they are only still going through the kindness of their owners/chairmen who either paid of massive debts or re-formed them as new clubs not through any intrinsic part of these clubs meaning they are a better proposition


and im not here defending the previous Paris, it was a poorly executed poor idea, 15 years later, it doesnt have to be the same

I said it was no more expansion than Barrow or Widnes in SL would be, doesn't mean I disagree with their inclusion, but based on your arguments on here that Paris and Toulouse are better than Widnes due to their larger population (and nothing else) then you should have to support Perth over Central Coast without being a hypocrite

the did, they played at a barely semi-pro level in front a few hundred fans, by that reckoning, they Skolars are in a heartland


and im sure when Toulouse become a success that will also have always been a heartland, and in five years when the crusaders have turned it round Wales will have always been a heartland too

I'm prepared to just about accept Toulouse as a heartland club but Leigh are a heartland club and both of them are currently equally undeserving of a Super League franchise. Them being a heartland club doesn't mean they should be gifted a franchise anymore than Leigh should.

I was always very supportive of Catalans for Super League in 2006 (rather than trying to lie I suggest you go back to posts from them and see what I wrote and you will find I have been 100% consistent in this from start to finish). I hope to see Toulouse in Super League one day, but only when they merit a spot, not as a charity as you want

They had nearer 1500 and only due to the low standard and the fact that there were 4 semi-pro Perpignan teams (til 3 merged into one who were not long after ready for SL and then there were still 2 and on big occasions both could get 5000 watch). Add the figures of the 4 clubs together and you get clear heartlands (in the way that most Championship clubs are considered heartlands)


Toulouse is borderline heartlands/not heartlands (like Sheffield) and could become more of a heartlands, but only with success. Crusaders won't be a success, it is a certainty. However, places can gradually become heartlands, no team has ever gone from completely non-heartlands to a successful SL team instantly (there had been pro RL in London 16 years before SL and then they still haven't got good crowds since, even with initial success) and none ever will.

To try to compare Paris and Catalans is pure dishonesty and lies

I'm not a flatcapper, you are because you want to see expansion clubs fold by being pushed in too fast. I do things to expand the game at grassroots (though admittedly much less than some of the better people on here), what do you do for expansion beyond suggesting stupid ideas? I have consistently supported Catalans as a heartland club moving up a league


UTC won the French league by a landslide the year before they joined Super League and changed name (a name change doesn't magically make one club stop existing and the other magically appear from thin air, Crusaders aren't a brand new club from thin air for 2010 and they are having far more radical a change from top to bottom than UTC did when they became Catalans Dragons) and had shown consistent success for years before then


UTC had shown consistent success in the only league they could, whereas Toulouse have finished 10th in the Championship and 7th in the French Elite the last two years. Hardly comparable. The crowds is a general guide, but the differences from Catalans is three fold: 1. The Championship has higher crowds than the French Elite so a slightly higher target is ideal; 2. UTC and Pia's combined crowds were at least that 2500 and they are both Perpigan clubs, Toulouse don't have competition at the same level; 3. Catalans had the pick of all of the best French players, Toulouse don't, so they have a harder target and thus need to be even more ready. By 2015 the many extra players (especially juniors) that started with the interest in Catalans will be starting to come through to adults and thus Toulouse will have a much better chance of having a good team. When this brings in more juniors then there may be the possibility of a third French heartland team in SL (Aude or Vaucluse), but Paris would still be impossible


Crusaders have had a year far worse than Gateshead had their first year on almost every measurement and if they were a heartland club you'd be calling them a waste of space. If a club folds after one year, then it is fair to judge them on one year, likewise if they do everything wrong but fold it is fair to judge them on that year. I am not judging Paris solely on the basis of a failure 12 years ago (you lie again by saying 15), it's the consistent failure of Paris at even the French Elite level. Toulouse I am applying (roughly) the same standard people apply to other Championship clubs and the crowds that translate into acceptable ones in SL, plus the playing standards that every other club has to accept, not arbitrary at all. If Crusaders are useless from 2nd in NL1, there is no prospect whatsoever of Toulouse being anything but a failure from 10th in the Championship. Also I said those conditions are the ones I'd support their inclusion on, thus I can set it at what I want, you might set criteria of 'they're not English' as grounds for supporting them, I'm not prepared to set such irrelevent, arbitrary and racist standards

It is only relevant if the situations are the same. I'm prepared to use Oldham's failure against their being ever suitable for SL, but the differences between the temporary setbacks of RL in Widnes and Bradford are not even remotely comparable to the absolute failures (not just one) of Paris. Flatcapper is not an argument, it is a word thrown around when you know you've lost the argument and have no rational opposition


If you think Wigan and Leeds have ever failed (dropping out of the top flight isn't failing and Leeds haven't done that for a very very long time) then you are a troll and should probably be banned. I'm going to assume you had a different meaning here so please explain it


Well they're not remotely the same as Paris failing and neither of them disappeared for 12 years then wanted gifting with a Super League franchise. If Prescot or Carlisle want a Super League franchise I'd view it the same way I view Paris wanting one, even though they're in Lancashire and Cumbria. By trying to equate vastly different situations you are the one giving different standards

so 4 clubs in an area twice the size of yorkshire, with twice the population who combined got lower attendences than Wakefield constitutes a heartland these days?



really, where is this objective criteria we have for deciding 'heartlands' what to Toulouse need to do to make that crossover from borderline to heartlands? has anyone told them? has anyone written down this criteria before or does it just exist inside your own head?



you are a liar, these a slanderous and malicious false accusations, please provide evidence for it!

im also waiting for an apology for your little dummy spit earlier on regarding widnes,

no team has made the step up from amateur to semi-pro to fully pro for about 80 years, no-one, not one has come through the pyramid, not one has been built slowly, not one has been succesful in following your model, i would see that as evidence it doesnt work


this sentence is just complete idiocy,

really, go read about the history of UTC and Les Catalans, you will see why this is just silly, especially the point about them winning the french league by a landslide, there was a pretty obvious reason why this happened,

UTC only existed for a couple of years prior to Les Catalan, before that they had the much more radical change of actually merging two clubs to form UTC,


they were a few years old FFS, they hadnt got consistant anything, X111 Catalan hadnt won the elite since 94 and St Esteve 98, UTC won it because they had all the best french players signed up in 2005 ready for SL in 2006,

I wonder who UTC beat in 2005 to win the French Elite?

really? between 2000 and 2006 (the year Les Catalans entered SL) St Esteve, UTC, and X111 Catalans featured in 4 grand finals combined, Toulouse also featured in 4, Toulouse also reached the semi-finals of the Challenge cup

so your argument seems to be, in the last three years Toulouse havent been as successful as the UTC side who were allowed to sign all the best french players and were guaranteed an SL side in the three years before les catalans joined SL

nonsense, Pia and UTC werent walking around with 2.5k averages 7 years ago (i.e before les catalans were given an SL place)

Toulouse arent going to produce a team of SL players outside SL and Les Catalans arent going to produce two,

If they were a heartland club they would be in that position after over 100 years of building, not 5 years.

I am well aware that the crusaders will take time, anybody who thought they wouldnt, or judges them after one year is an idiot



no, its still pretty idiotic, they have had a bad year, not the worst we have ever seen, but pretty poor, but that doesnt mean they cant and wont improve next year, and the year after, and the year after that,
there have been some good signs, and they are still here, and will still be competing next year,

they were given three years, lets see where they are then

a semipro comp with little exposure and based in the south of france is a different beast to a fully pro european elite competition,

aaahh, so you are pretending that a french expansion club is the same as british heartland club, explains a lot

maybe, just maybe, the side Toulouse put out in the championship is different to what they would put out in SL,



racist? youre a joke

go complain to your local BNP guy about poor little england being pushed out of the game booo-ing-hooo poor little you

if this is the racism you are encountering you are a very very lucky person

oh and thankfully, no one cares if you support their inclusion anyway, they will come in, they will be welcomed, and you will be ignored, and the game will be much better for it

So why are you actively wanting to drop a club into the top from nothing then when that has also never worked?

because it does work, and has worked when done properly,

there isnt something intrinsic in certain geographical areas that makes it RL country, when the game doesnt spread its because we dont do a good job spreading it,

it will take hardwork and time, but with the right backing and preperation any club, anywhere can be successful

making Paris play in front of a few hundred for three years wont affect that, they would be better using that time to concentrate on preparing their off-the field coaching, training, scouting, youth development, marketing structures ready for an assault SL than spending three years making a token gesture to the flatcappers

i would rather the RFL said to a Paris side, you are in 2012/2015 start preparing everything for SL now than making them go through the charade of three years in the championship

St Gaudens (which is near Toulouse I'll give you, though the French Elite was better then than it is now)


Combined between them they were, roughly, which is what I said


Well they need to have one that when combined with some good imports will be good enough, for Toulouse to move up now they'd need a whole new team from top to bottom, Catalans only needed some new signings. Yes there was a reason Catalans had the best players signed, but Toulouse need to be prepared to do that to go up too, and they show no signs of it. They expected to go from a season of 7th in the Elite straight into SL which is impossible. If they's put effort into their 2007-08 season they'd probably be in SL by now. As it is they refuse to make any effort in on field terms and that makes their bid unacceptable in the same way Leigh's would be.


Totally irrelevent to how successful they are and doesn't stop the bills having to be paid so who cares?


If they don't last 3 years that is a pointless statement, if they survive then yes judge them on the 3 years. I think one more season at tops they'll survive, unless someone very rich with a plan buys them up.


They both have the same costs (more or less, slight different tax and employment laws) and they both have to pay bills and both want to go from the Championship to SL, and they both have to play to the same standard at the same sport, so the small differences you try to exaggerate are just poor quality excuses for Toulouse's disappointing performances


True but having to replace a whole squad is not the way to go. Unless they can get RU converts they'll need 90% Australians at the current rate. They need a lot of their French players good enough before it is worth considering. Catalans put a good team out the year before they joined SL and a better quality one beforehand. Refusing to make any effort on the grounds of getting a new team in SL is no excuse, you need to built a basis


They will be welcomed in good time, but I would rather see them successfully enter in 2015 or even 2018, whereas you would rather see them disastrously enter in 2012 just to rush things as you have no interest in all but the most superficial expansion. You only care about the on paper situation, I care about true grassroots expansion, which actually sets the basis for true expansion rather than your universally failed method that has killed off more expansion clubs than anything else

When has it worked?

I'm not arguing that it does or doesn't work. I agree, in the right sort of set-up it could work. But I also feel the same could be said for a club working its way through the leagues. There are different ways that have different benefits to different areas in different situations. There is no right and wrong way.

But I will say that for your point about no clubs in SL having gone from amateur to semi-pro to full time pro: every SL club that was part of the Northern Union has gone from amateur to semi-pro to full-time.

You're lying yet again. Pyrenees-Orientales has an area of 4,116 sq km and Yorkshire has one of 15718 sq km. Also Pia, Catalan XIII, St Esteve and St Cyprien were all in a small part of that 4,116 sq km around Perpignan so that is heartlands by anyone but your standards.


Anywhere the game is popular. There is no dividing line (Doncaster and Sheffield being a grey area for a start) but the game can gradually become more popular somewhere. Toulouse doesn't have to meet some arbitrary level so much as have to be able to sustain a SL team. Since you support Crusaders in SL I take it you'd rather see Toulouse having serious problems like that rather than having success in the Championship? I wouldn't, I'd rather see them do well in the Championship or even in the French Elite than collapse in SL so we have something on paper. Once Toulouse have as much a claim to join SL as Catalans had, or say Widnes have now, or even a little less due to it being a good location, then I want to see them in. Until then I'd rather have a Toulouse club than not. I care about the game at all levels, you see it as SL or nothing and thus thing a club that folds in SL is better than one that wins the Championship.


Every club made up from thin air and put in SL has folded within a season or two, every single one without fail. Clubs have slowly come through and settled at semi-pro level or come from semi-pro level to full time level and I would rather things happen sustainably than your boom bust anti-expansion policy. A little help to push teams along is a good thing, but not totally artificially doing it as that will 100% guaranteed fail every time, always has done always will do

Leigh folded as a direct result of the war and had to be reformed from scratch, most RL clubs suspended operations here and RL in France had its highpoint in the 1950s and France were a top side into the 1970s. When are people going to stop using something that happened 65 years ago as an excuse for things today? The decline of French RL from the 1970s is big and far more of an issue than ancient history. Catalans joining SL has improved the situation a lot and one day this will probably allow a 2nd French team into SL, but ancient history doesn't justify a charity to French RL, anymore than it would be ludicrous for the Guinness Premiership to put a Moscow team in based on Stalin's banning of RU.

In fact RU is much smaller than it would have been in Russia due to Stalin banning RU and RL had a very good chance to take advantage of that and failed miserably. RU work at improving the real situation and so should RL rather than making pathetic excuses for everything

nope, it was Toulouse,

UTC lost to St Gaudens the year before,

you would have thought someone like you who knows everything about french RL would have been aware of that

so individually, they had an average of a little over a thousand, and out of 7million people this makes a heartland and guaranteed success in SL?


Catalans were allowed to do that without paying any transfer fees, Toulouse havent been allowed to do this, Les Catalans had three years to prepare when SL was guaranteed at the end of it, Toulouse havent,

Les Catalans were the only pro side, on the verge of becoming fully pro and were clearly the only option for french RL players, Toulouse isnt as clear, you are expecting them to be able to afford, in the championship, to pay more for players just to win the championship, when this in itself wont benefit them at all in SL

i would rather they spend the next two years preparing for SL, using the time to train the next generation of french players, ad preparing them for SL than spending time trying to create an SL sqaud out of part-time players

no one said anything about the bills

its fairly obvious to anyone but an idiot that a heartland club 100 years old is at a different stage of its development to a club which is 5 years old

well why dont you see what happens rather than just guessing at what might happen then pretending it already has happened?

but they are different clubs, in different positions, in different stages of their development, in different countries, with different needs, and different opportunities, they would offer different things to the game, would have different challenges, they would contribute different things, have different income streams, operate in different circumstances and have different potential

these arent small, theyre pretty big


a basis for what? Toulouse entrance to SL isnt for this generation of french players, it is for the next one, there are french players who can fill in in the meantime, but we shouldnt be judging Toulouse youth development in SL until 3/4 years in SL




yes, i really cant wait for that disastrous entrance

indeed, for some it is better to grow naturally, for others they need to be 'kick-started' and if someone else is putting up the money to do that, why on earth would we want to turn it down


im pretty sure thats the reason for the formation of the RFL, because the clubs weren't amatuer,

this whole sport was formed on the basis it wasnt amateur

Toulouse could have done well as the first French team in as there was the player pool at the time for one French team and it would have probably been the same players at either club, more or less. I doubt there'd have been quite as many supporters at Toulouse as at Catalans but it would have been viable. The biggest objection to Toulouse in SL now is that there aren't enough players in France for 2 SL standard clubs (even once you take into account 8-10 overseas players at each). If they drafted the best French players between Catalans and Toulouse you might be able to make things work, but at the moment Toulouse would only have the Catalans rejects who aren't good enough. It might have been better to bring in them both at once (as part of an expansion not a replacement), even if it would have meant them both being at the bottom now. But a SL club based on Catalans rejects is not good enough. If you have a better idea for where they can get SL standard players from can you tell me please?


Don't troll. The population of Perpignan is about 200,000 and there were 4 semi-pro clubs there. That sounds pretty heartland to me even if the crowds were only about 1000 at each.

I honestly don't for the life of me see where you got this 7 million figure for Perpignan from, but it shows you're not open to reason when trying to pretend Perpignan is an expansion area.


Maybe the FFR XIII need to look at that. Even if it is not my preferred method I would have no objection to them saying to Toulouse, 'you can be in SL in three years subject to meeting certain minimum criteria' as at least everyone would know where they stand and they'd have a target to aim for. Just making excuses for their shortfallings won't make them a viable SL club however much you wish it. Catalans didn't have three years, the vote to include them from 2006 was taken in mid-2004.

If we're going to have Toulouse as a credible SL club we need to look at what will prepare them for SL rather than chucking them in sink or swim and potentially killing off the game at a pro level in Toulouse as you're suggesting. Expansion below SL is still expansion regardless of whether you refuse to believe this or not. Them being in a different situation won't keep them out of trouble, so they can only enter when ready

I agree. But at the present moment, the system doesn't allow for it. That is the only objection I have for it. It would ruin any credibility the RFL has if they decide to wipe their rules out before the three years is up. If they want to change them after that is fine, but licenses were granted and denied on the basis that the next license window would follow a certain ruling. It could possibly even face legal scrutiny.



The formation of the NRFU (later the RFL) was mainly so they were allowed to pay their players, yes. But these clubs were amateur clubs before that. They had to be to play rugby under the RFU. When they set up the NRFU, they effectively became semi-pro. But the birth of the NRFU was not the birth of rugby league like many keep saying, it was simply an evolution. They were still playing pretty much the same rules as rugby union in the early days. They were still basically rugby union clubs. Basically, every club that is in the SL now that came from that first meeting were amateur clubs that progressed to be semi-pro clubs that have now progressed to be full time clubs. That would be: Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull FC, Leeds, St Helens, Wakefield, Warrington and Wigan.
Others that have made it amateur-semi-full and back to semi: Halifax, Leigh, Oldham, Widnes.
Others that are in SL now after joining the NRFU before the major changes that seperated the two codes in 1906 were brought in: Hull KR and Salford.

Not that any of this matters to what would happen to present date. But it dispels the myth that is what you are saying about no amateur club making it to SL or no semi-pro club making it to amateur. Most clubs that have been in SL were amateur at some point.

your idea of heartland is somewhere that comprises :

1. new club
2. an area where RL was banned for a number of years ie it was illegal to play
3. where the clubs had all their assets stolen
4. game was plundered beyond recognition and never recovered.

wigan and leeds were in such financial difficulties they had to be sold to new owners or wouldve gone broke

why can heartland RL clubs, indeed the very best in english RL have financial problems which can be explained away, yet the same situations in a non heartland club is treated differently.

until you treat both clubs evenly and fairly then ill just keep pointing out the hypocrisy of your position

clubs fail all the time, it doesnt mean we shouldnt try again

And all this happened how long ago ?

well if toulose are a heartland club and also offer potential for massive expansion of RL as well, that puts them ahead of all the traditional heartland clubs in england which offer no expansion

how much bigger can leigh, halifax or barrow get? how much more can they add to the growth of RL as a sport?

toulose can grow much much more, and will strengthen international RL and help revive RL in france

toulose anyday then

without the vichy banning of RL, RU would be dead now, or a very minor sport and RL the dominant rugby code

major union clubs were on the verge of bankruptcy in 1939 before the war started.

the success of the french international side in the 50s was built on the grassroots work established in the glory days of the 30s. once the grassroots were destroyed there was no more juniors coming through to replace them

Who are you actually arguing about Toulouse with ?

Paris on the other hand