the Bulls still aren't a big club, getting slightly better attendances than the worst SL clubs doesn't make you a big club. It makes you a medium sized club. Only getting 10k crowds when you're dominating the comps doesn't make you a big club. Playing in a big city doesn't make you a big club (London/Salford anyone?). They're a good, valuable club but I don't see why they should be considered more valuable to SL than any other middle ranking pro club.

They're not. But we don't have many clubs capable of being a middle-ranking SL club.

Too harsh on the Bulls by far. Essentially, the realistic position for us in terms of clubs is that the big clubs are those who in the last twenty years have drawn 10k regularly, produced competitive teams, generated decent numbers of young players for the pro game, and attracted significant sponsorship. That's a short list :

Wigan
Saints
Leeds
Warrington
Hull FC
Bradford

Then you have a group of clubs who produce solid gates (7500+), can occasionally hit a purple patch and take games off the big clubs (or even put together a good season like Huddersfield), but usually fall short in several areas and are thus never quite serious contenders, although they have clearly shown potential that they might, one day, with sufficient effort, make it to "big club" territory.

Huddersfield
Hull KR
Catalans

Then you've got the also-rans. The clubs who exist to give Sky commentators something to get excited about in occasional underdog upsets, but otherwise just make up the numbers, and nobody seriously expects them to either start drawing large crowds, or to seriously challenge the big clubs.

Widnes
Salford
Cas
Wakefield

Uncomfortable reading for them. Some of their fans will deny this. But the bottom line is that even when Cas managed to put together a good run which lasted nearly a whole season, they not only rolled over and died at the end, but they also couldn't keep that team together for more than a year, and their average crowd in their best ever professional era season was less than 200 greater than Bradford, in their worst ever super league season.

Yet those four also-rans, who in twenty years of full-time professionalism have shown no sign at all of truly troubling the big clubs, are still infinitely stronger on and off the field than anything in the championship (except maybe Bradford). London Broncos circa 1996 may well have been a genuine and exciting contender to become a big club, but the current incarnation is an embarrassing slow-motion car-crash. The rest are not so much semi-pro clubs as amateur clubs who pay their players beer money. There isn't one of them who, if they entered SL, would stand the remotest chance of challenging the big clubs in the next half-century, and the game probably won't last that long if we carry on as we are. Below that, you're looking at essentially amateur rugby played at a decent national level.

That's it. That's rugby league in the entire northern hemisphere at this point. 6 big clubs, one of whom we're currently in the process of killing off. 3 clubs who might make it at some point to be big clubs. And a whole bunch of clubs who will never be able to challenge the current big 5 on or off the field. This is why Sky think our entire sport is worth a couple of premiership games, and why we'll be moaning until the cows come home about the lack of media coverage. Because even those who know about our game think there's only 6 places in the whole country where it's practised with serious and significant intent : three Lancashire towns and three Yorkshire cities, one of which may be about to disappear. Maybe Catalans will pull it together this year and shake it up a bit - I think they've got a real chance of doing so if they keep Carney and Tonga fit. That'd raise a few sleepy eyebrows in the media and amongst sponsors. But otherwise, this year will be business as usual. The 8-8-8 thing is just some bizarre and pointless ritual which won't change a damn thing.

Sorry. I know I'm ranting. But I find it so incredibly frustrating that in a sport so desperately short of serious clubs with serious support and serious potential, we're quite happy to watch one of our half-dozen assets die, while at the same time, the knee-jerk response to a potential addition to that middle or top group of clubs, is met with a wall of negativity, and the firm thudding of the drawbridge being pulled up as we tell them all the reasons why we can't possibly do anything which might in some way harm the chances of an existing also-ran club to sponge more cash from the diminishing number of decent clubs we have left.

Whilst I have a lot of respect for Roy Haggarty. On this point I feel he too is guilty of what he accuses others of doing.

Which is wishing for things to be different to what they actually are.

Lets take the Bradford Myth to start with. Relegation did not kill Bradford. Bradford owners killed Bradford Bulls. As anyone can see the Bradford Bulls Club as was ended many seasons ago with the end of the owning company. This was in the promised land days of no promotion and no relegation. In fact the lack of P&R seemed to do very little to stop clubs dicing with financial ruin.

Then some how London got thrown into the mix, stating it was short sighted to get rid of London. Once again missing the point that London was not bought into long long long before P&R came back on the scene. London had been in the top flight for decades and blaming heartland clubs for the demise of London is in my opinion completely mis-placed.

Now lets go with the assumption of a new French club to expand the league. This is wishful thinking too. If we take out a heartland club and get rid of P&R and drop in a French club. There is absolutely zero evidence to say that the heartland club will continue pull in the crowds as they would in SL or in the Championship with the hope of promotion.

There is also nothing to suggest that the new French club would not be another PSG, Wrexham, South Wales, Gateshead. No evidence they will attract more fans, or will do anything other than be a roll of the dice whilst in the mean time cutting off those who are already loyal customers.

It's similar to banks who offer deals to new customers only. Except in this case there will not be an inertia from the old customers to stay but an active push to force them away.

If there is good evidence to parachute a club in, fine parachute them in give them a 3- 5 year dispensation. But in the end they need to be competitive, which means competing which includes the heights of winning and the lows of losing.

No one goes to watch sport just to have a predetermined result. A lack of P&R is a predetermined result on a systematic basis. There is no point looking at the NRL and NFL and saying they can do it. It's comparing different sporting cultures again wishing for something to be what it is not (which is exactly the same as wishing for a pro french league).

I don't think we will ever convince each other of the merits of each others point of view, but I know for sure, if Saints were relegated with no hope of promotion then the club would be as good as dead, they would not go to Wigan to watch RL. They would just leave the game.

The question is are we running a sport, where on the field performance matters or just a cartel where what ever you do on or off the field will make little to no difference?

Great post Roy, enraptures my views entirely. I just don't get why people can't get it!

Killing Bradford for the sake of P&R, and to totally abandon expansion is ridiculous.

The problem would, in my view, be identical whether 3, 5 or 10 year licences were issued: half a dozen clubs opting for safety in numbers by all failing to meet numerous criteria.

I think we're possibly talking at cross purposes here. I actually did say that it was rank bad management which killed Bradford (and London), not P&R. My point is simply that we do not have sufficient assets as a sport to take a laissez-faire attitude to who rises and who falls. Because those who fall - through incompetence - may well be our crown jewels, while those who rise, temporarily, may well be bottom feeders coming up for a brief gulp of air. The sport is increasingly looking too small to sustain full-time professionalism. We are entirely dependent upon Sky funding, and we are offering them now just 5 big clubs (all of whom are equivalent in support, but not budget, to top of League 1/bottom of championship in soccer). That's not a huge offer.

I accept your point about the risks of new clubs. However, in a sense, I think the fate of those expansion clubs underlines my point about how we can no longer afford this c'est la vie attitude to the game as a whole. None of those clubs involved the RFL saying : "we want a club there, and we'll invest the time and money and expertise to make damn sure it works". Instead, we simply found some likely lad (and some of them - in Wales - came into the "did you actually meet these guys before you signed the cheque?" category) willing to start up an operation, and then told them that although they had lots of problems and issues and challenges which exceeded anything faced by existing clubs, they weren't getting any more cash, any more assistance, any more central commitment. Here's your share of the sky money (or not, memorably), now do your best. If it goes toes up, then such is life. Contrast that with the approach the NRL has taken (and is about to take again), and you start to see why Catalans are a blooming miracle, while Crusaders, Gateshead and London were predictable.

The situation is, however, that we are now officially stagnant. Our entire strategy for growth is that the same clubs in the same places might somehow be able to attract a few more hundred species each from the same towns to watch them. That's it. That's what we're offering Sky. It's also what we're offering future potential participants. Other than that - nothing. There are only four fully professional team sports in this country : soccer, rugby union, rugby league and cricket. Three of those have establishment backing to one extent or another - large participation, plenty of assets in terms of grounds, a slavishly attentive media, good connections with business, and the sort of sponsorship deals which make you think the finance director must have been bladdered when he signed the deal. We have none of that. We've traded on the fact that we offer pretty consistently good entertainment value on the field, but also a decent amount of hype, experimentation, and not a small amount of smoke and mirrors about how widespread our support is (London played such an important role in helping us disguise the reality of where we are, and I suspect we will suffer for their absence off the field). We promised international teams in the same league, expansion into new frontiers, spreading the gospel and a bright future for the greatest game. Much of that may have been guff, but sport is entertainment, and we were selling a positive, confident, expansionist message. But now we're shutting up shop. This is your lot : three Lancashire towns, two Yorkshire cities now, and a bunch of also-rans. Toulouse ? Don't call us, we'll call you.

You're right that any expansion might be a risk. But the alternative now stares us in the face. The same teams, playing the same matches, getting the same results. Until someone at Sky decides that there just isn't enough interest in selling to that audience, and pulls the plug. We don't have the advantages our competitor sports have. We have to fight for our right to even exist, and we always have had to. That's meant taking knocks and bumps and getting back up - that's our game on and off the field. This season, I feel like for the first time since super league started, we've given up that fight. We've circled the wagons, sat down, and are just hoping something turns up. I don't think it will.

I agree to a point. That's where you'd need a proactive governing body to cajole those clubs into action. It's partly why I'd favour a longer licence period (ie 10 years) so that every 2/3 years you can assess the clubs as to whether they're on track to meet their long term targets. You could also have short term targets to be met every 2/3 years and if they're not (within reason) there's some kind of punishment (or at least threat of punishment) if they don't improve.
Effective threats and punishment for those who deliberately lag behind and benefits and reward (WCC participation/extra TV money/salary cap exemptions/whatever) for those who do improve standards on and off the pitch.
I agree that's highly unlikely with the way the RFL currently runs though.

Really know how to cheer a guy up, Roy!

Sky's interest is going to be based on viewing figures. As long as we continue to watch SL in decent numbers (despite their abominable commentary team), they'll stay, albeit the size of the pot may not vastly increase.

Perhaps we're being just a little pessimistic, though. To hear some people talk, you'd think the sport was about to die off altogether. Nobody criticises the same teams playing the same matches in the NRL. OK, there maybe a few more competitive teams in the NRL, but it's certainly not a "any team can win it" comp.
As for P&R, I agree that the deck is stacked. But the new set-up gets a guarded thumbs-up from me by making the existing comp a bit more realistic: 8 teams in the play-offs was always crazy. How could you justify a team getting in the play-offs, having lost more games than they won during the full season?

It's probably worth also making the point that even in rugby union, seemingly often regarded by league fans as the land of milk and honey, they are talking about abandoning P&R because the last promoted side, London Welsh, haven't won a game all season, and don't look likely to. Tellingly, I gather that the money available to newly promoted clubs there is half(?) what the established clubs get. A familiar story, indeed.

It's difficult to argue with the sentiment in your post and in an ideal world, the game would spread across Europe, simply because RL is a fantastic sport.
Sadly, what you are wishing for will never, ever happen.

TV companies want top level sport to show on their channels and currently the French National League is just nowhere near being an attractive option.
Even Championship football, which attracts excellent crowds etc is not considered worthy of any significant TV exposure.

So how long can you wait ?

If we give The French "time" to do it on their own, their game will remain at amateur level and the French National game will never be competitive at the highest level.

What would you do to try and attract decent investment/ sponsorship because the plan that you have outlined, whilst strong on ideals and principle, is very unlikely to whet the appetite of Sky, Premier or BT etc.

Therefore, what you are advocating is a contraction of the sport in France, which will ultimately make SL less appealing and so on.

Off we go back to the 80's and a semi pro sport, no longer worthy of any national exposure.

Bradford aren't dead Bradford also didn't finish bottom. Bradford were killed by uncertainty. Uncertainty that franchising should have avoided but as usual internecine fighting and self preservation took precedent. The decision to halve their cash, to put them under transfer embargo and deduct them points was embarrassingly short sighted.

When Bradford first had struggles, the franchise should have been seized and they should have had the stability and space to rebuild. They didn't, we had one season where the clubs future was at risk, followed by another, followed by another followed by the ridiculous situation we saw at the beginning of last year.

You say people don't want to see a predetermined result and I agree. That's why we need more bigger clubs. Under franchising no club finished bottom twice in a row, ever club bar Bradford (because of a points deduction) qualified for the play offs.

Despite P+R for such a long period we still have never seen Leeds relegated, Never seen Wire relegated, Leeds have qualified for every single play-off we have had in the pro era. Not only can we pick all our winners from a total of 5 clubs (unsurprisingly the 5 best attended clubs) we can pick them this season as we can last.

WHilst there is no evidence that Toulouse wouldn't be another PSG, there is no evidence that Leigh wont be another Leigh, Halifax wont be another Halifax, etc etc etc.

I completely disagree that franchising would be a cartel would mean whatever you do on or off the field makes no difference. Sport is about winning, not being the best loser, we watch sport for who comes first, not who comes 2nd last, the short, harsh fact of it is, very few people were interested in the million pound game, few people watched it, few people attended it. Few people attended the championship GF when promotion was available, next to nobody watched London get relegated last year, Bradfords crowds did not recover, people weren't excited by a relegated battle (a battle lets not forget that was decided by events off the field rather than on it. Points deductions are not a sporting contest)

It may not be popular, and some people may be hurt by it, but people don't watch either our relegation battles, or our promotion battles in great numbers. We have invented a damaging and convoluted system to create a 'million pound game' where the amount of people who will watch, will be about the same amount as Bradford are averaging. An average we declare makes them no longer a big club.

franchising shouldn't have been accompanied by increasing the size of the league, it should have seen the number cut to 10.

Great debate.

It is so problematic.

Do we NEED to expand? well yes, ofcourse we do.

How, is the question and it seems we all have differing views on that, one thing is for sure though, just parachuting clubs in and leaving them to their own devices (or should that be vices) hasn't worked before so why would doing it again be any different?

Like happened with Catalans.

Why should Toulouse be any different to Catalans?

The Welsh, Irish, Scots and Italian Rugby Union boards even with the money, sponsorship and participation they get. know that they can not prosper by themselves so they created the pro 12.

There is only one other "hotbed" in Europe where RL is relatively popular and that is the south of France. So it is must be in our interest to offer expansion clubs to Toulouse and Avignon for example.

The crusaders, PSG etc are not a fair comparison as there was no evidence of any interest in the sport in those areas and the RFL in all their wisdom just plonked a club there and prayed it would work.

The area around the south of France have a relatively popular amateur/semi pro league, a top SL club with large attendances and competitive team, and a number of well attended internationals just to see their national side get tonked on a regular basis.

Bradford are not a big club. If you could liken them to a football club, it would be Blackburn Rovers. A small club who has lived beyond their means and had some success along the way. In the end without the success they are just in the same category as Huddersfield, Hull KR and Catalan. Winning trophies doesn't make you a big club. Until the SL era, Bradford were living off crowds of 4-5000. The 10000 crowds were just a purple patch that they went through.

Hull KR themselves won lots of trophies in the 80's and were the first team to finish top and win the premiership in the same season. However this doesn't make them a big club.

Big clubs are the ones who have the resources and fanbase even if they are down on their luck. It pains me to say it but Hull FC are a big club because they are starved of success but still pull in 10k+ crowds. The same could be said for Wigan before it all came together under Maguire(SP).

You're right but what you haven't addressed is this: inclusion of the Catatlans hasn't - not even remotely - elevated the French National game. It's hard for me to accept that the inclusion of Toulouse would achieve this either. I don't think France will challenge Australia or - probably - the Kiwis in my lifetime and if they are to challenge England then logic suggests that they will need at least 5 or 6 clubs playing at a level akin to SL (based on the fact that's the kind of pool that feeds our national side). With the best will in the world, we cannot piggy back them to that level.

I'm open-minded about expansion but there are so many questions I need answers to if I'm to be convinced that the way forward lies in France.

I agree that Catalans' inclusion hasn't done much at this stage for a competitive French international side. Your doubts are valid. However, what they have done is added a significant amount of the impression of the reach and popularity of the game. A league with Catalans in it is a much more attractive and glamorous proposition than a league where Catalans are replaced by another M62 club.

In terms of their impact on the game as a whole in France, I would be interested to hear from someone with genuine knowledge of that field. I just don't know enough about their wider impact. We can certainly say they've had little noticeable impact on the national side, but what impact have they had on increasing playing numbers (or reducing the rate of decline), money circulating in the game, public and media profile, or attracting and developing more potential future French professional players? I don't know.

I think it is, however, also a reasonable and valid argument that a second French club would be much more likely to reinforce any positive effects than take away from them.

Another way of looking at it is this; we have three possible situations for the future of our game :

1) Status quo. There will be no new clubs. This is it for us - these 12 clubs, playing each other every year, with no prospect of change unless one of them does a Bradford, goes bankrupt, and thus has to be replaced by a weaker, but otherwise similar club from a similar area with similar unimpressive prospects. Only a small risk of disaster, but

2) Seek new coverage/player pools/supporters elsewhere in the UK. But where ? London was by far the most likely contender, and was starting to produce good numbers of players, including some of good quality. Benign neglect has killed it, and I'm struggling to see how that recovers in my lifetime. So where else offers anything beyond what we have at the moment ? I see nowhere.

3) Admit Toulouse. There are risks there, but also possible rewards. The admission of Toulouse would be an addition to the spread and potential of the game for all the reasons above. But there would, of course, be a risk it'd fall flat on its face. If the RFL approached it as it has previous expansion clubs, with a form of benign neglect, then that risk would be higher than if it was an interventionist strategy determined to make a success of it even if that required additional investment.

So it seems to me we have a choice between deliberate stagnation, complete wishful thinking, or a risky venture.

Only one of those offers any realistic prospect of reversing the shrinkage in our game and trying to re-establish some growth and momentum. It might be a bad choice, but it's better than the alternatives.

Roy I have no issue with admitting Toulouse.

My issue is people using the introduction of Toulouse as a foil for scrapping the new system before it has even started.

You can easily adapt the league and the teams playing in it to admit a new team to the top flight.

But I do not agree that you cut your base adrift.
I don't agree that protection for the new club is open ended.
I don't agree that the new system is a closed shop.

I think people look at the system and just count the numbers and falsey ascert there is no route to SL.
I think they also assume the difference between the bottom of SL and the top of the Championship is a constant set in stone.

Personally I see it as more of a precurser to the Championship being encouraged to develop more fulltime professional players, to build towards a standard that will allow them to enter SL. And if a ambitious man wants to put money into say a Dublin team. They could start a semi pro team in the lower division and quickly ramp up over 2 years to be in SL.

If money is all it takes to get into SL, then if they are spending the same as the top Championship clubs, then they will be there or there abouts.

So that is 2 routes into SL. You can drop straight in with a protection for x number of years, or build up, which ever is best suited to you or the league. But saying it has to be one or the other, seems like a mis-leading debate. You can have both.

As for the same teams winning all the time. It's never an issue for football. In fact Football benefits from the churn of P&R as whilst it has not made a huge difference in terms of the top 4 or 5 teams it does spread the number of teams over the years in the top flight.

But I do think we over state the demise of RL far too much. Attendance wise, there is not a huge difference between RL and RU.

RU has a European and International competition which exhaults the game. But if we have a SL that is fully European that would be the only thing we had, were as RU has both a domestic and European competition. Could you imagine that in RL. People already say we play too many games. Were as RU play far more games and extract players from their teams, mid-season to play international.

How? How practically could we put a team in SL and protect them under this system without making it even more convoluted than it already is?

With regards to building the championship closer to SL, I really don't believe it will happen. We can't even get 12 SL standard clubs, and all of a sudden we are going to get 24? The only way we will bring the championship closer to SL is to bring the level of SL down. That's not a good thing. That's a terrible thing. That really would put the future of the game at risk.

And in football, the 'churn' of P+R has spread the number of teams in the top flight, it also saw a ridiculous amount of them go bust.

We disagree on this. Largely because I think there's only one club in the championship which has the potential to support a full-time professional operation, and that's the very same Bradford we just kicked out into there. For the rest, their only chance of doing so would be for something to change dramatically for them off the field. But whereas licensing would allow them to then translate any off-the-field change into a realistic bid, the current system wouldn't, which is a bit ironic.



This is fantasy, I think. The point about ambitious men is that they like success and they like a seat at the top table. In return, they commit their cash. The proof of that is in the location of the various rich men we do have in our game. Every one of them is attached to a SL club. There are plenty of rich men from Sheffield, Doncaster, Oxford, Hemel Hempstead, Gloucester and London, but none of them are willing to commit much cash to sides playing with no limelight in front of tiny crowds for the right to have a one-off go at beating a team with a much bigger budget and much better players in two or three years time. Like it or not, that's the way it is. Stick Salford in the championship, and see how long Koucash lasts. That will never happen. We aren't big enough as a sport, and the lower divisions don't provide enough profile, income or interest to sustain that sort of build-from-the-bottom approach. The only clubs which will ever rise to the top of such a set-up are those who are already there : Leigh, Halifax, Fev. No new club can build a similar level of historic support based on a rise through the lower divisions.




I'd love to think that the door is still open for us to say that if opportunity comes knocking - either in Toulouse or elsewhere - then we still have the capability of finding a place in SL for a genuinely exciting new club of real potential. However, we don't. Partly because we now have a system which only actually works with the numbers of clubs we have, and partly because, as this thread demonstrates, you and I both know that any attempt to do so will be met by the usual self-interested uproar of those who want to keep this a closed shop, and who can't, or won't see what is happening to the game as a result of constantly allowing the tail to wag the dog.


I admire your optimism and determination to see a half-full glass. I'm afraid that the last two years have left me with a very different view of domestic RL in this country. The London and Bradford sagas have suggested very strongly that the decision-makers in our game - not just the RFL, but also the clubs - have abandoned any hope of trying to protect the game from the chill winds which are coming as the pay-to-watch TV revolution gathers pace. It's almost as if they've accepted that the game is up, and a return to semi-professionalism is on the way, but rather than try to avoid that outcome, or shape our own future, they'll instead bunker down and try to suck as much as possible for themselves out of that teat before it runs dry.

We obviously disagree, there is no doubting that. But I would just point out that it would not be the first time someone has called the end time on RL. But I don't see it for the reasons that

We have (historically comparable) good crowds.
The finances are decent at the moment (again historically most clubs ran at a loss in semi-pro times)
The NRL is coming around to more international exposure (slowly)
I don't see the Championship as a graveyard for ex SL clubs.

On a more philosophical point.

The glass is neither half full or half empty.

It has half liquid/half gas
Therefore the glass is technically always full.

I still think a welsh club is a better prorct than another French club. There is a strong history, an interest in the game and very real potential to see significant development at jnr level with welsh kids playing in SL more and more, not just for the welsh club but others as well. That is why nz are now a world power again, not just the Warriors but the fact most nrl clubs have 4 or 5 kiwis in their squad. Due to language and culture it is unlikely we'll see many 16-18 year old French kids moving to England to get a SL spot.

Come again? Myth? Nah mate, it's real. I've been goin since a wor a lad.

Nah. The Bulls aren't dead. You may not have heard of it, but we play in this league called "The Championship".

Nah. Bradford's been around since the league was founded. The name of any holding company for the time being is about as important or relevant as the name of the chairman. Like, not at all.

Actually pretty much they do. Twickers is regularly full when showing a field full of unfit lards stood about watching penalties. In e.g. the FA Cup, some non-league team that has been playing for centuries with crowds of 500 will get their record crowd to see a tie with Man U even though they know, barring a one in a million miracle, they will get pasted by Man U's B-team. Golf crowds shot up during the period when it was impossible to beat Tiger Woods. And pro wrestling fils huge Arenas all around the place, with NOTHING BUT predetermined results. No, you can get a big crowd to anything, the only thing you need is that lots of people see your event as likely to be fun and value for their money, that's it. And you can be good as you want, if it doesn't appeal to the masses, they won't come.

Hey, what not kick 8 clubs into touch and bring the whole French elite over,