Surely the marketing of the club counts on the franchise applicaton, as does, as widnes found out, the way it is perceived the club is run. But, as we cloth cappers know, Harlequins will be ok cos london needs a SL club

I wouldn't bank on that for much longer.
Some of the clubs who were granted licences last time had to make assurances on certain points and I believe that Quins were warned about attendances. 40% of 12,500 is 5,000 and if we aren't near that by 2011.......we may well be in strife. For the record, that is 34 more home league games to get from 2,245 on Saturday, to 5,000

You'll get one of those points back for your location. Unless you go bust again, you'll get another licence.

That's pure speculation, the club has existed outside of the top flight in its history. I have no doubt is a far stronger local player base now than pre-SL.



I'm not convinced, we have structures below the SL squad these days. Player development programmes etc that didn't exist maybe 10 years ago.



I'm not convinced by your arguments about almost all heartland clubs, it seems to me that lots of them make losses and have sugar daddy's helping them along.



What I clearly hold in contempt is the nonsensical rewriting of RL history to fit some imagined tradition, or interpretations that skim over the hard economic realities that have always driven the sport.



That's just plain daft.



What negative spin? Do you mean not getting all nostalgic for an imagined history?



Many clubs in the heartlands have suffered the same fate you predict for Quins RL if the club fell out of SL (e.g. reformation, moving etc). I'm struggling to see the difference that long tradition brings to what you think the lack of tradition will bring to London?



Catalans is a different scenario entirely.



Good, these obsessive anti-expansionist threads are a dead end.



I don't know, but I can imagine 1k being realistic, allowing for a thinning of our core support and a drastic drop in away fans and casuals.

The crowds are the major weakness, I suspect a lot of clubs who were promising on new stadiums will fall shart come the next license round.

would have been written pre credit crunch so I suspect they may not be as relevant anyway.

Good point that many commentators have alluded to.

The need to market the club to the local populace was known at the point of moving to twickers, there must have been a plan and budget for that surely.

If you say there is no budget for advertising and precious little in the way of marketing, how on earth did the business plan get through the franchise process?

Probably because the club was/is debt free with Lenagan and Hughes making good any operating losses. Besides by sharing ground, training facilities and office space with the RU club a number of the overhead costs were significantly reduced. The people who try to elevate the attendance issue above it's importance (it is important, just not as important as some try to pretend) conveniently ignore the cost base. We don't have a big name squad, just a solid team of generally astute signings, we've improved our revenue streams, and we've reduced our overheads since moving to Twickenham. Nic Cartwright used to say 5k average was break even at Griffin Park, but the operating costs were higher and the revenue streams more limited.

We need to improve our sponsorship situation, and we need to improve marketing (Gutterfax has suggested CPA type deals in the past, which may be the only realistic option given the lack of cash to media buy).

I think that's probably far from realistic to be honest. Yes, it's only my opinion. I'm not stating it as fact and I know I could be wrong.


Not everyone, who wants to discuss Harlequins and Celtic Crusaders attendances are anti-expansionists.

Crowds are one of the most important aspects of any sporting club. You may be able to get good sponsorship deals and have a lovely sugar daddy, but a club cannot grow exponentially without developing a large fan base. As you do so it can snowball. All the extra income then comes in from that.

It also makes the game appear lame and lacking in excitement, when played in front of crowds of 2,000/3,000, where you can hear individual voices and the atmosphere sounds flat. It does the game no favours at all seeing that on TV.

Hopefully both clubs can sort it out.

so a 3,300 average at IL's figure of £9.80 odd is OK? £420K + SLY TV cash and residuals is about £2,000,000 a year. That's fine and we can survive on that....problem is, our coach and players will have their heads turned by so called bigger clubs with more fans if we don't sort something out sooner rather than later.
Also, to ignore the fact that our attendances are poor is just stupid. Field of Dreams marketing doesn't work and we need to spend a few quid sharpish or we will see a sub 2,000 crowd at the stoop this season!
Crowds numbers are important.........without customers, businesses fail.

I fully appreciate the potential reduction in costs but I cannot understand how a business plan which basically proposed "treading water" with regard to attendance would be acceptable.

And if the attendance figures bandied around on here are correct the the club has not even done that.

Not if the claims of the importance of a club in London for the future prosperity of the sport is true

I would have no problem with the RFL helping to fund the Quins in a marketing initiative , as long as it was all out in the open

I have on numerous occaisions posted that the RFL should be doing much more than they do to help all clubs generate better attendances

In fact it is the one area they seem to neglect

In reality Quins are safe as houses in SL anyway, their crowds won't affect their status.

Agree completely

Would that not be the same for crowds- Cas v Wire 5000, Bulls crowd dropping.......

No excuse for the Quins but just a thought.

Are you jealous of us or something? Or have you got some un-related hatred towards the Quins? Every thread involving us, you join in with some witty humour, give it a break?

It's not only you, he has a dig at us as well.

Flatcapper in every sense of the word.

I really don’t care about attendances because its not what I go see when I go to rugby matches. Sometimes I think that some people off this forum go to matches to watch the crowd. Please start watching the rugby because your missing an awful lot!

Don't be stupid.

What will they have to say on threads like this if they actually watch the game and discuss that afterwards?

I don’t know.

People who talk about rugby on this forum ruin it for everyone else.

Are we only restricted to talking about the game then?

Feel free to talk about other stuff in the sinbin. I’ve not been banned they for an age so its safe now!

Nobody said that but check the number of replies to this one thread in comparison with the others and you will see my point.

I’m looking forward to five years time when people will be in love with the Celtic Crusaders club for providing us with a decent GB player. If your development is anything to go with in the area then it sounds like you will unearth something special.

I wonder who will be moaning about attendances when Celtic are helping GB smash the Aussies.