post. For some time the only answer to my view that the overseas clubs would not grow the sport, but would block clubs here from being part of Superleague, thus lowering our value to SKY who benefit from English fans subscriptions, and reducing the number of clubs developing players was cheap and cowardly insults from anonymous keyboard warriors. To be honest I'm so endeared with your reply I just want to respect your opinion and thank you for that







Your a true gentleman!!!!

All I can say is that the game obviously needs big crowds, but the crowds in France and Spain don't come here, nor do they buy SKY subscriptions. Catalans don't develop players they buy them from here.

And so you yourself see the clamour to return Bradford Bulls to superleague, so fans renew their lapsed[u TV subscriptions[/u so the Bradford academy can hopefully inspire kids to try to become Bulls players and find talents like Whitehead and Bateman, and so thousands of Bulls fans can pay through the gates of fellow clubs along the M62.

The question isn't for me should we put Catalans & Toulouse in Superleague?

It is a question of if we do what damage is done by consequently excluding (say) Bradford and Leigh?

And for what?

There absolutely no damage done to the game by excluding Leigh or Bradford.

Probably not, but in my mind there has been damage done to the reputation of RL in Britain due to the recent history of the Bulls.

But obviously it's international sport where it's at, so we need the British Lions to play more matches, have the Lions in the WC instead of England, Wales and Scotland. Ireland isn't in Britain.

On the subject of Sky subscriptions, are there any figures about, that indicate a drop in take up since either Leigh, Bradford or even London dropped from SL. Was there any change with the inclusion of Toronto.?
Does having clubs like Catalan (or Toronto) increase the "pull" on neutral fans or are people just not bothered ?

Erm.Could you possibly name the Sky executive who ' warned the game if they go down the path of overseas sides then the Sky contract goes down the plughole' ?

When did Lenagan,prior to Wigan losing money and squandering more money in the direction of Elstone and former RFL officials,ever suggest an all - English league?

Stay off the drugs,children!

There are no such published details emanating from the analysis of piles of data, but but it's clear from Superleague attendances that people prefer a Leeds.v.Bradford game to Leeds.v.Catalans by a long chalk........

Looking at SL attendances Catalans seem to regularly deliver under average attendances to SL clubs here, at one time London and Crusaders were also delivering the worst attendances at SL grounds. Obviously these are/were [i"no away fans"[/i clubs. In my experience fans of English SL clubs love there to be a divided crowd ultimately as big and divided as:-

Warrington.v.Wigan
Leeds.v.Bradford
Hull.v.HKR
Saints.v.Wigan
Cas.v.Wakefield (we both were there when 11,000 attended)

Which get some fantastic attendances. The trick some so called "expansionists" use is to state that away fans do not count. On message boards this is often dredged up as an excuse for the low SL crowds we see when these so called called expansion clubs come to town. I once went to a Celtic Crusaders away game and the crowd were chatting before the game started and well into the game as well







Let's remember the last Leigh.v. Saints was 8,000 and leigh took good away following around with them all year in Superleague. Let's not forget the days when Bradford put 12,000 into Fartown and 8,000 into the Halifax games......

If Super league needs paying fans the more the better (and it's not really a "if"icon_wink.gif and "if" SKY want to maximise subscriptions then look above for what Superleague needs to be to satisfy and attract the most fans and TV subs. OK we need P&R so lets not forget Widnes and Featherstone Rovers.

And let's certainly not forget that SKY's bottom line is no more than three so called expansion clubs IF Superleague "must have them"..

However there was a study on the commercial viability of North America that concluded they could bring no value to Superleague. No TV deals, no top quality players. No away fans. It's the same position for Les Catalans sadly..........

Then a return to Superleague opens a new chapter and the "Recent history" becomes Chip paper....

I can't see any fans whether on TV or at the grounds, being put off by the past when the Bulls come to town....

You've changed from Sky having an all-English league to a 3 club maximum overseas clubs in your theory/imagination/hallucination.
Beats me why new 'expansion' clubs based along the M62 corridor have also gone out of business.
Perhaps the sport is contracting.
Those ' fantastic attendances ' are considerably fewer than in other decades of their 100 + years of existence.

Thanks mate. I never resort to personal insults on a forum board, not worth it. Never say anything over a computer that you wouldn't say face to face. That's my philosophy. And I don't allow insults to get in the way of a good debate.



The crowds don't need to come here. They get better crowds there than quite a few of SL sides. I'll take 2020 as an example as it's the most recent season (Average Crowds according to RLP):

14,227 - Leeds
13,554 - Hull FC
12,852 - Wigan
11,213 - Saints
10,895 - Warrington
8,348 - Catalans
7,773 - Castleford
6,574 - Huddersfield
6,482 - Hull KR
4,612 - Wakefield
4,176 - Salford

If you look at 2019 averages as fans could attend all games it looks even better for Catalans as they nearly averaged 10k just 625 less than Warrington:

14,640 - Saints
12,158 - Leeds
11,420 - Wigan
10,735 - Hull FC
10,431 - Warrington
9,806 - Catalans
7,505 - Hull KR
7,253 - Castleford
5,298 - Wakefield
5,099 - Huddersfield
3,483 - Salford
2,014 - London

The game is the European Super League. That's why SL was created in 1996 to create a brand that had European teams. Granted the initial Paris venture failed but we now have a successful French club who have been in the top flight for 14 seasons. It's not called the English Super League. Catalans have big crowds compared to half of SL. I'd sooner see 31,555 at Nou Camp for Catalans vs Wigan or even a 9,000 crowd at Catalans for a league game than the 3,550 crowd at Salford vs Huddersfield from 14 Feb this season. So the crowd argument you have is irrelevant. I'm curious to know exactly how many fans other SL clubs take to Catalans? Their lowest home crowd of 2019 was 7,237 against Wakefield. Is that Wakefield's fault that the crowd wasn't above 8k? In contrast the home match against Castleford was 10,120 and the biggest home crowd (excluding Camp Nou game) was 10,284 against Hull FC. Now those are the figures I like to see in our top flight competition.



You are mistaking SKY subscriptions with the viewing figures of games. No-one has cancelled SKY just because Bradford aren't in Super League. So there is no lapsed TV subscriptions. The 8,000 Bulls fans will still have SKY as there are other things to watch such as Movies, TV Shows, other sports etc. Having Bradford in SL won't increase subscriptions but it may increase the games viewing figures if they have a Bradford vs Leeds match on. Even then I think you are severely overestimating how this impacts SKY. RL is a cheap sport to have on for SKY, £40 million is pocket change to them. They don't even think it's worth that anymore. Having the Bulls only benefits SL so the chairmen can say, "well now instead of having 60,000 watching Leeds vs Salford we now get 150,000 watching Leeds vs Bradford". That's the bargaining chip SL may need when it comes to negotiating the SKY deal. The only other benefit to SL clubs is the away support we bring. But that's irrelevant, clubs don't base their budget on X amount of away fans as that's based on a figure that could change. If they do it's a poor way to run a budget. Otherwise in 2014 they would have had to re-evaluate their budgets based on Bradford being relegated. Bradford's academy will always have top class kids coming through, at the moment in the SL we have:

Trueman, O'Brien, Wardle, Wilson, Roberts, Butterworth (just left Giants days ago), Cameron Scott, Ryan, Milnes, Storton, Mudoti, Mellor, Donaldson, Lees (pretty sure he was at our academy), Bentley, Olbison (Toronto), Kopczak, Atkins, G. Burgess, Bateman. That's not including the likes of Whitehead. And we continue to produce talent. That's not including everyone in the lower leagues or current academy players either.



I would. If Toulouse are a good business, get decent crowds and earn their place. Then yes. Get them in. Catalans vs Toulouse in the top tier has the potential to be a 10k gate. Not many get that other than your top 5 teams. Who knows, with two top flight French teams, the derby, there might just be an interest from France to get those games shown over there. Has there been damage by excluding us? Maybe to the viewing figures by losing the Leeds vs Bradford derby. I think SL would be better having us in but not at the expense of Catalans. Maybe at the expense of a team with sh*t crowds who never seem to increase. But I'd personally sooner earn the right. Leigh to be fair haven't been excluded, they earned the right to go up but wasn't quite good enough to stay up under the structure at the time. For what it's worth in 2017 they should have stayed up and Widnes should have gone down. That might have changed Leigh's fortunes.

The criteria of SL should be sorted prior to any promotion. The youth/structure all should be in place before even considering entry to SL. On the reverse side,current SL clubs should also adhere to that criteria.

Quite clearly it doesn’t. That’s the issue, that’s the problem. Shoe horning a club in at a cost to the sport isn’t an answer. Do it right first time and SL can’t argue.

I'm not against Catalonia remaining in SL, it's just that the bigger fight IMO is to get more ppl who live in the north of England attending SL matches. One way of doing that is through the British Lions, and getting them playing more often and in a WC.

It's down to the clubs to try to get more people through the gates. People have less disposable income now than they did 10 years ago never mind 20. So they spend it on other things. Some SL clubs are charging £25 a ticket. For my family (Mum, Dad, Me, 2 sisters it would £110 on tickets alone if the kids were £10. That's a hell of a lot to be shelling out a week or every other week, not including food and drink and travel costs. So rightfully some people decide that money's best spent elsewhere. Make it affordable first. It's hard because clubs need the cash to survive. The product on the field needs to be good, RL used to be entertaining then they brought in structure and the wrestle which really dulled the game down (great to play as it made it harder to break down a defence) but not good for the fans. Now they are speeding up the game again and we've had arguably the most entertaining Grand Final in years even though there weren't many tries. Playing like that will also put bums on seats.

I would have agreed with your point about the British Lions about 40 years ago in the 80's and 90's when GB was the pinnacle of the sport here. Long gone are the days when kids wanted to be Davies, Hanley, Offiah because of their exploits in a GB jersey. The GB concept was dead in the water the minute they chose an Aussie coach and Aussie players. I love Wayne Bennett, easily the worlds best coach for representative rugby and has proven it again with Queensland this season. But he's not a GB coach.

Having a successful international side would be great for the game no doubt but that doesn't encourage the kids to play anymore. We have a big stage, and that is the Grand Final. The TV games. The local clubs. This is the pathway now a days. If you ask kids these days they want to be the next Tomkins, the next Walmsley, they want to be like Burrow, Sinfield, Hall. Because of their exploits at club level. I wanted to play because I loved the Bulls and in particular Robbie Paul and James Lowes. You get kids playing at a young age because they want to play with friends then it snowballs from there, you get right into the club and you feel a sense of belonging. Not because England managed to beat NZ in the Baskerville Cup.

For what it's worth the GB concept is 'romanticized' and I would love to see it back properly as I loved the early and mid 2000's games. But I also think having an Ireland, Wales and Scotland could provide players with an opportunity to play international rugby (maybe at a poorer standard) who wouldn't normally get selected by GB.

These days rugby is fighting against other things to occupy peoples free time. Especially kids. I was born in 1995 and in the early 2000's there was nothing better than going training on a weekday and playing winter rugby. Now kids have Playstations and Xbox's, Tik Tok and Fornite etc. Parents work for longer these days and may not have the free time to take their kids to training/games etc. It's getting harder to get kids involved.

Obviously I've heard most of that before, it's similar to RU down here. Kids, do tend to think and feel more local, adults, to get most of us interested it takes a bit more than that, and to get more people with more disposable income to watch RL, that's only going to be done through international matches. There are hardly any Welsh bred guys playing for Wales, there are even fewer Scots and Irish bred players in those nations, I think in any case.

Explain how that will be done by international matches? I'd be interested to see how that works? If there's no structure in Wales for example from the bottom up then Wales can't produce players and can't have a successful team. If Wales suddenly became competitive it would suddenly increase participation in Wales. They did well in 1995 at the World Cup but there wasn't anything after? There needs to be a build of the amateur game first, like they are doing in Newcastle. At the moment there's development in Ireland with Longhorns RL and Galway Tribesmen etc. Theres a born and bred Irishman in Ronan Michael whos at Huddersfield at the moment, hopefully this shows there can be success for Irish players.

Wales are probably further ahead than Ireland and Scotland and have two clubs at the moment in North Wales and West Wales. I think from the outside looking in West Wales are at least trying to play local Welsh players, they've suffered but how good was it when they got their first win? This will help majorly as they are getting exposure to the lower leagues. If this continues over the next few years whos to say West Wales can't be competitive in the higher positions of League 1?

Why just north of England? It doesn't matter where you live.