Silly point you're making , so I'll ask you a silly question , do more Leeds fans turn up for the visit of the small city of Bradford , than turn up for the visit of London ?

You would think Leeds would find it easier marketing a game against the biggest city in Britain than against a small town like W1g4n , wouldn't you ?

See we can all pretend to be thick , it's easy , when are you going to start pretending to be intelligent ?

If the total attendance is 800 and there are 100 away fans then despite being a good proportion of the total, it's still not a significant amount of away support.

Wigan is probably the biggest and most well-known RL club in the country, as well as having arguably the best team. I don't know what point you are trying to make but the population of the town is completely irrelevant.

Still not the actual point , if your average is 500 , but only 300 are interested in watching you play some RU lads from Milton Keynes , you lose money

Yes, it is and the fraction of away fans is more than 1 in 8 in most cases. Away fans can often be as numerous as home fans.

So what relevance do the hot beds of RL that are Bristol and Coventry have ?

You started the silly comparisons , not me

As I said , acting thick is easy , that's why you keep doing it

Once the four clubs have been selected the RFL need to follow up and start garnering interest.

I would suggest taking a game on the road to each of the four locations chosen to give them a taste of what can be achieved with backing.

Perhaps take the England v Exiles game down to one too?

Once they are initiated it might be worth the CC1 clubs using the Super League clubs as 'parent' clubs by supplying a couple of young prospects to each of the club, playing a friendly with them, helping them grow etc.

Oh and it's interesting to note that there's no mention of the Northern Rail Cup. I wonder if this is ending come 2013 with a 26-game season for the Championship sides. It does make reference to a European Cup with the French sides, though. Interesting.....

Your point was fans aren't interested in watching new Championship clubs as opposed to heartland Championship clubs, therefore my point is perfectly valid, rather than silly.

I'm not sure what relevance Leeds, Bradford and London have to do with this mind you, but a very similar number of Leeds fans turn up to both games.

What I did notice in the Northampton announcement was the mention of SL , not that the Championships are a fantastic competition , no change

Nice.

The biggest grouse from Championship 1 teams over the past 3 or 4 years has been the lack of meaningful fixtures and several weeks between home fixtures. Most clubs having just 9 home league games and 2 NR Cup group matches.

Now it may be a silly question but where has this been addressed under any of these new plans? There is still only going to be 10 teams in Championship 1 which will give exactly the same number of home league games plus, if it is still going, 2 home games in the NR Cup???????

The Anglo - French Cup is for the top four clubs in the league above playing their French counterparts which will no doubt mean Championship 1 clubs will have free weekends again just as they have every time the NR Cup quarter-finals and semi-finals come around!!!!!

As Championship will have each team play all others twice for 26 games a possible solution in the ten team Championship 1 from 2013 could be to play everyone 3 times giving them a 27 game season eliminiating the gaps as they would play each week just as the higher league would. Don't know if such a format would be what the RFL have planned though.

Accuracy, etc

See , you agree

Because Hunslet and Keighley are not big RL clubs and wouldn't be any more of a draw to casuals than clubs from anywhere else, I would think that the majority of people would have never heard of these places were it not for RL. Trying to compare the drawing power of these clubs to Wigan is just stupid.

I can't understand at all what you are moaning about here. You have constantly advocated, or at least claimed to advocate bottom-up expansion with teams working their way up from the amateur game. Now that this is happening, you are still continuing to complain? Not that this is really a surprise, you attempted to find fault with South Wales Scorpions last year despite them doing everything that you suggested a new expansion side should be doing and everything that you criticised Crusaders for the first time. You are a complete hypocrite.

You are correct , mention Hunslet or Keighley and RL immediately springs to mind , does that happen if you mention Northampton or Coventry ? , no , so you have answered your own question

I am happy to see new clubs coming in , I just didn't expect them to be like buses , I wanted the RFL to make sure that whoever does join the Championships can sustain a place in them , history is against us , how many have come in , done a season or two , moved around a couple of times , then disappeared ? , I want the RFL to help and encourage new clubs

But personally I think they are wrong in bringing 4 all at once , I also think they are wrong in dividing up the leagues 14/10 , I don't understand why it isn't an equal split , my only conclusion is they are going to change other things , ie the NRC

It will drastically diminish the attractiveness of Championship 1 to whichever clubs fans remain in it , primarily the heartland/established clubs , even the RFL seem to accept this , they are almost apologetic about it

+1

This is generally a good thing but I don't get why some like to make out that there is never a downside to anything the RFL does. No decision is ever perfect and there are always losers as well as winners.

I can't say that I noticed these large crowds for the visit of Bridgend [Crusaders, Gateshead or London [Skolars. There seemed to be about the same number of home fans but very few (particularly in the case of Skolars) away fans.

If you mention Hunslet or Keighley to people who aren't RL fans, nothing springs to mind, because people don't know where these places are. Obviously Coventry and Northampton are not synonymous with RL because they are relatively big places that don't currently have professional RL clubs, only strong amateur teams. That's why they are expansion areas and not part of the heartlands. I haven't seen anything to suggest the new clubs won't be viable, the process of selection seems pretty sound so far and the new clubs will have a year to prepare. But if any of the clubs don't survive, then so what? It's not as if they were planted straight into Super League and cost the game a lot of money. On the other hand, we might see two of these clubs contesting the Super League Grand Final in 30 years, it's impossible to say and so I don't see what you are trying to achieve by sdeathriding everything that happens, especially when you now so few details. Putting expansion clubs at the bottom of the semi-pro pyramid is exactly what people have been calling for, and if some inbred moronic fans of heartland clubs don't like it because they think that they are not 'real' teams or whatever then forget them, who cares what they think.

Are you seriously suggesting that people in Yorkshire have never heard of Keighley?

Anyone who knows Leeds has heard of Hunslet whether they are RL fans or not.

That's as stupid as making out that Welsh people might not have heard of Llanelli if they aren't RU fans.

Yes, obviously people who are local to those places will have heard of them, that's not saying anything at all.

We were discussing RL fans , fans of clubs already in Championship 1

I notice you are now getting insulting and abusive , always happens in the end

In case, you haven't noticed, most clubs are along the M62 and so people in Oldham etc are well aware of Keighley and vice versa even if they don't watch rugby. It's only really the clubs named after districts (Hunslet & Swinton) and Fev that only locals would know about.