You wouldn't enjoy it, the foods too rich for you and would bring you out in a rash, don't think they do tripe and black pudding and all the other delicacies likely to be found in Leigh

The bigger picture is still to try and develop the game in France (and beyond) and as with any business model, it's expand or die.
RL HAS to have ambitions beyond a slow lingering death or, what is the point.
Of course football and Union are massively in front of us and they will remain in that position for the rest of my life, no doubt whatsoever but, there has to be some ambition.
Many of Leagues failings over the 125+ years have been down to mickey poor planning and lack of finance.
The only way to improve investment into the sport is to appeal to a broader range of people and this simply wont happen while ever the sport contracts to the M62 corridor.
We have to have a clear strategy and prolonged effort to make it succeed.

The N. American experiment was bonkers, not for it's ambition but, purely from geographical constraints but, France is, at least, a more sensible and viable area to try and grow the game.
For the record, any new French side in SL should not be replacing any English club. They should be in addition to what we have and this should be part of the strategy.
Also encouraging The French to put more effort into developing their youngsters to a higher level.

1. RL of course has ambitions but no way of realising them, so it's left with doing what it's always done for the last 100 years which is to survive. Where did you get "expand or die" from? Our game hasn't really expanded in 128 years yet it's far from dead



2. If we have 12 English SL clubs and allow two French clubs to take us to 14 without "replacing" English clubs, do you expect the English clubs to reduce their share of the English TV deal and give that to the French? Do you expect the English club to share the English player pool with the French?

You clearly must do, because without them taking our players and our TV money they cannot compete, as they have no TV money to speak of and produce very very few pro-level players indeed. I don't understand what you mean by[i[u put more effort into developing their youngsters to a higher level.[/u[/i

They are up against the vast majority of talented young french lads choosing French Rugby Union and French soccer over League which is clearly a tiny game there far smaller than it is even here. If there were Superleague quality French RL players then they have had what, since 2006 to bring them through......15 years

There's only a handful..... RL has been dying a death in France and the top two clubs abandoning the French league to playe here and signing up players from here is not in any way "expansion" at all. Catalans and Toulouse are English/Aussie RL teams playing in an English league.

There was the return of the France.v.GB tests back in 2007 which created a chance for French players to become top class professional internationals but their best side just could not cut it. 15 years of Les Catalans has only seen the French game shrink further, yet people talk of Toulouse as "Expansion"........

Toulouse and Catalans have simply abandoned French RL to play here. That's the reality

In business terms, it most definitely is expand or die.
Yes, there can be managed decline but, this is more akin to lingering death.

You are right about the return of the France v England tests but, was it ever possible for a French side with 15/20 full time players to compete with England ??
The answer here was that it should not be possible and again, I agree that if Catalan (and Toulouse) fill their side with "Aussies" and English players, the French side cannot improve -other than the few French Nationals getting some exposure to playing top level RL (against their SL counterparts).
There should be something in place to "encourage" those sides to include a minimum number of French Nationals in their squad but, as you know, this isn't as simple as it sounds and for certain, returning Catalan and Toulouse to the French National League, would reduce the quality of the French side still further. It certainly wouldn't improve it.

IF staging a world cup in France can boost their game, it is a positive step for the game, either in terms of paying fans, TV viewers or maybe, just maybe, more people becoming interested in taking up the sport. Not to mention investment opportunities for both the French game but, for the sport as a whole.

Staging the World Cup in France should allow investors and advertisers to see that RL is not just a "Yorkshire/Lancashire" small time sport. Even you must see that ?

Quote ="Donnyman" 2. If we have 12 English SL clubs and allow two French clubs to take us to 14 without "replacing" English clubs, do you expect the English clubs to reduce their share of the English TV deal and give that to the French? Do you expect the English club to share the English player pool with the French? You clearly must do, because without them taking our players and our TV money they cannot compete, as they have no TV money to speak of and produce very very few pro-level players indeed. '" People in Perpignan, Paris,Manchester and London,are thanked in the final paragraph,with regard to helping Catalans Dragons and their broadcast deal. They seem to have managed very well without any help from Elstone or any M62 club. https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/ca ... -for-2021/ Strange how Sky TV have involved themselves when they just want ' English ' clubs.

Quote ="Donnyman" 2. If we have 12 English SL clubs and allow two French clubs to take us to 14 without "replacing" English clubs, do you expect the English clubs to reduce their share of the English TV deal and give that to the French? Do you expect the English club to share the English player pool with the French? You clearly must do, because without them taking our players and our TV money they cannot compete, as they have no TV money to speak of and produce very very few pro-level players indeed. '" People in Perpignan, Paris,Manchester and London,are thanked in the final paragraph,with regard to helping Catalans Dragons and their broadcast deal. They seem to have managed very well without any help from Elstone or any M62 club. https://www.loverugbyleague.com/post/ca ... -for-2021/ Strange how Sky TV have involved themselves when they just want ' English ' clubs.

So you would have less of an issue if the french sides were in addition to the existing 12 sides if we were to bring in say bradford or London 22 english sides and 2 french sides ?

Ignoring the argument of tv money it would be a better option than as you say just replacing a current side with Toulouse. I think that we are seeing expansion wrong and it's not about a club in America one in canada n maybe Spain if they all have to fit in to a league of 12 !! Rfl must now look to expand but in a more thought out manor. It should be to look at how to get to 16/18 sides without impacting tv money from sky or for a way in which clubs are not as reliant on the tv money. I would not be looking to increase the length of the season but to play more midweek games and less loop fixtures.

I dont mind the french clubs they are a nice weekend away add somthing different to the league. I think that if we have london york newcastle Toulouse widnes and bradford in super league in 10 years and all clubs are competitive and financially stable that is the expansion we should be aiming for.

1. There are countless businesses that have been established many many years who have adapted to changing times, so your just wrong there. Many of these businesses take pride in being established many years ago and use that on their advertising and labelling. Suggest you leave this one alone.

2. Suggest you cut out the "even you" crack as well, we have both probably lived through many World cups and they are great TV and they attract many fans and sponsors who do not normally watch RL but you know as well as I do when the tournament is over that's it for the part time fans and sponsors.

That's how every world cup goes it attracts many casual fans and new fans and business give it a look in, but none of this ever sticks.

Rochdale Hornets may be good for 600 fans, then the world cup gives them a Fiji game and they get 9,000 fans. Next home game back to 600. That's how it is, your arguing a principle that World cups bring in a legacy new fans, new money and new players in which down the years of our life time there is exactly ZERO evidence of this.

We get this every so often in any sort of "Expansion" e.g. this Billionaire has started a club in Toronto.....

They have a league in Burundi - the fact people aren't pointing to the opportunity of holding the word cup there is shocking in this day and age.

If we don’t get a Kazakh super league side soon rugby Union will remain dominant in Central Asia.

Mate, I went to the first test between GB and France after Catalans came in the league. We had not played France for years but here was a chance to get the test games on every year, but one club could not produce an international side. Had Toulouse come in as well and had the two clubs had say a dozen top French lads each in their sides providing quality test games I'd have been made up.

Because that is why the French were invited into Superleague

Now there are no more Tests because there weren't many quality players in the first place (Touxagas,Raguin, Pelo, Casty, Duport, Khahtabi, Fakir, Gossad, Guisset and Bosch were quality) the inclusion of two English/Aussie teams from France is thoroughly pointless. We have 15 years evidence of which way the French game is going and as we only see only a few French lads with first team shirts it's clear French RL is gone as a professional game. They don't have the players nor the TV money.

There can be no justification to make ambitious clubs like Newcastle, Bradford, Featherstone York etc who all applied for SL recently to sit out a future Superleague in which two "French" clubs playing virtually no French players and providing no TV subs take SL places they should have..

Why does this nonsense go on? Because Superleague bosses can't agree to do anything in unison. IIRC it's probably Hetherington who won't vote the French out. I suspect however that the other Superleague clubs won't vote Toulouse in. Certainly when there was the chance recently for Toulouse to come straight into Superleague this year many armchair fans called for them. most SL bosses didn't.

Yes if we had a load more money we could be one step towards more SL clubs, BUT we would still need the second step of more quality players which France can't even offer for the one team that have in there. As it stands we need 14 well funded SL clubs to avoid the loop fixtures and we need them all to be English to up the SKY subs.

It may be reunification between SL and the RFL and a majority voting system may see some progress.....

Round and round we go again.

The whole point is that if the league increases then, necessarily it should be on the basis of increasing TV revenue and not just making the slices of cake smaller.
IF we are saying that RL has already maxed out the potential revenue and is incapable of improving the take from Sky or, whoever else, our sport really is in dire straits - what a poor reflection this would be on our game.
Those negotiating the deal should be bigging the game up, on the back of an up coming world cup, across all variations of the game.
We certainly shouldn't be accepting that our sport only exists along part of the M62

Ambitious Newcastle won't have very many north east accents representing them this year.
Ambitious Bradford lost heavily to another club that don't play their home games in their own city.
Featherstone ignore the laws of the land and York not only lost at home to Toulouse,but are yet to win a game at their new home stadium.
Yea.They will boost the current status of Super League and Sky subscriptions will go through the roof.
The home international side will certainly raise their standards....isn't that what was supposed to happen with Super League and summer rugby?

This is a non argument.

The correlation you use to push your agenda utilizes a flawed measure, namely that if 95% of English/British R.L Clubs (percentage picked at random to make point) are located along or very close to the M62 then of course the percentage of financial failures or administrations is higher. For your argument to work in any way you would need to point to the exact number from each region & the percentage within that region.

Good luck with that !!!

FWIW, I have already stated that I am all for a RLWC to be held in France.

So you’re writing off clubs with a history of and that continue to produce fans of the game and young players that go on to represent their country on the strength of one round of fixtures with squads built on championship budgets? With all due respect that approach hasn’t ever and never will work in building support for whatever the latest expansionist pipe dream is.

I think you have taken it out of context.
As it would have meant you reading a lot of previous input from Donnyman,it may help if I assure you I am certainly NOT writing of any of the above named clubs,or any other clubs that have lost,by necessity,and by no fault of their own,any young players,and any clubs who have done without money by whatever circumstances.
Nor am I,or will I,attempt to shatter any expansionist dream:quite the contrary.

1. So on that basis the drop in TV revenue according to you should mean what? A ten club league? It has been suggested the top 10 clubs play each other 3 times.

2. The dire straits comes when the TV deal is pulled, don't you get that? Therefore the game survives on an English TV deal?

All along the ridiculous journey of the fake Canadian club and the calls to put another fake Canadian club in SL for a "derby" along with the calls to put the tiny "French" club Toulouse in for a "French Derby" (with few French players) a relatively tiny number of RL enthusiasts mainly hanging around message boards have wholly ignored the reality that expansion isn't spreading the same number of pro clubs across the northern hemisphere.

It was always just a dream, yet a small number of people seemed to believe it, (we have about 120,000 RL fans and only a couple of hundred on message boards) or at least liked winding up those who can clearly see RL's survival isn't closing down English pro clubs who attract TV money for fake overseas clubs who don't attract TV money.

It's just a wind up Ste.......

They can hold the World cup anywhere they want for me, and if it's in France I hope you have a great time Ste....

I also hope Leigh can get used to the pace of SL and start to pick up some wins....

But not by depleting the clubs inside the traditional boundaries. We forget entirely what Catalans and Toulouse have done to French RL by walking away. Just imagine if Leeds and Wigan decided to go join the French league for next season 2022, and to accommodate them two French clubs were relegated from the Ellite



This would be a nonsense and not in any way "expansion". But exactly the same thing as Cats and TO have done

It is a world cup. I can guarantee that someone will be travelling abroad.

Quote ="Levrier"It is a world cup. I can guarantee that someone will be travelling abroad.'" can you that's good https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52646738

Quote ="Levrier"It is a world cup. I can guarantee that someone will be travelling abroad.'" can you that's good https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52646738

With the talk by some that the tv deal would shrink with a second French club how about this thought.

The last tv deal which was highly successful included Catalan.

The current reports say the next deal will be significantly lower and some would say that is so because of Toronto entering Super league last year. Now replaced by Leigh where are all of the reports that the tv deal will increase with the addition of another English team?

you need to let it go or it will make you poorly

It's what Donnyman has been telling us for months and will no doubt do again.