The SL " clique" are given the SKY money to show English SL games to English fans. SKY have been kind enough to allow the Catalans experiment and the Toronto experiment. This is at a cost to fans of English clubs who could have those SL places..

Outsiders Toronto had access to £30,000,000 of their own money more than any other club had access to. They wasted the lot.

That’s contradictory Donny. Quite clearly the promoted side would be short by £800k.

Why?

If you are referring to Leigh having to make up £800K themselves to have the same funding as the other SL clubs next year then I don't know. But I can hazard a guess that the 11 clubs have done their budgets and were short of £800K across the board, so maybe they thought it a good idea to take that from the "new clubs" SKY share.

Is that fair? Do the SL clubs care if it is not? Does Derek Beaumont care now he has the prize of an SL place?. Maybe the [i"we can't pay a full share[/i" of SL money was to shut skint clubs out of applying - which didn't work. Maybe they were going to share the SKY money so all 12 clubs would take a hit of £66,000 each, and then clubs started saying no to that.

Maybe we had 11 clubs whose owners aren't an old pals club and can never agree on anything so we got the usual fudge.... Your thoughts?

Interesting - do you have the lineouts stat as well?

If the offerings for next year in the Rugby World (I'm sure you don't take the line these are two totally separate games) are two types of game, one where the action is almost continuous and another where the action is broken up by periods of inactivity organising for players to stand straight in lines, or pack down square an upright just to re-start the game after a ball has gone out of play, being knocked on, ............then we at least have a far superior product again?

I say this because pre 1996 union was awfully tedious, and TBF they did modernise it, but it seems we have pulled away again.??

Agree with both you and Atomic in part. Union is a great team game.....if you are playing. For the spectator less so as the ball is invisible for long periods unless during the tiresome marshalling of troops the scrummy has it in his paws (at scrum setting) or the hooker in his prior to line-outs. Funny that the papers never ran Spot-the-Ball comps for RU as the fans were already bored enough on exiting the ground.

RL is miles better without scrums, the uncontested ones were an embarrassment to the code. They are, however, a massive part of the RU code. Why? Well it is exciting to see one pack (as long as it is the one of your preference) over-muscling the other in a drive for the line. It also (if the Nº8 allows the pill out) sees half of each of both teams tangled up and allows the backs room to run - something for the paying public to savour. It is also, too often, a production line for penalties (yawn - rather watch crossbar challenge).

Lots of bad press at present due to concussions in scrummages. Helmets will be made compulsory and will not resemble the present "cauliflower ear preventers" but rather ABA boxing headguards. Union cannot do away with scrums for several reasons:

a) RL has gone there first (hic sunt dracones)

b) without the forwards tied up, there would be fewer free-flowing tries as attacking sides would face a 15 man flat back line that those RL basstds taught them (along with tackling)

c) can't widen the playing fields as the arenas aren't big enough

d) can't reduce each team to XIII as RL got there first (hic sunt dracones)

The bonus point for scoring 4+ tries is testament to the fact that RU needs bums on seats (and settees) and cannot rely on preferential Old Harrovian & Etonion Government handouts!

Whither now Carlingz 57 Old Fartz?

If you really think we have pulled away again, you are even more of a crackpot than I originally thought.

Rugby league is on life support wheras Rugby Union just goes from strength to strength.

Excellent post, great analysis and I can't wait to see what they do, especially if all the forwards come out with big head protectors on. Even then would they still do the aggressive head slams into each other - or will it be gently engage??

Isn't there some evidence to suggest it's not the direct contact to the head that causes the most damage but the body shuddering when hit with a tackle and the brain moving inside the head. There was talk tackling will be lowered to below the waist which will in part prevent that.

Back on topic....

I honestly thought Toulouse or London would have been given the nod but Leigh also make sense, purely based on the squad they've been putting together for next season (even if a lot of them are Rovers' cast offs). Good luck next season and try to make the best of it - apart from against us, obviously.

As long as Charlie the clown doesn't come back on here like he did a few years ago spouting his nonsense.

As for the M62 corridor thing? So what? In Australia, the NRL is actually quite localised in their support as well and it doesn't stray beyond the areas the clubs are already in.

And Union? Its well funded because of the public school boy factor. I have no interest in it and don't watch it so I really don't care about what happens in it.

Leigh are going to be my superleague team to watch and follow this year, I really want them to stay up, I believe what the other superleague clubs have voted for the 12th team to only get 80% of the funding is wrong, there are 2 maybe 3 teams in superleague who just plod on each season happy to survive and maybe cream some nice monies in the process, and that is the reason everyone should get behind Leigh, atleast mr Beaumont is prepared to use some of his own dollar, COME ON YOU LEIGH

your now in the category of teams happy to survive and plod on and cream some nice monies dont knock it

I bet mr Beaumont wouldn’t have voted that way, I think he puts his money where his mouth is, Leigh are in a very good position too as there ground is quite new, unlike some in superleague

He has a point? Leigh are a few quid short on all.

Ha Ha, You would normally find Mr. Caroli on the Halifax fans forum winding them up, but maybe not next season.


He's a nice chap is Ian....honest !

The crowds in Toronto were artificially inflated, see fiction !
With the exception of the MPG there were always empty sections, lot's of 'milling about' which in the UK means wandering & even one of Toronto's own suits admitted to giving away many tickets.

Report's that gates were left open & passers by beckoned in are numerous, as are reports that many local businesses had many tickets thrown at them. British fans visiting saw this. The beer garden was always busy I'll give you that !

It is interesting that Derek Beaumont was able to furnish the RFL & SLE with confirmed ticket sales for all Leigh games home & away with hard evidence but Toronto & Livolsi could not ! D.B also furnished the RFL & SLE with full financial accounts for Leigh Centurions showing a very small operating profit & his own personal wealth accounts yet Livolsi refused !

Despite all of the above & the many sly underhand actions of TW under the watch of Toronto's/Australia's wealthiest racist, Toronto Wolfpack for me had value, that value was to at least attempt to knock down doors & attract fans & more amateur RL players in Canada & the USA.
I have said it before & will say it again, even if Toronto only averaged 6/7/8 thousand in actual verified body counts they still outperformed many U.K clubs in that regard, the problem arises when many are not paying, it is a flawed & unsustainable model, mass cheap ticket sales at Bradford Bulls & a big wage bill was also their undoing if you need an example of how broken that model is.

Yes, Toronto attracted many fans, yes there was an appetite for R.L & Toronto's fans all appear with the exception of the occasional extreme *as usual* to be a great bunch even if their singing/chanting is a bit feeble. Toronto fans didn't deserve what happened, fans almost never do.

Toronto *again* was a new frontier & Wolfpack was something that could have been very, very good but it was poorly planned & badly executed !

Maybe *hopefully* Toronto & therefore RL Canada can rise again & grow, maybe more organically, though the problem with this is if the time taken to do this is beyond the patience of Canadian RL fans.

Give over. There were more fans at Toronto that Leigh will ever get in SL

Define the word "fan", Steph, pretty please. Is it:

a) a paying season ticket holder, replete with merchandise from the club

b) a person that gets to as many games as they can (work/personal circumstances permitting) and gets palpitations towards the end of tight matches as a win for their club means so much to them

c) an idle and only vaguely curious passer by who is press-ganged into the ground

d) an opportunistic social net-worker

e) a sot that doesn't even witness the drama unfold

f) a figure in creative accounting?


If your answer is A or B and you still maintain your stance, we can only assume that you heard this from your mate who is "never wrong" and told you that The Bulls would definitely get the 12th spot. Regarding said "singular" mate, as well as his all white rig-out, does he have a Canadian accent, smoke Marlboro and have the letter K tattooed on three knuckles of each hand?

Whatever your answer to the first question (sorry to bamboozle you with two) you should ask "Drop Dead Fred" to help you to change your signature - surely he won't get that wrong!

Defining fan is very ambiguous and your allusion that Toronto fans are lesser due to what you perceive and heard ''reports'' about is very unfair.

Need I remind you of the fairweather Leigh fans. Averaged 6k in super league, was half that in the Championship last year. Thats FACT not ''reports'' and someone saw this etc.

I hope Leigh do well and do stay up but it really is chalk and cheese in regards to what the potential of Toronto was compared to Leigh.

Fan is short for fanatic. To be a fanatic you have to be prepared to pay money to watch games and you have to be interested in the games enough to pay.In TWP's case they had some fans, some people who were fans of Beer festivals, and some people who wandered in because it was largely free to get in.

The club failed to find a single NA player, nor a single cent for televising their matches which they promised and on which they were admitted to the game here, so they forgot all that and started boasting of big crowds.

Calling leigh fans "Fairweather" is nonsense as the 6000 Leigh fans actually all pay to get into the grounds and I say grounds plural as they take a good following to most leigh away games and create a great atmosphere.

Fairweather fans are the sort that turn up when their club is winning easily every week and who disappear when they start losing. Which is the position Toronto Wolfpack were heading for when they lost all their Superleague games. However before they were due to go back to Canada with a losing team their number one fan fled the club......

Toulouse have fans and in the 2019 season in the play off's their big game against Featherstone Rovers drew 1,068 paying fans for the game of the season.....

I would guess they all paid and that there wasn't a beer festival on.

Remarkably in March 2019, 6,103 people came to see the visit of Toronto Wolfpack to Toulouse. Where the extra 5,000 French fans came from I don't know? Maybe it was the glamour of TWP themselves? Maybe Toulouse rented the Stade Ernest Wallon and put on a beer festival and passed thousands of free tickets around the city?

Maybe it was all Hocus pocus in a joint venture to try to promote the idea of a Transatlantic league??

All I know is leigh have a great core of 6,000 paying fans many who go pay at away games, and many who follow their club and the game and don't need leigh to be winning all the time to support their club. This is one big reason why they got the gig........

This is just a general comment (I haven't checked your quoted stats) but surely there would be a dip in average attendances as the majority of visiting Super League clubs would bring more away supporters than the majority of Championship clubs.

That's certainly the case.

Looking at the stats an all leigh fans crowd (e.g. the sort you would get against catalans) in Superleague was 5,600.

The following year Leigh.v.Batley was 3,200

Having said that whilst in the Championship Leigh fans away support has provided clubs with their best attendances at times doubling gates, so for me the criticism is one eyed,

Toronto let most people in for free that’s the reason the fans were inflated, and that’s possibly part reason they don’t play rugby now

Evening H, how are you? Well one would hope.

There was no inference that genuine TWP fans were in any way less than other fans, merely that they were FEWER than reported (as admitted by several senior staff at the club).

Wanderer (another bad result today, mate) made a genuine point about lower gates at LSV following relegation to which may be added a factor from my own experience. I was able to attend far more games when Leigh were in SL as I have work commitments on most Sundays.

Harking back to my earlier question regarding the definition of "fan", it was directed to Steph and was mainly rhetorical but everyone started shouting answers from the audience.

NO MORE HELPING THE CONTESTANT, PLEASE!

Are you saying that Catalan brought 2.4k to the attendance? I seriously doubt that.

If so, why the drop the following year if not fairweather fans?