Christ almighty it must be rocking at Headingley!

Good luck London, hope you get everything resolved. You'll love it in the championship, great, honest open competition which should be close next years, (plus there'll be no Leeds fans to bore the pants off ya!)

IMHO (for what it is worth) London's problem wasn't so much in the name but where they are based.

London has a massive population but it is also spread out over a wide geographic area, so basing themselves in South West London immediately alienates potential fans from East London, North London, etc. For example, travelling to Twickenham from East London involves two tube trains, an overground train and walking and can take between an hour and a half and two hours.

Travelling to Barnet's ground isn't much better - about the same journey time using three different tube lines and another 15 minute walk. Trying it from South London or West London is worse.

Driving to the grounds are usually a mission too - you either have to drive all the way round the M25 or across London itself (potentially through the Congestion Charge zone) which isn't for the faint-hearted.

To attract a decent level of support they need to be closer to the of London, somewhere close to good transport links that make it easier for all London (and Home Counties) based RL fans to get to and other amenities, e.g. hotels for away fans, etc.

The teams who have fixtures remaining v London are going to have a real boost to their points difference. Could hve a big say in that push for 7th/8th places.

So you've noticed that too? The "I must have the last word" brigade. Must be a hoot to live with!

Ad hominem attacks!


Oh deary me Smokey. You continue to pretend that black is white if you wish, continue to twist every point of every argument you enter into if you wish. It still doesn't mean you're right or you've won in some strange way. It just means people get bored from trying to debate any issue with you.
It was you who brought up Leeds, obviously without realising its history. Then when it doesn't suit you it's suddenly an irrelevant example.
It was you who brought up Leeds/Yorkshire Carnegie, obviously without knowing much about the reasons for its name change. Then when it doesn't suit you it's suddenly an irrelevant example.
It's you who continues to say a club cant appeal beyond its name, whilst ignoring every football club in London.
It's you who says anyone who thinks differently to you is "restricting London's ambitions".

A quick question, see if you'll answer it. Should Leeds call themselves Yorkshire Rhinos or can Leeds Rhinos appeal to the rest of Yorkshire anyway? Staying as Leeds is just restricting their ambition isn't it?

SmokeyTA rendering threads unreadable since Thu May 25, 2006 12:59 am

I did know the history. You have still not explained why the fact that before it was an RL club, 125 years ago, it was called Leeds St Johns was relevant. I didnt include it because it obviously isnt. You decided it was but have yet to explain why. Other than it gave you a chance to try and score a point.

Im not saying it is irrelevant. I havent said it is. You have decided that the reasons for the name change are different from the public statements of those who run it.
Except of course the biggest one, which isnt named after a part of London.

And again you are going back to clubs which were founded over a hundred years ago as amateur past times. Not now as professional businesses.
Leeds arent going to attract people from Wakefield or Hull or Bradford by calling themselves Yorkshire Rhinos. There are other clubs representing those areas. Yorkshire Rhinos would simply be an attempt to appeal to a much more difficult and competitive market. If those clubs didnt exist then yes. I think it would be a good idea.

The same as Les Catalans being a Catalan Club instead of a Perpignan club opens up new markets for them.

Just like pretty much every super rugby club has done.

Like the New England Patriots and Like the Carolina Panthers.

Like the Golden State Warriors

Like North Queensland Cowboys, like the NZ Warriors (should they be Auckland again?)

It shouldnt need pointing out to anyone that one of RL's problems is that its market is so heavily segmented that we have divied up the game in to far too small a markets, there is far too much duplication and cannibalization and as businesses our clubs spend far too much time preoccupied with battling each other for smaller and smaller resources instead of the Game competing in the sports market.

Every other sport in the world is consolidating its clubs in to larger ones in an expanded league, Ours has its fans desperate to atomise it further and contract it.

Beltin thread

lol......

....yeah, let's get them playing out of Oxford Circus




Charlton, Brentford, Harlequins and even Barnet FC in the areshole division of UK soccer don't seem to have propblems attracting a level of support that alluded London Broncos over 19 seasons in the top flight.

As for East/North Londoners being alienated

.......for that to happen, these people needed to know we ing existed, which they never did. Alienated East Londoners





I lived in Brentford for years and never gave Orient or West Ham a second thought, but I despise QPR. The only part of London that is "worrying" is south of the river....and that's really just an old "black cab joke"

The various owners of the London SL team, with maybe the exception of Ian Lenegan shared one common belief. They believed that if you stuck posts in the ground and announced a KO time, then the fans would come. They repeated this season after ing season and the result is there for everyone to see.... they are currently playing out of a stadium that the RFL had to bribe the owner of to take them in and even he's said he wants another bung if we're to stay there next year.

I repeat.....name and now LOCATION are not the reason the club failed.....bad management and lip service from the RFL did that.

If you want to see how to "transplant" a sport into a new territory, look no further than the Melbourne Storm........but you can imagine the outcry in Featherstone and Dewsbury if the RFL/SKY said they were going to bankroll a london club with 3+ times the cash they give everyone else

I think he supports them because they're his local team. Leyton isn't in Hackney. I know a guy from Walthamstow who also supports Orient. People from the North of England support Arsenal and Chelsea. The idea that people wouldn't support a team because it was named after a more specific area than the huge region 'London' is ridiculous.

So they're called London, but not marketing to all of London. But keeping the name London because people from other areas might somehow hear about them and be interested enough to consider going, but if they aren't called 'London' then they wouldn't bother. Yeah, I don't really buy into that TBH. You're treating London as if it's an individual entity like a Leeds or Cardiff, when in reality people from London identify with London about as much as people from Leeds identify with Yorkshire, or people from Cardiff identify with Wales. In fact arguably less so.

You're claiming that marketing to a more specific area is 'limiting ambition'. In that case then why not have all teams trying to market themselves to everyone? You can claim that London is different because it isn't represented by other clubs but it is, London Skolars, Hemel would probably be in the target market and there will hopefully be other pro clubs too in the future. By your reasoning, the Broncos would have been better served calling themselves 'London and The South Broncos'. Or all clubs should have regional names, Warrington should be 'Cheshire Wolves' and Sheffield should be 'South Yorkshire Eagles'.

The city of Manchester itself is smaller than Leeds, and much, much smaller than London. Other places in Greater Manchester like Stockport, Bolton etc have their own teams. Also, Manchester United are supported mostly by people from outside Manchester, which pretty much invalidates the argument you're trying to present here.

You're seriously trying to compare the NFL teams in New York to Super League in London?

Even the NBA team renamed themselves Brooklyn Nets. Come on. If you want to use a relevant example, Sydney, a city with under half the population of London, has 10 NRL teams, only one of them is called 'Sydney' and that's because they are based in the very heart of Sydney (equivalent of a London team based in the City of London). There aren't 10 teams all trying to market themselves to the whole of Sydney, because that would just be totally stupid.

Why would people affiliate themselves to a sport they werent familiar with in a place they arent associated with?

So quite a lot then? Im pretty sure people from Cardiff will say they are Welsh and I'm certain that people from leeds are pretty happy they are Yorkshire.
People don't associate themselves with a direction. People dont think of themselves as 'The south' i dont think that would help them.

Sheffield arent the club for south yorkshire, Doncaster probably wouldnt be all that happy with it. Similarly i doubt Widnes would be too happy with Warrington claiming all of Cheshire. Do i think it is a terrible idea for similarly atomised areas to try and work together and possibly merge together to strengthen? not in principle. If they did would it be far more beneficial for them to be Cheshire and South Yorkshire? Yes.

Man Utd are a world wide brand who would tell you 30% of Korea supports them. The claim 659million fans. Im not surprised they claim more from outside Manchester.

and a fair few of those Sydney clubs are struggling because of the atomisation of Sydney and it is has long be spoken of that they need fewer, bigger clubs there.

Again (bar penrith) these are also very old clubs named from an amateur age.

Im fine with looking at the NRL, but that means looking at the NZ Warriors, The north queensland cowboys, named after larger areas rather than even cities, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Brisbane, Newcastle all city sides. Look at the expansion sides talked of in the NRL, Brisbane, Central Coast, Central Queensland, Southern New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, West Coast, Western Corridor.

They are talking big geographical areas, even countries. We are talking suburbs and boroughs.

He is one tedious mo fo. Destroys virtually every thread he takes a dump on. His dissection of threads and patchwork quoting is comparable to the work of Thomas Harris' character Buffalo Bill.

Complete freak.

Because they want to watch the sport? Why do people support teams other than their home town, or the town that they live? Leeds draw support from Harrogate, York and many other places. They don't need to be called Yorkshire Rhinos to do that.
Of course, but I doubt too many people from Leeds would be interested in watching a team called 'Yorkshire Panthers' playing ice hockey based in Hull, which is the equivalent of what you're suggesting.
People identify themselves as being Southerners or Northerners.
London Broncos aren't the only club for London. Nobody identifies with their home region over their home town/city and it's ridiculous to suggest that they would be more likely to support a club because they've been given an all-encompassing name, particularly in a sport such as RL which doesn't have anything like a huge penetration. You've used NFL examples but the NFL is the biggest sports league in the world, literally everyone in America and a large percentage of sports fans globally know what it is, so having teams named after larger areas is suitable because the whole thing is on a much, much larger scale. It's ridiculous to attempt to compare it to RL. NFL isn't struggling for penetration and recognition like RL is.
Which pretty much invalidates your argument, doesn't it?
But again you're missing the point, none of those regions have huge populations, in fact it's necessary to use regional names in Australia's case because most of those areas are extremely sply populated with no real major population centres in which to base a team. Whereas London's population is two or three times greater than the entire country of New Zealand. Those 'struggling' Sydney teams are still bigger than any British sides.

I'm absolutely not against city clubs, but attempting to have one club representing a city the size of London in a sport the size of RL is nonsensical. You're treating it like a normal city, comparing it to the likes of Newcastle and Brisbane when the reality is that London's population is larger than the whole of New South Wales and Queensland combined.

Not to any great degree we dont. We dont focus on or target those areas. this is a very very small part of it.
certainly more than they would if they were called Hull.

really?

But they werent always like that, which rather than invalidates my point, supports it. NFL clubs chose to represent large cities or large geographical areas to promote growth. That growth is why they are one of the biggest sport leagues in the world.
but your opposing argument is that they would support these same teams even if they were simply named after a relatively small areas. Even some of those do have large population centres. Like perth,
Yet thats what they do in New York with the Giants, Jets, Knicks, Yankees, Mets, Rangers, Islanders, Red Bulls, City FC, In fact all bar Brooklyn Nets who had spent 35 years in New Jersey.

In fact, London, in soccer, is pretty much unique the world over in branding their clubs after smaller parts of the city and that is mostly to do with their ages and the environment in which they were founded.

Again, that completely contradicts what you're trying to say. London are also unlikely to get very many supporters from outside the area in which they're based regardless of name.

Maybe, but there probably wouldn't be anywhere near as much local interest in Hull.

Yeah, that and the fact that it's the biggest, most popular sport in the richest, most powerful and third largest nation on Earth.

No, that isn't my argument at all. But there's a huge difference between naming a team after Rockhampton, a small and relatively insignificant place with a population of 60,000, and naming a team after Barnet, which has a population of 330,000 in the middle of a city of 13.5 million. A club named 'Barnet' would represent the third biggest population centre out of any team in Super League after Leeds and Bradford, and would also be bigger than any in the NRL apart from Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast and New Zealand. Barnet alone has a bigger population than the geographical region of North Queensland.

What you're failing to acknowledge that these 'suburbs or boroughs' are far larger than most cities in their own right.

But again, you're missing the fact that sport in the USA is completely different to RL in the UK, both in its scale and nature. And that most of those teams play different sports. AFAIK, New York is only represented by two clubs at each sport. Which makes sense given the size of America and the population spread that needs to be covered. There are 30 or so teams to go around 320 million people. But what you're talking about in the UK would be a London club representing a population four or five times the size of all the other teams combined.

So you think it would be more logical if all the soccer clubs in London were just called London?

So I say I don't like the 'London' moniker and the usual suspects start shouting "that's not why the club's in trouble". Except that I never once said it was the reason the club's in trouble, but don't let that stop you refuting a premise I never put.

I still don't like the 'London' moniker, and never have.

Why??
It doesn't matter what the rest of the country think, if we're serious about building a local support base and not relying on away fans turning up (I grant you, given what's gone before that's a big 'if').

Quote ="SmokeyTA"People don't associate themselves with a direction. '" Many do. onedirectionfanclub.com/ Quote ="SmokeyTA" People dont think of themselves as 'The south'.'" Some do www.thesouth.co.uk/ they're playing Gawsworth Hall on Friday. And Bingley Live on Aug 31

Quote ="SmokeyTA"People don't associate themselves with a direction. '" Many do. onedirectionfanclub.com/ Quote ="SmokeyTA" People dont think of themselves as 'The south'.'" Some do www.thesouth.co.uk/ they're playing Gawsworth Hall on Friday. And Bingley Live on Aug 31

FA



[size=50but a superb post[/size

How on earth does it? Harrogate and York are nt in Leeds. It is entirely irrelevant to my point.
it doesnt need to have more than there is in Hull. Just more than there would otherwise be and it is the obvious right way to go.

And to repeat, Them making a conscious decision to target large populations with city or region teams were one those catalysts for that growth which made them the most popular sport.


But you are arguing that those who want to watch RL, but were one of the 13.2m people in London but not Barnet would watch Barnet anyway even though they had no affinity or affiliation to Barnet. So Why wouldnt they watch Rockhampton? If the name doesnt matter and they would watch anyway why would you rename the Auckland Warriors the NZ warriors if it wouldnt attract more people?

If the name didnt matter and those in north queensland who were going to watch the cowboys would watch anyway, why are they the North Queensland Cowboys and not the Townsville Cowboys.

Its irrelevant how big they are. We want the club to be as big as possible. The principle is the same. It doesnt change with scale.

Every other sport in the world doesnt look to clubs representing suburbs, every major sport in the world looks to its biggest sides to represent cities, larger regions or are none-geographical, the only exceptions are those which grew out of amateur sport and we are talking centuries old.

Why are we different? What are all they doing wrong?

And? are we in a position of Londons Club being too big? Why wouldnt we want each club to be as big as it can be?

Everyone else in the world seems to manage pretty easily.

Quote ="Ferocious Aardvark"Many do. onedirectionfanclub.com/ Some do www.thesouth.co.uk/ they're playing Gawsworth Hall on Friday. And Bingley Live on Aug 31'"

Quote ="Ferocious Aardvark"Many do. onedirectionfanclub.com/ Some do www.thesouth.co.uk/ they're playing Gawsworth Hall on Friday. And Bingley Live on Aug 31'"

To be fair, I'm loving Headhunter and Smokey arguing, leave them alone.

I thought they were they same person. Maybe they are...

Back on topic. RFL get involved, help the London club find a decent venue and market the living day lights out of it. Also, again, enjoy the championship, it's a fantastic league, more so next year and hope you all visit the Shay!

The Club's biggest and most enthusiastic attendances were when they were called Fulham and played at Fulham.

Leeds get support from Harrogate and York despite being called Leeds and being based in Leeds. Obviously there aren't as many fans from those other places as there are from Leeds, but based on your argument there wouldn't be any at all.

In relation to London, the argument is the same, they also wouldn't get a huge amount of support from outside the local area. A team called London based in Twickenham would still get the majority of its support from Twickenham and not from East London or North London.

Obviously if the net gain was higher then it would be the right move, but I don't think that would be the case at all. You're neglecting developing a local base in favor of targeting the huge area of London and getting completely overwhelmed. RL in London is a drop in the ocean, decreasing the size of that ocean is likely to make a far bigger impact.

They haven't gone from clubs the size of London (or other RL clubs) to huge entities overnight because they 'targeted large populations'. American sports are operated on a franchise basis by billionaire owners, many of them have been relocated thousands of miles to opposite ends of the country. It's nothing at all like RL and completely irrelevant to this discussion.

There's a huge difference between Rockhampton and Townsville and Barnet. Townsville and Rockhampton are relatively remote, isolated places that probably couldn't support clubs on their own. Barnet as you've said is a suburb, with a population more than big enough to support a club and also a huge population in the immediate vicinity. Your argument is completely ignoring the different nature of these places. It's like trying to compare Fulham and Whitehaven.

So this entire argument is based not on logic, but on the arbitrary measure of whether something is a 'suburb' or not. And the fact that 'other sports do it' despite the only relevant examples (soccer in London and RL in Sydney) being operated with clubs based out of suburbs.

We do, we want as many strong clubs as possible. But 13 million people is far too big a catchment area for just one club, especially in a sport the size of RL. Even the aforementioned New York Giants and Jets playing in the biggest, most prestigious and well-known sports league in the world don't market themselves to that many people. For such a club to grow to a level relative to the likes of Wigan or St Helens would mean they were playing in front of hundreds of thousands of fans every week. It's just lunacy.

12 clubs all called London FC. Great.