Sorry, i forgot you had spoken to over 2000 people regarding this!

BTW are you still pretending this is true?

And clubs that aren't in the heartlands aren't great either are they?

I said ' Not enough '

There is a difference , typical of you to missquote

I said the ' home ' fans , not the away fans

yes, i got that.

i used a contrast to highlight the fact that most things fail because of a lack of money, whilst also alluding to the fact it is very rare something should fail because of too much money due to it being possible to solve most problems if you throw enough money at it. I even used a cheeky Richard Pryor reference to show the tone.

erm, i think you said most of home fans, the players, the administrators and some of the people who just lived in bridgend.

Now for a club with a 3k average, i think 2k is being generous to you. But its not important. How many did you speak to? 1700? 1500? 1000? 700? 500? 100? 50?

Well thats good , we have established something

Maybe that should be the RFL's policy from now on then

Maybe so,

And whilst the RFL dont have enough money we can carry on throwing other peoples money at it

So you are suggesting that the Celtic Crusaders averaged 3,000 fans in NL1 and NL 2 , and that all those fans attending were actually from South wales

And yet you didn't attend a single match at Bridgend during that time did you ?

You really are a cretin

And carry on failing

oh, you werent specific about it being only in NL1 and 2,


So what was it 700 people?

i would say it seems strange for you to argue against your own point, but as its you....

It would seem strange if I had done it , but as I havent

Unlike your good self







Like a cash deposit

<cough>









now, Just for clarity, do you think if we throw enough money at a problem we can solve it or not?



no, a cash deposit is expensive and counter productive. It would preclude very good clubs, and discourage anyone from ever joining us. It is a silly idea.

Especially when there is an obvious and much better possibility that would be easier to implement

so no, not like a cash deposit. Like a guarantee like I said.

and before you say it, No, not a lie or con or whatever other loaded term you want to throw in there alluding to us not being able to trust anyone who wants to join our game. But a guarantee, a legally enforceable guarantee

Obviously it was in NL 1 and 2 , why would I go down to Bridgend to watch anybody else except my team

How many times have you visited the Crusaders at Bridgend ?

The same thing in this context , people do tell lies

no, it isnt, a Cash Deposit is very expensive. A club would be better investing that £10m in a wine cellar than putting in the bank and leaving it their for years. And not having £10m in cash isnt the sign of a bad club. Im not aware of any club in SL that could afford to put £10m in the bank.

Its also prohibitive and pointless to expect a club to have sourced year 6' (as was your idea before, £10m in cash as a bond for 6 years competition) expenditure before year 1s income.

They would also need more than £10m as whilst this money is sat in the bank earning less interest than it is losing in inflation they would need money in the bank for day to day trading.

Whereas a legally enforceable guarantee achieves the commitment we are aiming for and the safeguarding of the clubs competition without wasting huge amounts of money for no real benefit.

Would result in a very messy legal battle which would further damage the sport when it was challenged in court when the person giving it reneged on it

As you well know I suggested this in response to wild claims of Stade Francais's wealth and supposed business acumen by posters on this board , and funnily enough a few others have suggested the same since , not incidently fans of Championship clubs but fans of SL clubs that actually have a bit of common sense and dont walk round with their eyes shut

I wouldnt want any club stupid enough to give hundreds of thousands of pounds to a bank (which is what leaving the money in the bank is) rather than invest it or spend it on youth development. They clearly arent intelligent enough to run an SL club.

I think you would be hard pressed to find more than a few bank accounts in the whole country that has a £10m balance . Any account worth putting that much money in would have a lllooooooooooooonnnnnnggggg withdrawal period meaning the money couldnt be accessed quickly anyway.

It would be a dereliction of duty for any one within the game to come close to asking for something like this.

As for Stade Francais' wealth and business acumen. Well you dont get wealthy by being an idiot, and having business acumen would immediately preclude them from being involved in anything like that.

As for the risk of the guarantee not being honoured, Who the f'ck is really going to give the RFL £10m to keep in a bank, at a cost of thousands, because not only do the RFL not trust their business acumen but also their integrity?

Bloody hell, you act like the game doesnt need to be attractive to investors, like we should take it for granted they are falling over themselves to give us money. Its like you think secretly at night Bill Gates and Roman Abromovich are in a four way fight to death with Warren Buffet and the Duke of Westminster over who gets to throw money at RL

And the way the Celtic fiasco has been done does make it attractive to investors ?

So lets get it right here , nobody is going to give the RFL 10 million cash deposit , and nobody is going to give the RFL a personal guarantee for the equivalent of 10 million , so no argument either way

Problem is , without 10 million you are not going to get a new SL club up and running in this country outside the heartlands , simple as

So what do you suggest ? , more of the failures we have seen over the last 30 years ?

Wanting something is one thing , affording it is another entirely different thing

Nitey nite

widnes crowds will surpass Hull KRs with their stadium after a stable period in SL

toulose will exceed LC. i expect a stable toulose in SL to easily beat a 10,000 crowd and take RL to critical mass

then if we can get london and CC crowds up to 5000 - 6000 well be well on the way. RL isnt that far off gaining real credibility.

we just need to hang on in wales and london and hope as the game grows in the heartlands they benefit as well.

whoosh.

nah, lets expect non heartland clubs who are fighting a hard battle against cashed up rival sports with massive media with clubs that have everything going for them




RLs problems stem from the heartland. if all the "heartland" clubs were strong, expansion would work more easily as the whole game would be stronger

its because of poor clubs like leigh, fax, oldham etc which should be a lot stronger but arent that the game is let down

lets be honest, if you had 11 clubs in SL like wigan (excluding the expansion clubs) how much bigger would RL be as a sport? the same goes for heartland nl1 and 2 teams.

the game has zero solid foundations below SL in its heartland.

off the top of my head, the following are heartland nl1 / 2 teams who have almost gone broke in recent years :

fax, oldham, keighley, rochdale, one of the cumbrian clubs i think, not sure and ive probably missed a few

Only and idiot would suggest that any problems an expansion side has is down to heartland clubs. You are obviously one of them.

Was Oldhams fault Samuels pulled his money out of CC? Was it Leighs fault Quins are not attracting fans in great numbers, was it Featherstones fault Gateshead went bust? And is it down to Wigan that Catalan are a success?

I await your reply where you don't answer with any substance other than more attempts at winding people up.

And let's not forget that heartland clubs are fighting the same battle against rival sports.



Thank you. At last we are getting somewhere.



There may be some element of truth in this although I don't really see how those clubs have more than a minimal impact on RL as a whole. The SL clubs have far more effect on RL and the sport will either thrive or stagnate along with the fortunes of SL, not depending on how well Leigh, Fax or Oldham do.



Correct, so perhaps we can move beyond the tired old "they've had 100 years" argument and suggest how heartland clubs and consequently RL as a whole can propsper.



And yet it's a fair bet that in 20 years RL will still be played in Leigh, Halifax and Oldham. Without a paradigm shift in the development of the sport I could not say the same for Crusaders or any other club that gets introduced to SL in the same fashion.