Looking at the Nosey Parker column in the League Weekly, it seems that the Stade Francais consortium are willing to be self financing and are not looking for any SL TV monies. If they can guarantee that, the RFL will be stupid to ignore it (given their love of expansion).

The RFL could justify the inclusion of Stade Francais by expanding the league to 15, which would cost them nothing to do. All the other clubs in SL wouldn’t lose a penny as a result, and no-ones SL place will have been lost as a result. The RFL get another French club with no cost – and a prestigious one at that. They could, potentially, be one of the wealthiest clubs in SL if their backers are as good as they seem to be. Poor old Carlos Zalduendo, and his club cannot match that.

So they would be less risky than Toulouse, who would require TV money and would need to hit the ground running, otherwise they could end up struggling financially like the Celtic Crusaders last season.

If this situation is as good as it appears – and that’s a very big [size=200if [/size– then it looks likely there’ll be a club based in Paris after 2011 in Super League. If Stade Francais get the go-ahead, they will have 2 years to prepare. This seems to be a very different situation from the usual ramshackle expansion clubs that lunge from one financial disaster to another. This offer looks like an RFL wet dream. This could be the real deal.

As long as they dump the Magic weekend

i argue les cats are an expansion club.

but if idiots like you want to call them a heartland club then ill put it back on you and ask why people like you arent fans of the inclusion of toulose since they also must be a heartland club on the same dumb logic.

just put them both in SL if their bids are strong enough.

especially if 3 french SL teams means a paying TV contract from a French TV station to cover the costs of these extra teams

good logic but why have a bye each week and have a club lose home gates? taking it to 16 by having the RFL fund one more team shouldnt be too hard, especially as toulose look like having a very good bid as well.

of course salford and wakeys SL spots are certainly up for grabs as well.

Byes probably wouldn't affect SL clubs the same way it has many Championship clubs. The RFL have already stated that they'd be prepared to go to 15 clubs, if there is no club worthy of demoting, in order to accomidate the promised Championship club. So I would assume they've thought it through.




Obviously, as Starbug Mentioned, they’d have to lose the Magic Weekend, or work round it somehow.



I'm not too sure that there'll be enough quality French players to have 3 French clubs in SL....yet. They probably don't have enough for two yet either. All that would do is lead to more Antipodean imports cramming all these teams, which sort of defeats the object. Slowly, Slowly catchy monkey. If this Paris deal is as good as it looks, it would be worth the risk, but adding two more French clubs at once wouldn’t help either of them imo.


That was always the case.

even if the french clubs are full of imports initially, its worth the risk

clearly paris has to be taken if the people behind it are interested but toulose deserve a SL spot too and shouldnt be knocked back again.

for example im a fan of celtic crusaders but toulose would be stronger club than them. im not saying crusaders should be booted out for toulose, more so that the RFL has to find a place for toulose as well.

it does makes things a whole lot easier for the RFL if salford fail on their ground cause thats 2 spots there with wakey. though salford with a new ground behind them would offer lots to RL too ...

I am all for the inclusion of Toulouse - once they meet the criteria set out. Can't you read or comprehend what i put in my previous post about Toulouse? You're an idiot.

So location and a stadium are all that is relevant to you as far as expanding the game is concerned ?

the bit about P+R


So clubs in the championship do have more full time players,




so thats one less reason against having Toulouse in the championship in the first place isnt it


relative to what?

in General Championship clubs are poor compared to SL clubs but rich compared to Championship one clubs,




you mean contracts that could have been broken by a stipulation almost universally in SL contracts that they are cancelled on relegation?

or are we rewarding Salford for not being professional enough to prepare for this eventuality? as we would have done Leigh?


imagine your outcry if they didnt



how the f'ck is other clubs not being able to afford an away trip to Toulouse possibly one of Toulouse's failings











yeah, good argument

Absolute garbage is the only way to describe these posts , you ignore the points on some , pretend that one club having 1/2 extra full time players makes any sort of difference in another , suggest that clubs in one league are richer than other when all are not anywhere near being close to being described as ' Rich ' , in fact 2 clubs this year have gone bust in the higher league , total rubbish

Give up while you still can

not one of those clubs has started from nothing and built themselves through the leagues, as is bottom up expansion

in fact only one club in the last 90 years has come from amateur to semi-pro and they are still quite abit away from pro, and it woudl still be a huge jump whenever/if they ever make it

toulouse arent going to produce a team of SL players outside SL and les catalans arent going to produce two

ok we should put Toulouse in championship 1,

there would be huge advantages and benefits to everyone

But toulouse are already in the Championship, is the West Yorkshire smog addling your brain?

Personally, before they try and start a SL team in Paris, I'd prefer FFRX13 to recognise the French Wheelchair Rugby League.

They have actually adopted the murderball league in France, which is sponsored by the RFU over here, leaving a 12 team domestic league in strife, in the country that invented the sport.

What on earth has this got to do with the thread?

expansion clubs should be independant of the same criteria heartland clubs are judged on.

expecting a club that is in an expansion area to rank on the same measures as clubs with everything going for them is dumb

what happened to the italics?

there are enough heartland clubs in SL.

the only way the RFL should allow more heartland clubs in ie leigh, widnes, fax is at the cost of another heartland clubs

the RFL then has to do its utmost to create spots for expansion sides and then back them to the hilt

good point

I presume you support the same argument for the NRL and believe that the CC should only be in if an existing Sydeny NRL team relocates? No? Thought not!

Actually cas did it a bit more recentley than that but lets not split hairs.

Whether they should be or not is irrelevant at this point. The rules, as have been stated (if you believe the sources and statements of the RFL) say that TO will have to obey the same rules as everyone else, and would make a mockery of the system if a team that has met the required criteria would miss out (or a SL team be chucked out) if a team hasn't met these objectives.

I agree that clubs outside the North West and Yorkshire regions should be under different criteria due to the differing challenges these clubs face (attracting players, sponsors, fans, media attention, etc). But I am totally against changing rules in the middle of a stated period. If they want to change the rules, they have to do it after the next franchise period,

this would only be the case if you misunderstood the rules regarding franchises and criteria

not wanting to go through all this again, but franchising isnt a box ticking excercise, it never was and was never advertised as such

The game and it's systems have totally changed over 90 years, so it is pointless using the time frame to show why something today under the modern system with the advantages we have now couldn't work. Differing media systems, differing seasons, differing levels of professionalism, differing numbers of amateur clubs in areas, etc.
If you want to use that argument, then you have to look at the number of [isuccessful[/i clubs that have come from the top down system.

The way our leagues are do not reward or even help best develop clubs that want to work from bottom up, which is why its success rate has been very slow since the introduction of the RLC. There is no continuous path; rather a staggered and blocked path that makes progression difficult or near enough impossible. The Crusaders aren't an exact example of bottom up progression, but the amateur base was set before they started. It's probably the nearest you'll get under the current set up.

The rules and set up basically make bottom up expansion an almost impossible task. Saying that, the new rules make top-down expansion just as difficult. The RFL, in all their wisdom, have tried to make a system that is a bit of each and made it crap both ways if they want to encourage expansion. There needs to be a SERIOUS look into club development at the RFL to help clubs progress to a more professional set-up, and at the same time needs to be a clear criteria set to anyone wanting to make the plunge on a top-down set-up (i.e. capital up front, plans for progression, etc,) as they will cleary be on a different set of rules to everyone else.

It's daft to expect everyone to sing off the same hymm sheet when in reality these clubs aren't all going to be the same "religion" let alone go to the same church. I think the RFL know what they want, but just don't know how to go about setting it up fairly and without p*ssing off and confusing everyone!