JEAN, I will say zis only wonce

Hardly anybody in Toulouse even knows they have a RL club

Carlos is a lovely bloke, met him when we 1 st played out there, the band even struck up God Save the Queen for me, but nobodys interested

Another classic post from the French fraud

I'm still trying to suss what the second paragraph has to do with the first.

I knew there was a reason I kept away from this place.

It should be a (Team) Europe, the Europe Mountaineers. And re-brand the sport, we have invented a new sport, the Americans produced a sport quite different to rugby too, they have managed to hold on to the term Football we haven't in Europe, therefore we have to come up with a new name, how about Yorkball? Any other suggestions? Obviously because the sport was started in Yorkshire.

Then call the league the EYA (European Yorkball Association). Then have an EYA Championship and an EYA Championship 1. 12 teams in each league, with 1 up and 1 down between each. Play March-October; Grand Final on the first Saturday of October.

Someone's been on the eggnog lol

Seen as we are talking about Toulouse and RL, I'd say they're the 'small potatoes' where RL is concerned, compared to the Wakefield/Castleford area. If we're talking financially as a City, every team in SL apart from maybe Leeds are 'small Potatoes' in comparison to Toulouse. Or are we going with the theory that because it's a big City and has a small number of RL players, they're a better investment than any team in the Wakefield area? I'm sure we've been here before.



Lets be right, the size of a City is a bit of a red herring when it comes to RL, all you need to do is look at Wigan, Saints and Warrington, all similar sizes to Wakefield. Ateotd you just need to be in a catchment area that has an interest in Rugby League and said area has the potential to get 10k+ crowds. Then to be a top team you need a man with a bit of cash on the hip, to put the money in.

As for Toulouse they remind me of Leeds in a way, similar size and the fact they dominate their neighbours businesss & financially wise. Toulouse has got one of the best European RU teams in the City as well as a Football team in the French Ligue 1. Leeds is similar but it's RL that's the top dog and RU suffers because of the other 2 teams in the City and obviously the populations lack of appetite for the game. Like I said before, if they want in, get them in the Championship again, this time destiny is in their hands with a chance to get promoted. That will test whether there's an appetite for the game in that area. Maybe they'll turn out to be the new Catalans and not PSG.

Problem is will it? As has been seen clubs in championship might get 3000 but that might jump to 8000 on promotion, or it might not. It is hard to judge the potential whilst outside SL. Probably a better judgement would be business plan etc but now we have a fake p&r system no one is getting in for the forseeable future.

I knew it!!! You only want Toulouse in so you have double the chances to visit the picturesque north of England.

This is the problem with Rugby League. The flat cappers and fans of a small number of Championship clubs have be crying and moaning for the last 7 years about licencing.

"It's not fair"

"What happens on the field should only count"

It never occurred to these please that licencing was supposed to protect medium sized clubs from bankrupting themselves like Halifax, Workington and Oldham. But it turns out incompetent administration can overcome any system.

After years on listening to your nonsense the RFL say "f$£k it, let them kill themselves off", bring back P&R and let them settle it on the pitch. Let just put them in a feeder league and let them fight for spots in Super League.

Is everyone now happy....No

"Local League for local teams", "Only a select few should be included", "Let them play in their own league"

Hypocritical sods!!!

It's like UKIPs Schrodinger's immigrant, [urlhttp://newsthump.com/2014/11/28/ukip-warns-of-schrodingers-immigrant-who-lazes-around-on-benefits-whilst-simultaneously-stealing-your-job/[/url

Schrodinger's expansion team!!!! Stop them from buying or playing there way into the League.

Just admit it, you know Toulouse can be a bigger team that than most of the Super League Teams no matter the Championship teams and you don't like that.

Spot on.

Hang on.

There are three tiers of professional rugby league in this country.

If Toulouse want to apply to play in League 1 in 2016 I'm pretty certain they would be accepted. They just need to accept that their central funding would be lower than that of UK based clubs in League 1 so there is extra funding to those UK based clubs in League 1 to cover their travel costs to Toulouse away games.

If that happened and Toulouse were good enough, they'd be in Super League on merit by 2018 anyway.

and they abide by that salary cap that makes it impossible to put together a French squad able to travel to England every two weeks.

So they should put together a squad of part time French players earning less than elite one players, prepared to travel every two weeks and losing their pay from their full time job under a salary cap that makes it impossible to do, and they should do it on less central funding than anyone else, and if it does work it would be a pointless hoop they jumped through. But we need to be fair and everything should be done on merit (as long as we implement rules to keep small northern clubs competitive, and call that merit)

Funny thing is all those screaming to p&r in the hope there club would one day see SL. Reality is SL has now become a totally closed shop. Salary cap disparity will mean there is cat in hells chance of winning the playoffs, I cringe at what some of those score lines are going to be!, and with the intro of a fake promotion and relegation the SL no longer need to consider license applications from potential future SL clubs. Job done nicely by the lucky 12!

Disagree with this.
Although your sentiment is correct, Bradford, along with Leigh will be very competitive with the bottom 2/3 clubs in SL, when it comes to the split.
IF there is a "lame duck" in SL (as London were last season), they would be massively weaker than the top 2 clubs in the Championship.

The problem will be at the end of the following season, when the promoted club becomes the "lame duck" going into the "qualification league".
A perpetual relegation fight, far from increasing interest in the game, will irrevocably damage clubs in the lower reaches of SL and IMO, will lead to a further change,
probably a 10 club closed shop SL.

Rather than trying to change history why dont you try and think about it before you push submit.

For the last 3 season 'on this very forum' Wigan fans imparticular,' but STs fan,wire fans & the more educated Leeds fans have been asking whats the point of the early rounds when theres nothing to play for.
The fans of bottom end SL clubs were fed up of just doing through the motions apart from the odd game.
Of course fans and owners of KPC clubs wer moaning,why shouldnt they be when they looked at the state SL was in

The way we decide our champions is entirely separate from a return to P+R. Wigan fans moaning about the structure of the play offs has nothing to do with P+R at all.

Fans of the bottom end club now have 23 rounds of going through the motions, playing to either be in a competition where the points they earn count for nothing, or to be in a competition they will mathematically have next to no chance of winning.

The state SL was in was one were attendance records were set in 2012. But we ignore that because its convenient. ,

But hey, at least now the KPC clubs get to play for a prize of 23 rounds in SL which will be meaningless by the end of the season. Not forgetting the bonus of the nonsense 'million pound game' and the fact we have undermined the big success we had made of the GF. Leigh v Hunslet should be a close game next year too

I'm feeling quite emotional reading this, it must be the time of year !
Maybe, for the first time, I agree with just about everything you've put here.

The whole point is that, if we want a Grand Final, the weekly rounds will NEVER be as important as they deserve to be, notwithstanding the fact that the season now finishes with the GF and we don't have a few of the later rounds where the champions have already been decided.

Back on topic, its very difficult to see how Toulouse (or any other expansion club) can fit into the new structure, the downside is massive and the upside is unattainable .

I for one am dreading the new structure and how anyone at the RFL thought it would be a good idea.

The every moment matters tag line is a total fallacy. We will have plenty of "meaningless" games. And all the new structure is doing is degrading the SL brand by including a farcical middle 8 which pits 4 FT super league clubs against 4 PT championship club and in doing so destroying that competition.

Games in the top 8 will be pointless if your club don't have the points to get close to the top 4.

It all just beggars belief.

I agree in principle but I doubt the teams in Championship 1 could afford the trip and their players my struggle to get time off work etc.

So therefore the Championship is probably a better option.

and just suppose the RFL sacrificed the teams from within the WMDC in favour of Toulouse, what happens to the youth production line that these three clubs and the amateur game generates?

The latest figures suggest that Wakefield and Wigan are neck and neck in terms of player production from their respective Districts, do you suppose that losing that production line would be "small potatoes"?

Please don't suggest that Leeds Rhinos, Huddersfield Giants etc would move in and fill the gap as that's naive thinking at best and moronic at worst. Without the pro clubs the young kids are not inspired to play and player numbers would drop, entering a downward spiral that in years to come would dwindle to almost nothing.

Whatever you think of Wakefield Trinity, Castleford Tigers or Featherstone Rovers as clubs between them they generate interest in playing Rugby League in schools, community clubs and eventually Scholarships.

Your pathetic attempts at diminishing the importance of the WMDC area is poorly thought out and ignorant in the extreme.

What would be moronic and naïve would be thinking that we need a club every couple of miles in Wakefield or else the youth of wakefield are going to collectively thcweam and thcweam and refuse to play anymore.

You do have to wonder why, if the youth production line in Wakefield is so important, that Wakefield aren't filled with players from that production line and they are relying on the likes of Scruton, McShane, and Michel Simon, and Fev have just taken 4 leeds youngsters on loan.

Oh dear!

Really?

I actually thought you were more intelligent than that!

Over time, without a hometown club to watch, without games to attend with their dads or their mates, without being inspired by someone wearing the colours of their Town or City, without being visited in school by players and yes by club mascots these young kids will turn to something else. It might be cricket, Football, XBox, a street corner or whatever but it will not be a Community RL club because they won't have been inspired to emulate a hero or aspire to play for Cas, Wakey or Fev.

The end result is the RL has even fewer young kids playing the game, I don't know what it is that makes the area so Rugby League dominated but it is, it dwarfs all other sports and even football takes second place. What I do know is if you knock the legs from under that production then it'll eventually cease to produce.

Even if we accept your premise, it would apply to everywhere else in the world. There is an entire nation out there of kids who, according to your logic, would play RL if they had a team and a hero to inspire them. Sticking 3 clubs within 10 miles of each other would by any measure be idiotic. There are about 55million people in England without a home town club and a home town hero to inspire them. There would be 1.5m just in Toulouse. The 300k people of WMDC do not need 3 (or 5) clubs to do that.

Considering there are only 12k people in fev and only 40k people in Cas, there isn't that many who can be inspired by them.

And if WMDC is such an RL dominated area, where are they? where are the fans? where are the players?

Except that the Wakefield region isn't like any other region in that Rugby League is currently and historically first second then third before all other sports, which is there in my previous post if you care to read it with an open mind and without an agenda

The fans are there but like any region they're there in greater numbers when things are going well. Two seasons ago Wakefield and Cas were averaging around 8,000 each while Fev were getting about 2,500. That's 18,500 turning out to support the teams at a time when none of them were threatening to win the league or CC.

The players are there, in the U16s alone Wigan have 6 from the Wakefield area, Warrington have a couple, Leeds have quite a few, there's some at Huddersfield etc and that's not counting those at Wakefield, Castleford and Featherstone.

The area feeds a lot of players into the Youth system, if you're trying to say that's not the case then you're wrong.

WMDC only needs one club. The smartest way to have the whole area represented is by having a Calder United club, with its constituent components -- Wakefield, Castleford and Featherstone -- still in existence as feeders, in the Championship. That way we rationalise the competition, and avoid fans getting splinters in their bums by having to sit on the benches at The Jungle or Rapid Solicitors or Post Office Road. United Calder could afford a brand new stadium to replace the use of the constituent clubs' eyesores and bumsores.

Toulouse by cointrast will have a totally renovated new stadium, with perfect viewing areas, comfortable seats, lots of good food and drinks, and a metro station across the street to whisk you back to the city centre or to your hotel in time to prepare for your sumptuous French dinner.