You say its shown that is doesnt work, but last year Crusaders had a higher average attendance than Salford, a team with over 100 years history. Surely it is time we said Salford rugby league doesnt work?

I dont have a build it and they will come mentality. We need amatuers and school's playing the game, and the new clubs to have academys to get the best out of the local talent. This can be done while the club builds up from champ 1

South Wales is a hot bed of rugby union in a way that nowhere else in the UK is. They managed to hit the ground running because of this: you only need look at Skolars or Gateshead to see that other areas find it tricky to get players sufficiently good enough to play in Championship 1. You can guarantee that either Dublin or Edinburgh would face a decade or so propping up the bottom of the table without major investment.

I don't mean to be nasty but those rugby league clubs are mostly rugby union players playing league in the union off-season. Nowt wrong with that but hardly comparable to the bigger BARLA clubs let alone semi-pro sides.



The thing that you are missing is that the Irish and Scots clubs probably don't have more than a couple of players capable of making the step up who would be willing to relocate to Dublin / Edinburgh, travel a great deal and get paid less than they get to play union.

Like this



So you suggest that 3 years in the Championship is sufficient to move from '0' to SL ?

You mean SL clubs ?

More people might have watched them ? , lets see what happens next season ?

It is not unusual for any new business to get strong intitial interest [ pubs,clubs and the like , it is if it can be sustained like interest rates crowds can go down as well as up

the vast majority of RL fans are general RL fans and will have the ambition and desire to see RL grow from the grass roots then watch it spread through the leagues,anyone who doesn't feel this isn't a true RL fan - don't try speaking for the majority on here


Happy New Year to you and all Leythers as well as any other fan who reads this

to put a club in SL , a guaranteed 250 K a year would be enough to finance a Championship club in the midlands , no argument

Funny isn't it that fans of expansion clubs and clubs IN SL claim to be fans of the sport before their own club , dont you think

You have no affiliation to any club , if you did , you might feel differently , as for your other answers

I didn't ' pick out a number ' , I worked it out

Yes any British club , but sensibly the further away from the heartlands you go , the more difficult it becomes logistically , espeially for a part time club

Not really. The only reason for anyone to be against expansion is because of a mistaken belief that it will negatively affect their club. Not all SL or pro-expansion fans claim to be just fans of the sport, but all anti-expansion fans are definitely short-sighted fans of their club.

So you would be happy for the RFL to invest their hard-earned cash with a team from Edinburgh or Dublin say ? But they wouldn't have any exemption from relegation of course ?

It's not "mistaken" if there are a limited number of places in SL and expansion sides are guaranteed some of them regardless of merit.

But regardless of that, the reason why most people are against sticking a pin as per the usual plan is that such ventures have a failure rate that is only marginally below 100%. And the few "successes" are lame ducks.



No, it just suits a particular point of view to characterise "anti-expansionists" in this way. A more accurate summary would be that very many people believe that only a gradual grassroots build up in "expansion" areas has any chance of success.

per season is enough to establish a Championship 1 club 50 miles from the heartands until they either succeed or decide to fold

As I said , the further away from the heartlands you go , the harder it gets

I am not against expansion , I am just against unfair treatment of clubs by location , you are an idiot

You are 90 % correct , a gradual properly financed build up is what is importantant for success to championship level , after that you need to let things find their own level , if that is SL then fine , if not then also fine , clubs will be what clubs will be , it still however is expansion

i dont want to get directly involved in this increasingly heated debate, but again ive noticed the opinion floated that rugby union has some amazing world beating european competition in the heiniken cup. i fail to see how this competition (and that is the operative word here) is really all that? you have what? 3 or 4 teams who have a real chance of winning it each year? and half the teams are frankly poor and just make up the numbers. its about as competative as a competition of similair structure involving the top 8 SL teams and most of championship one would be.

Translation: Expansion is great as long as it's at a low level and doesn't affect my club.

And err, how has your club been affected by expansion?

Although I agree that the HC can be overhyped somewhat I think you are being a bit harsh. Across the six pools half of them have the top three teams within a few points of each other. The other half have the top two teams who are in a few points of each other.

Its not like one team has dominated the competition over a number of years and its great to see teams from a number of countries competing. Your right though in that a few sides (especially the Italian ones) just make up the numbers. 6 pools of four is too many but I guess Sky TV money is running things there too.

Lets be honest we would love to have a european club competition like that.

I don't really have a club. I've been a Haven, Blackpool and Keighley fan at various times depending on where I was living but right now I'm in Devon. The last game I went to see was in Somerset. Try a different card because the flat cap one doesn't work.

Would you like to equate your post above with my post below








Surely a club that cannot be successful at Championship level will struggle to be successful at SL level , at least that is what we are told if we are discussing heartland Championship clubs prospects of success in SL