Jeez!!! you just don't get it do you!!!

What happens on the field is of little interest anymore.

Pretty coloured bog seats, Ridiculous replica shirts for clashes that are not there, who goes where and how many, stadia that are "promised" etc..

That is THE future of the game, oh and moaning about match officials constantly.

The actual game on the field?

Irrelevant!!!!!!!

Now I am generally considered a flat cap wearing anti expansionist , but I also would happily see the RFL put extra money into a London club , as long as it was all out in the open and the reasons why properly stated , my only proviso being I would like to see similar effort and investment put into the Championships as well , effort being the main one , rather than the badly thought out ' lip service ' we currently see

Possibly , although we might have been promoted back into the Championship by now , we were relegated , but placed back into the Championship because of yet another badly thought out attempt at expansion , one that like the ones being discussed on this and other threads is unsustainable due to lack of public interest

Not forgetting the ' protection ' given to a club that also cannot sustain itself at Championship level , which devalues the competition , a club that was supposed to add value , yet another ' own goal ' by the RFL

Whilst your sentiments are to be applauded, who is going to pay the deficit year on year?

Do you expect their current Sugar Daddy to bail them out ad-infinitum, or maybe our Masters a Red Hall could slip ‘em a few quid each year to keep them afloat, perhaps the RFL could put a levy on all other clubs, say a pound on the admission fee, to go towards propping up the expansion utopia.

A fine example of the classic internet fail, flawlessly executed.

Quins have to go in July. They cannot be allowed to rumble through another administration/bail out and carry on. Fold Quins and give some backing to Skolars to ensure that league in London doesn't altogether disappear.

what i want to know is, watching the game yesterday, there looked to be 7-800 there, max! how can they keep stating these crowds which are obviously lies? terrible crowds constantly and a terrible image for the game when on national television like that, really damages the view of rugby league to outsiders imo.

No because Leigh weren't the worst. Thanks for your concern though...

My mistake. I thought you finished third bottom above relegation exempt Toulouse. I was thinking it should have been yourselves and Doncaster relegated.

On 13th October 1992 Warrington beat Blackpool Gladiators 32-8 in the Regal Trophy preliminary round in front of 1,412 people, the smallest first team crowd ever for Warrington, at a ground they had been playing at since the 1880’s. Hell, they only got 4,011 at Wilderspool for the visit of Bradford in Super League in 2001

But you’re OK now aren't you so its fine to say how low crowds damage the sport of Rugby League. Very gracious of you

The only people watching RL on SKY are people who like RL. The view of RL to outsiders is already damaged assuming they even know it exists in the first place.

Saddened, I think I know you're just trolling. But in case you're not :

1) London have never been "bailed out" by anyone save their owners. In this sense, they are exactly the same as every other club who are regularly "bailed out" by wealthy benefactors.

2) Saying that Quins/Broncos, with their hardcore 2000 fans, successful youth teams and top-class facilities should be cast to the winds, while investment should be made in Skolars with their 200 hardcore fans, second team which failed to complete the RLC season last year and municipal-sports-centre-with-a-stand, is beyond parody.

I'm not trolling, what reason would I have for that? You cannot possibly run a viable professional team when you get attendances of just 1,900 with supposedly no central help.

You mention the 2,000 hardcore fans. I don't believe that. I would just love to see the figures for season ticket sales this season. As mentioned there were no more than 800 people there against Salford. The 1,900 figure is fantasy.

To be in Super League a club should be able to post crowds of 10,000 ideally. At the moment we're revising that figure down to 6,000 or so for your home games, even if there are no away fans. Catalans more than manage it and haven't been playing well either, so why can't London. They have the biggest market to play with in the competition. It is an absolute crime that they are allowed to carry on in SL when they make no effort at all to market the sport and sell tickets. If they were making an effort, for example ditching the Harlequins monicker, being inventive with ticket sales like Bradford or Widnes or moving to another location then I wouldn't mind them being there.

After a good 15 or so years on SL funding they have crowds of less than 2,000 which are falling. There appears to be no effort at all to increase that. One can only wonder just what is going on at Harlequins. One thing for sure is that unless they improve they won't be around for long.

Remove London and replace with any of the folwloing Crusaders, Hull, Salford, Wakefield ......at what position in the league would you start to fork out your money Phippsy

Hypothetical this, but if you know that you X amount of income GUARANTEED for a period, and you know that Y amount of expenditure is less than X then you should be ok.

If another source of income, say Z is available then this is a bonus.

Everyone would like as much Z as possible but will be happy as long as X exceeds Y.

perhaps there are some clubs who operate this way.

Of course it's only hypothetical.

You can run a team with no fans at all as long as you have a rich enough guy willing to put his hand in his own pocket. It's a red herring. The issue is not one for the RFL, or the other clubs in the game, it's for David Hughes. Just like Salford's crowds have always been the concern of Wilkinson, not the RFL.



Whether you believe it or not is hardly a reasonable criteria for franchise assessments. As for the idea that Quins would overstate their crowd by more than 100%, when they'll pay tax on the higher figure, is a bit silly. Quins' back office is pretty crap, but overstating their tax liabilities would be pushing it even for them.



Which would currently rule out the majority of our SL clubs, including Saints.



I am a Saints fan.



I think at present, Catalans' version of not playing well is a standard to which most Quins fans can only aspire.



If an ability to successfully market the sport was a franchise criteria, then we'd probably be down to matches between Wigan and Bradford every weekend. Quins' marketing is shocking. Gutterfax can happily explain why and how to improve it until he's blue in the face. Personally I think they're in a downward spiral right now - poor crowds, poor atmosphere, poor performance, poorer crowds, less money for marketing, poor crowds etc etc etc. Hard to see how they'll crack that for a while. Salford took decades, and still haven't cracked it. Huddersfield also took decades but now have cracked it after depending on Ken Davy for years - their own version of Ian Hughes. I can't recall anyone ever suggesting we should abandon our sport in Huddersfield or Salford.



It seems to me that part of the problem is that the only way to stop the spiral is to invest a large amount of cash in marketing and players (ultimately, Quins are taking the field with less player capital than every team they face, every week. In our game, that's unforgiving). But the more the usual suspects call for the end of RL in London, the less likely either Hughes or anyone else are to actually make that investment. Why would you hand over lots of cash if you think the decision to end London RL has already been taken ?

My issue with this is simply that I want all clubs to be successful, I want all clubs to grow their fans and budgets, and I want all clubs to develop and identify top new players. I would sooner cut my own arm off than call for the death of any RL club, and the more they struggle, the more I feel sympathy for them, and that includes clubs from the RLC, through the chanmpionship, to SL. I can't understand anyone who professes to be an RL fan who demands an end to any club, rather than demanding more help for them.

Crusaders no.

Other 3 yes.

They have lower crowds than the crusaders, and are lieing about their crowd totals. They must be adding season ticket holders even if they don't turn up.

Very sad to see. I want them to succeed, but something needs to happen drastically.

Problem is this is SL not PL. Our sugar daddys don;t have that deep a pocket and whilst they put in a fair whack it is clearly not enough for Quins. They are obviously not paying close to the salary cap and their marketing dept and other off field staff is poor. I'd love to know what their annual budget is, I would suspect it is 1/2 of most SL clubs and the results are there for all to see. The results of this should be a concern for the RFL.

I think it is. Hughes managed to get the RFL to take on some of the cost of youth development in London. I was pretty surprised to discover how much of the youth development in the South had historically been funded only by the Broncos/Quins, until this year. Some of that is now being helped by the RFL.

I think the problem is that we've approached RL in London (and elsewhere) in a typically half-d RL way. We say we'll do something, then sit back and wait for it to happen through the efforts of someone else, offering little more than warm words. A decision needs to be made about whether we are serious about establishing a successful professional presence in the capital. If we are, then we need to fund it, in the same way the Aussie sports' governing bodies fund their attempts to expand into each others' territory. If we don't think that it's a strategic necessity for our competition, then we carry on the way we are, and when Hughes runs out of cash/motivation, then Quins/Broncos will be history and 30 years of professional RL in the capital will come to an end. Ironically, that would happen just as the talent conveyor belt is beginning to start producing interesting results, but that would end too.

I think we are at a turning point, but I for one would like to see us finding ways of investing in what we want to achieve, rather than simply shrugging our shoulders and saying "well, it's all , let's get back to the M62".

Sadly bringing Widnes in has just done that.

RL has one thing that other sports lack, a real exciting game on the field.

The game just seems to struggle with the secondary aspects of running the sport.

There is a "hybrid" thread somewhere else about "merging"

Perhaps RL needs RU business acumen.

You would be correct but seeing as you and Starbug were talking about the best and worst team in either league, it's also redundant.

Ah ok. I thought by worst he meant the team(s) finishing lowest.

What did he mean by worst then?

Plenty of z's in that post.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz




You say in 79 words something which could have been said in 8.