I'll bet there not only you and me who pick up on that one

the logic is that we turned up in numbers, due to a promotion with Jungle.com, the stand allocated for Cas was packed, and as usual the other 2,& 7/8ths were empty terraces, nothing unusual about that, they play at a RU ground, in the middle off god nose how many RU grounds, and more than enough Football Grounds, the support is not there, in the winter its RU, & football, in summer its Cricket & RL, but support for RL is poor to say the least, when they play away its like the kids book wheres Wally,when looking for there fans, London is saturated with sport & RL, is not welcome, i wish it was, but they need more than 2500 to 3000 attendances on game day, RL is struggling to keep well known northern clubs heads above water, but all you hear is expansion, theres been that much hot air blown in to that bubble it cant be far of bursting

I can only presume that you mean Harlequins RU by "landlords". Yes they did this against a backdrop of clubs doing this same across the country and they did it in an area where rugby union was popular. Broncos have to do it when attendances are going up slowly if at all and their local area has neither heard of or gives a cr4p about RL.

It is easy to slag off Bronquins but they've had several changes of ownership and none have got close to what you suggest. I don't think that Brisbane Broncos know nothing about running a rugby league club. Nor do I think that Richard Branson is incapable of generating publicity.

Castleford, 8,067...year, 2000.

By the way......100 coaches at 45 seats a pop is 4,500.......urban myth by the way......Jungle.com paid for 48 coaches....but keep up the good work

Why can people not accept the fact we are a regional sport, embrace the fact.

One aspect that doesn't seem to get much of a mention here are the numbers playing RL in the south east at junior level and there has been a significant increase in the no of junior clubs and kids participating in RL.
These are the people who should be targeted as the growth area for supporter numbers and although i.m sure that work is being done in this area, surely its a case of encouraging kids to watch and hopefully they will persuade somebody to take them. Equally where any schools are participating in league, then dosh some freebies around and do something to encourage them to come back.

What's even more laughable from my POV is that the places the expansionist zealots want us to expand into are often far smaller than the much maligned M62 corridor!

The M62 corridor has a bigger population than Scotland, Ireland and Wales combined. Where as places like Batley and Rochdale are far bigger than most of the French village teams touted for SL.

We should spend the next 10 years consolidating and strengthening what we already have and kick the Smokeys and their silly and expensive dreams into touch. Sort the back office out first as Wayne Bennett says.

But what would a silly stereotype like me or you know.

My sentiments exactly, but we are mere flatcappers.

I would have more sympathy with "flatcappers" if they didn't take the opportunity to try and tear down the work of those in non-traditional areas. The continual reinvention of the past and mythical golden eras doesn't help either.

Rugby League fans should stop the continual self-loathing and remember that expansion vs heartlands isn't a zero-sum game.

But surely the RL need to realise that expansion such as Crusaders and in a way with London hasn't worked. Yes, London have a good community set up but how many of them kids and family eventually go to watch London. They would probably rather watch the numerous footie teams around London. They have even tried Kent 30 odd years ago, it never worked then and unfortunately i dont think will work now.

Never mind the "flatcappers".
If the game is to expand in some sort of sustainable manner, then this can only happen from the grass-roots upward.
Unfortunately, this takes too much time for the games administrators to cope with. Alternatively, we can have teams like Paris, Crusaders etc, but for these to succeed there needs to be large scale sustained subsidy and this still doesn't come with a guarentee of success and each time these experiments fail, it puts the game in a bad light.
Therefore, IMO, we need to go from grassroots upwards.
What puzzles a simle guy like me, was the way that Sheffield was allowed to merge with Huddersfield and disappear when, with a little help, they could have been a succesful top flight club AND, although only 20-30 miles from the "heartlands", they were spreading the game.
Their re-forming and success in the GF last season shows that there is still massive potential down there and although not quite as glamerous as say, Toulouse, would still be progress.

I dont have self loathing, just realism.

Toulouse, with a greater metropolitan area population of over [i1.2 million[/i, must be the biggest village the world has ever seen!



That makes Toulouse 6 times the size of Rochdale and 24 times the size of Batley.








Not much it would seem.

LMS and Clubb both played for Eng

Sargerson and Dixon played this year for the Knights

Plenty more southerners in the national squads at various age groups

The much talked about youth cup played at Wembley before the CC final is currently sat in Surrey

Stacks of RL clubs popping up all over the south

But yes you are right it is a regional sport

Jean you are arguing with blokes that live in pit villages, whose big day of the year is a coach trip to North London on the Aug bank holiday drinking bargain booze deals.

That may be so in your eyes, but IMO the RL has no cash for substantial expansion of the game.

I can't make out if your a Northerner, living down south or London fan who support Wires??

Based on probability, he must be a wire fan living down south as there aren't any Broncos fans anyway



Only kidding btw but, when we came to our last Broncos match, we actually asked some of the home fans what got them into RL and 2/3 of those questioned were actually dis-placed northerners who wanted to watch some live RL.
of course we didnt really need to ask them where they were from because in all cases they were wearing flat caps, miners lamps and were taking their whippets out for a long walk

Yeah right, and in Toulouse RL is the big sport is it. RL is s tiny insignificant sport in that city and you know it. If the same percentage of people in Toulouse supported the game as in Batley I'd be impressed - but they don't and spin doctors like you damn well know it.

The rest of RL is pretty much village based, and that is a expression that come directly from French RL people.

Give it a rest.

Oh aren't we the perfect little cultural snob who's spit the dummy out because he can't justify his argument. For one untravelled men from pit villages and northern towns built this glorious game so show some respect fool.

Don't assume you know your advisory either, your description that I assume includes me could not be further from the truth. Nobody needs to justify their background to you pit village or not. Do us all a favour and take you and your kind off and support something else - thanks.

Little touchy today Vastman- took the bait nicely. Something for you to moan about in the social club tonight

people(the rfl included) need to stop treating the sport likes its some fantasy league where they can just drop clubs in at the top and everything will be fine. The only proper way to truly move the sport forward is to put a long term plan in place with the ultimate goal of a pyramid structure without these huge chasms in between, where any club can find its own level without being artificially kept in a division. Put strict financial fair play rules in place and then if any rich sugar daddies want to throw their money away they can do it on the clubs infrastructure rather than on a bunch of journeymen.

Isn't that whats happening?

Iiiin west philadelphia born and raised on a playground is where i spent most of my days. Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' and coolin' and shootin' some meatballs outside of a'school. And a couple a' guys they were up to no good! Started makin' trouble in my neighbourhood!

Sorry....just doing something, anything, which had not been said already a million times before in these threads.

Although the definition of ' Expansion ' is quite confusing, basically in our case it means growth, however too many just look at the geographical aspect

We need the whole sport to expand, the amatuer participation side, the spectator side at all levels, the income side at club level and of course the proffessional club and International side

But what is the most important part is that any expansion is sustainable and successful, however bad planning and lack of follow up support have led to some pretty poor examples

And heartlands being sacrificed for pipe dreams.