I guess London and Wales has dampened there enthusiasm for the wing and a prayer approach to expansion? I am pretty confident if Toulouse had an iron clad business plan, big corporate support, modern stadium and latent support worthy of SL and added value tot he SL TV money that they wouldn't have to jump through so many hoops. As none of us has any idea what they have or don't have in these areas I guess we have to trust the people that do know?

Hey.....

Why don't we take the top 5 from the French League, along with Catalans and the top six English Clubs???? and voila!!!!
Half the money going abroad!!
Half the jobs available for the English talent pool!!

Brilliant!!

You mean London the Challenge Cup Finalists and Super League runners up?

Even if only entered into League 1 if their recruitment was right they could be in SL within 3 years. While that would be quite a challenge this may be part of their thinking.

Yes the London that is no longer in SL and struggled to get 2500 people to games.

And Toulouse's average???

Yes, clearly a better bet, all 900 of their fans will make a huge splash!

Are you seeing any of the "big picture" or are you focused on the small detail in one corner.

IF RL does not at least maintain it's profile or, preferably improve it, the sport will fail to attract any increase in external sponsorship.
But, if income isn't important, we should stay as we are or, perhaps have a northern based pub competition.

RL fans are generally blinded by the tag line "the greatest game" when, unfortunately most of the country doesn't even know that RL
is different from Union



The current plan seems to involve dropping clubs from the top flight in order to improve average attendances in the top flight, so
that we can pretend that the game is in rude health, when the real situation is the virtual opposite.

There has to be a strategy to grow the game but, right now, despite a "successful" world cup, the game is almost on its , despite the
regular fanfare coming from the RFL.

This is probably the way we are going at the moment. The game needs to grow nationally before experimenting on foreign shores, we have sunk into a "3rd world sport" with very little stature. We have put all our eggs in the "Sky Basket" because our leaders at Red Hall have very little marketing expertise to go after the big global sponsors and have resorted to lots of subsidiary sponsors and tell us they are our partners.

We don't get "big global sponsors" because of RFL shortcomings but because we aren't the market they are looking for.

You could put the exact same marketing team and execs from the RFU into the RFL but we still wouldn't get Moët, Range Rover or Hilton Hotels sponsoring us. The RL supporter demographic isn't what they want to target and we don't get anywhere near like the national media coverage to make up for that.

In order to change that we need to alter the balance of RL away from small northern towns. This can't be done quickly. We can't just dump a new team in SL and hope it'll take off. UK sport doesn't work that way. The "new" teams in League 1 are a great start. I just wish we'd take some of the new TV money to help fund these clubs to a better degree. Hopefully Koukash at Salford can finally wind his neck in and start actually running a sports club instead of playing fantasy RL badly. A strong club in Manchester would be great.
Personally I think we should be targeting Manchester, Sheffield & Newcastle as big cities in which RL could develop a presence. Unfortunately, due to the inherent financial weakness of the clubs, the RFL will never have enough money at its disposal to target these places effectively and to subsidise the clubs in these places.

If we develop a bigger footprint in the country then more of the national media will take notice of us. Though we'll always be fighting against the London, middle-class centric nature of the national media.

The other way to garner better sponsors etc is the international game. We always get our best media coverage when England play, especially if it's in London. Companies also take notice.

So more internationals and a bigger national footprint in order to get a less narrow demographic is what's going to get us more/better sponsors rather than some mythical "top marketing team".
Whilst I don't think the RFL are brilliant (partly due to underfunding) it's still very difficult to sell a relatively poor sport, with a relatively poor supporter demographic, little national media exposure, little national profile, no household names and incoherent international aspect.
Which is why we generally get local companies sponsoring our clubs and 2nd tier national companies sponsoring our competitions.
Off the top of my head the only "major" company to be involved with RL for any period of time is Gillette.

Silk Cut! John Player!



But yes, you're spot-on there, I'd say.

Silk Cut and John Player would still sponsor RL if allowed as their product is aimed at the archetypical RL supporter. That is why most RL sponsors were Alcohol or tobacco companies.

People may not like this, but I am going to say it anyway!!!!!

Perhaps had we have stuck with a 16 team top flight with proper promotion and relegation, London would have actually EARNED their own way to top flight status by now, in fact I think Gateshead would've too and possibly North Wales as well!

Instead we have fewer and fewer teams.........You call that EXPANSION!!!!!!! Really??????

We have fewer competitions to aim for.........Is that EXPANSION too?????????????????????????

The League winners are no longer "Champions" but get a trinket that even the people within our OWN sport ridicule (and then we wonder why no one else takes us seriously!!)! .... PROGRESS?????................Nice!

Summer Rugby is about the only good thing that has come out of all this, the rest is just SHI-ITE!

I agree about the "3rd world sport" thing and it may be time for "Europe" to try and insist on some more help from our Australian "friends".

Although the Aussies enjoy beating us at any sport, surely it is in their interests to have decent English competition ?

For me, we should be working as hard as possible to help the French become stronger.
Although many people say "why should we help them", France is the best chance we have of "finding" some decent competition for our national
team and IMO, we should be busting a gut to help them, which will help raise the profile of the game.

The governing bodies in all of the RL playing nations and especially in Aus, NZ, England and France need to be sitting down and working on a cohesive
strategy to attract investment into the game.

Couldn't disagree more.

The best way to grow the game domestically, through participation, crowds, sponsorships etc, is through the growth and competition in the international game (& the exposure & interest that gives). Admitting Toulouse into the league structures is another step towards this. A high profile international game is what our game needs, not just in Europe, but all over the world.

The RFL are also growing our game nationally. Look at the make up of Championship 1. New amateur clubs are popping up on twitter each week, all over the country.

Could it have been done better in the past? Definitely. But, are we on the right track regarding expansion of the game? I honestly think we are.

You mention the Sky deal and sponsors and RL sinking to a "3rd world sport"? From where have we sunk...where things that good in 1995?

The admittance of the PNG Hunters into the Aussie leagues seems to have been a great move. The Hunters have been competing at the top end of the table and last week attracted 15,000 fans in Port Moresby. Hopefully the Hunters will act as a springboard for more PNG players to get into the NRL.

There's also a bid by Fiji to enter a team into the NSW Cup, along the lines of the Hunters.

The french need to do a lot more to expand the game in there own back yard, its no good piggy backing onto Super league and calling it Super League Europe it would be a disaster if we had 3 french teams in super league which would probably contain a lot of overseas players from the southern hemisphere.
We would be left with 9 english clubs already loaded up with overseas players which would mean less players to choose for our national side. It would also effect club finances when 25% of the seasons away fans won,t budge out of France.

25% plus of English teams don't Bri g fans to Hull so not sure there's much of a loss there!

French league can't go FT anymore than suggesting the championship or NZ league should be FT. You can't make the TV stations want to pay tens of millions to screen the game sadly. Given most French kids are not Hoi g to want to play for English clubs the only way to get more French players at a top level is going to be to have more French clubs in SL.

How would the French do this on their own ?

If Catalan are the only full time French club, why would another club go full time in a semi pro league ?

Therefore for the French to go it alone, should we jettison Catalan and tell them to try and find their own equivalent of Sky in order to fund a full time
league which would need to be 3/4 filled with Aussies or should we add another 1 or 2 clubs to SL.

Although the clubs at the top of SL would probably like SL to be cut to 10 or maybe 8 clubs, so they can increase their slice of the TV cash, this isn't the only option.

We keep being told that SL is a massive draw for Sky, which should mean increased TV cash





The new structure having been sold with the tag line of "every minute matters" is anything but, with the clubs at the top and bottom already "managing" their squads for when it really matters and we haven't yet got to the stage where the lower ranked clubs are starved of decent players.

We have been sold up the river, instead of any thought whatsoever going into developing the game for the long term, as the new structure brings risk to 4 out of the 12 club SL which can only damage their own long term planning.

Everyone citing reasons why Tolouse shouldn't be or don't deserve to be entered into SL like "they only get 1000 home gates" "they're isn't enough French players" "if they wanted FT rugby they would have they're own SL"

Think back to 2006! We're Catalan any different to Tolouse of today?

For what ever reason the people in the South of France have taken to RL and have a real passion for the game all with little or no marketing or domestic professional clubs or competition's to follow.

If we could place a club in Manchester, Birmingham Bristol etc and get a result like we have seen in Perpignan then I would agree with some on here and say the hell with France but there is just not the appetite for RL in these places.

So we need to expand and support the places that have the appetite for RL so they have every opportunity to succeed.

I think the fact that Toulouse have been forced to start in League One (and are seemingly willing to do so) suggests that they are being anything but 'piggy backed into Super League'. Although I would have no issue at all with them being directly admitted to Super League in 2017 and relegating two teams via the Middle 8's next season. In fact that would be a lot more sensible IMO.

It would much less of a gamble than Catalan was imo.

I don't get the tentative approach.

This would be the better for me, England RL to move the professional standard into areas beyond the M62, we need to sort out our own expansion first, let the French RL sort out raising quality beyond Catalonia. I would sooner model Gloucester All Golds to Superleague instead of Toulouse.

If only League One was full of expansion clubs like Gloucester.

The difference is there is no one in Gloucester that cares one jot about Gloucester bringing the all golds to SL and defiantly nobody willing to stump the cash to fund it.

I would love SL to have clubs all around the country. But we can't force it on areas that don't care.

The one area outside of the heartland that has a relatively large apetite for RL is the south of France so let's focus on expansion clubs in areas that it's worked before.

You are spot on sir, in all of your posts on this thread.