Except they dont have any, certainly not enough to do a half decent job of marketing their clubs against their local SL clubs

Dont forget that there is still relegation outside SL

You were right the first time

Posts loads , says nothing , spent too long in the ' smoke ' , turned into one of those ' clever dick yuppies '

Rd 25 Aug 14th-16th
Wigan v Wolves 13,452
Leeds v Cas 16,931
Les Cats v Hull 9,800
Quins v Salford 2,612
Hudds v Bulls TBC
HKR v St's TBC
Wakey v CC TBC


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rd 19Rd Total = 60,260
Rd Avg = 8,608

Rd 20Rd Total = 53,471
Rd Avg = 7,6,38

Rd 21 Total= 63,645
Rd Avg = 9,092

Rd22 Total=60,192
Rd Avg = 8,598

Rd 23 Total = 67,053
Rd Avg = 9,579

Rd 24 CC slplit round

Rd 25 Total= TBC
Rd Avg = TBC

well dont pretend they are a product to compete with SL then, it isnt.

Sainsburies own brand champagne doesnt try and compete with crystal, and casio dont try to compete with rolex,

instead of trying to compete with SL clubs, why not try and offer and alternative, why not look at making your product a different product rather than simply an inferior one?

So Sainsbury Champers isn't inferior to Crystal or a Casio watch isn't inferior to a Rolex ?

Fizzy wine isn't the same as Fizzy wine, a watch isn't a watch

You're crackers

What do you suggest we do , play Lacrosse ?

So what do you suggest, slogans such as

'Too poor for Super League? Come along and watch a lesser quality version for half the price!'

They'll flock in their tens of thousands.

no sainsbury champers isnt the same, its amuch more inferior product, and it doesnt pretend to compete with crystal, Sainsburys champagne doesnt pretend to offer the same taste, quality or 'experiance' as crystal,

Crystal spend millions of pounds a year differentiating their product from sainsburys own brand, creating an image to persuade people to spend ten twenty maybe a hundred times more on Crystal than sainsburys,

and sainsburys dont pretend that they are the same as Crystal, they dont pretend to be special, nor do they pretend to offer the same as crystal, they are a bargain option and happily market themselves as the bargain option, they have no pretence about being a luxury brand, they dont offer a luxury lifestyle, a luxury image or a premium experiance,

they offer basic value, they over the basic product for a basic price, they are offering a product aimed at different sections of the same market


maybe dont pretend you are a competitor for SL, your not, its idiotic to pretend you are,

using an obviously inferior product to try and compete with a better one, is commercial suicide, the championship as a rival to SL simply will never happen,

they can however clearly differentiate themselves. How they choose to do that is another question,

they could try to be the sainsburys own brand champagne to SLs crystal, but SL sells itself on being the cheap option to Premier League football, and the price difference between SL and the lower leagues isnt massive, so that isnt really an option

so they have to find another way to differentiate themselves, they need to be clear as to why someone should choose to come see them rather than go a couple miles down the road, see a bigger game, in a bigger league, with better players for a small amount more money, whether that be as the first opportunity to see the next young stars or whatever, they need to be different

or maybe, 'come see your local team bring through the stars of the future'

To market as a ' feeder ' club or glorified academy would be financial sucide to almost any club

You are crackers

really? its not like we are dealing with huge numbers here is it?

the attendances are fairly small to start with, its not like there are going to be thousands leaving is it,

clubs can market themselves as a local team, with local yong stars, the guys who will be playing for GB in 2 or 3 years time, it would raise the standard of the league, with also the possibility of getting the BIG names in for a week or two,

they would have lower rwage costs, more money coming in from SL clubs, probably a few hundred fans from the SL club coming to watch the youngsters.

It would likely make it more difficult to make the jump from the lower leagues to SL, but thats no bad thing, it should be difficult to get into SL, its only for the best

Crackers

cheese

on a seperate note, how are leigh doing? bringing in LOADS of fans are they? making LOTS of money? have HUGE recognition do they? got some international quality youngsters playing for them at the moment?

if so your probably right, they could lose all those things by becoming a feeder club, if not then they arent really going to lose anything are they?

i mean a club which is so desperate to not be a feeder club and is desperate to compete with SL clubs, wouldnt be struggling along at the bottom and signing a player to old to play at SL level would they? their ticket selling signing wouldnt be a past it half back who can no longer cut it in the 2nd worst side in SL would they?

Well done the Wakey marketing team, we've come in for huge criticism this season and rightly so IMO, however they've done a tremendous job for this game and got a great result.

7,893 against Celtic deserves a huge round of applause.

Diversity were top drawer aswell.

Looking like a great round, just Quins as per usual letting the league down.

Fine thanks , we actually played reasonably well yesterday and have given ourselves a half decent chance of avoiding relegation

As for the international quality youngsters , no but our reserve team have finished top of their division for the 3 rd successive year

But you're still crackers

But as it has been suggested previously, there are only about 4 or 5 true Super League quality clubs, the rest just so happen to be playing in Super League at the moment. You shove Celtic, Quins, Wakey, Salford, Huddersfield, Cas or even Hull KR in the 2nd tier for an extended period of time and their attendances and youth development will be poor.

Becoming a feeder club would feel a bit like you have given up trying to get in to SL. Given that there are so many poor/average SL clubs, why should ambitious Championship clubs give up their dream? I'm not saying it should be easy to get into SL, but the threat of Championship clubs would keep the SL clubs on their toes.

2009 is just a snapshot of how things are now - if anything below SL is just effectively cut-off, who knows what damage that will do in the future. Imagine if the licence system was brought in just a few years ago, Hull KR probably wouldn't even be in SL, never mind near the top. You have to have the opportunity to progress or the competition and the clubs will stagnate.

Well I suppose you've got a point. We regularly see massive crowds at Academy games.

FFS, money isn't everything. You know what, I bloody loved being at our game yesterday - seeing 17 blokes bust a bloody gut to represent my town with pride. 1,500 fans going mental when Watson scored. Beer going everywhere, hugging random people - thought the roof was going to come off the place. You can't put a price on that. But becoming a feeder club would destroy those emotions. Do you think I or the other 1,501 people at the game last night would be even a fraction interested if we simply became Leigh Saints/Warriors/Wolves/City Reds? Not a chance.

I don't know why you support the club that you do, but you want a dose of reality and realise why people support the clubs that they do.

Leeds fans dont do reality they are to far up their own ar**s for that

I know the feeling and it's why I'll never be a fan of non relegation and licencing promotion. I've been lucky in my 26 years to do countless cup finals with Wigan, most of them won, but their was no better feeling that the emotions experienced than that of our 2006 "great escape" season. I know the arguments suggest we cheated the salary cap but that's not us fans fault and at the time we didn't know. I remember the despair when Pat Richards knocked on to win in the last minute at Wakefield meaning we lost back to back to our main rivals. Being sat in the pub pre match before a late Sunday game v Catalans as Lee Briers missed a penalty goal that saw Wakefield win to leave us 8 points from survival. Sweating over a long 17 minutes at Leeds on a 20-14 lead for a result that was the pivitol one of the whole run.

I'll make all that relevant to the thread by saying our crowds never faltered in that early season run that saw us lose 14 of our first 16 league games. I'm proud of that! No glory hunting fans in Wigan unlike at some other clubs!

It was more in reference to the 'feeder club' idea than P&R to be honest Bilko, though I certainly get your point.

Thats why i made it relevant at the end!



I could argue though that Wigan's academy system feeds loads of teams in the National Leagues though.

You could, but it'd be a pretty shoddy argument

Well I've looked into it sadly for the Wigan board and found 38 players out there!

So W1g4n are THE feeder club