There are social differences no question. Currently the main barrier the game faces is that it is played in 2 x 10 mile conurbations with a city to the east also playing. Which companies have a product that sells or targets exclusively to the M62 corridor? Hence why we get Mushy peas (p1ss take, no different to Specsavers on the refs top) as our sponsors.

The game must spread before it can benefit from the larger sponsors. It has to break into the south.

I always feel that with expansion, we have 33 million people in the north of England and we should be trying to push more into Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool regions that further afield.

However we should ensure that anyone starting up outside like Toronto gets the support they need. focus on your strengths first and the rest will come on its own.

The problem there is that we're probably at market saturation in those areas. That might sound weird given the small attendances, but we need to take account of the fact that soccer dominates sport in England to the exclusion of almost all else. The issue of social class has been raised above, and it's very relevant, in that the middle-class sports market offers strong support for other sports than soccer, notably cricket, tennis and rugby union. These sports are fostered in private schools, and draw on well-funded facilities and administration based around historically wealthy governing bodies sustained by huge national sponsorship deals and major international events. Other sports are also increasingly relying on participants from middle and upper socio-economic groups, including athletics and swimming.

The working class sports market, which is overwhelmingly where we draw our players and fans from, is much more dominated by soccer; it's almost a sporting monoculture. Call-Me-God may have a caustic style, but he's right in saying that our demographic is not being replaced. As our old fans die off, and our player base retires, we are not replacing them with new fans or players, because soccer is hoovering up pretty much every athlete except in tiny pockets around South Lancashire and parts of West Yorkshire, while its unbelievable riches and publicity make any other sport seem trivial and uninteresting by comparison to young people. Essentially, the only thing sustaining our existing clubs is an almost hereditary habit, and there's evidence that even those communities are beginning to lose interest.



I thnk, given the above, that there's a strong case that we've been focussing pretty much exclusively on our strengths for the last 130 years, and where we are is a matter of record. Our existing top clubs are probably at maximum capacity now, in terms of interest, player development and crowds. They are now in a fight to maintain that existence, rather than grow it. Looking across the entire league structure, I could only imagine Bradford and London being able to produce similar levels of support to Saints/Wigan/Leeds etc, and that would require them to be relatively successful for a good period of time. Bradford might, if they recover quickly, be able to reconnect with their own version of the hereditary support, while London have the advantage of theoretically being able to manage a decent level because you only need a tiny percentage of 8m people to do ok.

That's why, for me, the North American ventures might be our last lifeline as a professional sport. No single sport dominates in North America like soccer does here, and the class-based sporting system which hurts us in this country doesn't apply to anything like the same effect in the US and Canada. They're also clubs based in huge urban areas, where again they'd only need to attract a small percentage of the sporting public to generate scale similar to our existing best.

RL has to find a way to exist on the fringes of a sporting world in which there isn't really a gap for a working-class team sport. We're never going to challenge soccer. We're never going to have the middle-class support network which maintains RU, cricket and other second-tier sports, and developments of the last twenty years, like online gaming and on-demand streaming are not going back into their bottles. That means that 33m people might sound like a big number, but we're probably only going to realistically be able to access 1% of that, either in terms of potential players or fans. The only solution is to seek out new fringes elsewhere, establish new hereditary habits, and seize on every possible opportunity to stand out in a marketplace which strictly speaking doesn't have any space available to us.

Can you imagine how far the sport could go if fans of some clubs put aside their own self importance and realised how important Manchester & Liverpool are to northwest rugbyleague, and so to the sport as a whole in this country.

How does one swipe LEFT on the RLFANS ap

Bless, I never realized (until now) that a lot of RLFANS care about our sport, rather than their own club.....



What does it matter what sponsors we have, whether it be 'bachelors mushy peas' or Chevrolet, Toyota, Pepsi, Adidas, Sony etc. YOU CANNOT FORCE PEOPLE TO LIKE/WATCH A SPORT THAT THEY HAVE NO INTEREST IN THE FIRST PLACE !!

It matters because the realities of modern sport mean that if you can't attract commercial revenue, you're not going to exist for much longer.

I want to see the best players possible, playing in the best facilities possible, and earning a fair amount for their efforts. If we can't offer that, no matter how bad things are now, they're going to get much much worse.

What, playing against YOUR OWN TEAM, whilst giving you a good 'stuffing'...NOW YOU ARE BEING SILLY.

........Imagine "The Special Brew Super League"......intoxicating ...

Why is it that whenever 'Expansion' is mentioned on a thread or 'Licensing' etc, we always get the grade A cocks jumping on out of nowhere just to get their ever purposeful mundane and boring point across ? I dont think half of these people even watch RL, they just want to wind people up and over criticise.

' We dont want Leigh, Wakey has a crap ground, Catalans are the best thing since sliced bread'. Its BORING , Yet there would be no RL if it wasnt for the likes of Leigh, Batley, Fev Fax etc.......

North America can have its own bloody league eventually, and take Canada with you !!!

I am all for expansion, but it has never been done properly from day one. All we want to do now is 'Over expand'.

I can live with France as its the right thing to do, but lets go back to the original Plan A from the mid 1990's and look into Ireland, Cumbria, Wales and Scotland, South of England, Newcastle, Kent etc.

Rugby League is going to be famous for over Globalising our sport whilst killing it in GB. Some expansion strategy that will be !!

Rant over !!!

Way to go Snowy

I can just picture the scene now - All the expansionist will be busy typing on their keyboards, checking out GOOGLE, throwing loads of facts and figures at you. You gone and done it now!!!

Wait for it

To be fair to Leeds they do have a sizeable contingent of wealthy supporters, Leeds sell a large number of corporate packages for their games. I believe with the new north stand the corporate capacity will increase significantly. Other clubs need to follow suit.

Are people in Leigh being a little over sensitive or just realising another SL team 5 miles from the largest team in UK doesn't really add a great deal to the game generally.

Maybe we are , but what exactly do you want us to do ?

Funny that the new owners of Man City picked on a club a few miles away from the biggest football club in the UK to invest in , rather than any other ?

What will be will be ,

So you agree with me now!!!

Anyway putting that obvious contradiction aside you're spot on.

This forum is full of fantasist who live in la la land. They never learn the lessons of history and are totally deluded as to the importance of the game.

They seem incapable of realising that before Toronto or New York can become a reality we need a solid foundation. Currently most championship clubs are dying. We have so far failed to spread the games popularity as far as Sheffield let alone London! Why on earth do these people think that long term Toronto and NY is a goer!

In fact I'll tell you why, they are snobs who are ashamed that their sport is a northern sport watched predominantly by working class northern folk. I like many rejoice in that but not the lads who went off to University and now think they are smarter than those who didn't and thus refuse to accept that most of us are happy with our own intimate and unique and not so little game.

You want to emulate the NRL then fine but do what they did, spend decades sorting out the grass roots. Making the game strong at every level, producing fans and players. Make Rochdale and York as strong in there own way as Leeds or Wigan.

Also when people disregard Wakefield or Leigh or whoever as not having enough fans or whatever other gripe they have they should think on. My club may only have 4000 hardcore fans but that's 4000 more than Toronto or NY. These are people who turn up every year with little complaint. In a sport like ours 4000 fans is gold dust so why pee them off.

It is they and other fans of other smaller teams who make clubs viable - sugar daddies and franchises come and go but those hardcore fans are forever if you treat them right. 4000 probably isn't enough to truly challenge but it's enough to be competitive and those clubs are vital in all sports not just RL.

We need to get our heads out of our bums and play what's in front of us. Stop trying to be what we are not and enjoy what we have. If we start to love our game warts and all you might find others will.

Finally non RL people aren't stupid - they can spot a fake and everything about RL exspansionism is fake and that's why they aren't interested. Do people really think that people in Scotland and Ireland can't spot the con - seriously folks? They are England C and D it's obvious. How long before the people of Toronto realise they are watching a team of rejects from SL and the NRL without a local in site.

Get a grip.

Pretty much spot on, however the VT expansion mob will be on you like a ton of bricks.
They will bore you into submission but good on you for having an 'alternative' opinion.

Come on mate you know I don't get bored easily

Just to further your main point and one that perfectly demonstrates the snobbery and ego of the exspansionists on here.

A couple of years ago Wakefield got a one off shirt sponsorship from the Whetherby Whaler fisn'n'chip resturant chain - that's right 'chain', not Berts chippy but a multi million pound chain!

The stick we got was horrendous. KFC and their greasy chicken would have been fine or McDonalds and their limp burgers but good old fish and chps NO FECKING WAY. Far to parochial, far to northern and far to stereotypical - the snobs were outraged ashamed by their kin folks love for battered fish. How pathetic and insecure can you get!

The most vocal was a Cas fan, yep you heard it right. Cas a place where eating out of paper is considered fine dining! He may not have been to Uni that's to much of a stretch but he was clearly a Cas fan who'd been to an Adult education course at the very least.

Funny thing was the next year his club was sponsored by a company that mends hoses! How back ally can you ger! Me I don't care their money is as good as anyone elses but how that stacked up with our Glasshoughton intellectual I'm not sure seeing as they all ran off the their own forum.

As I say it's all a mixture of snobbery, half knowledge and massive shame and insecurity (which is sadly a very northern trait)

Personally, my view is that it is precisely because we are struggling to spread the sport past Sheffield that the sport needs to look to new markets, where the challenges that face the sport in much of the UK aren't present - such as places like North America.



Firstly, this sort of "inverse snobbery" is just as bad as the "snobbery" that you accuse others of.

But secondly, I have no problem with the roots of the sport - I genuinely don't. I was introduced to the sport via its tradtional roots, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, I look with pride at some of things that this community of sports fans do, such as the way they ralied around Matt King, Steve Prescott or the Jones family in 2015, and feel that few other sports could do that in the way that we did.

But what I don't want to see is our top talent feeling that they need to change sports or move to the other side of the world to earn their worth, because clubs continue to vote to impose real-terms cuts to their earning potential. I don't want to see those players have to train play in facilities that other sports comdemmed 20 years ago, and I do want to see us producing and attracting the best talent that we can, to put on the best possible entertainment that we can. If I didn't, I'd just go and watch the amateur game, along with other "working class folk", and save myself a lot of money in the process.

What expansionists like myself are arguing is that when you take a pragmatic look at the current situation that the sport finds itself in, rather than through the sepia-tinted spectacles of yesteryear, there are problems. We're losing supporters, our support base is ageing faster than the rate at which the country is ageing, we're losing players, we're losing revenue, we're declining off the field and we're not keeping up with our competitors.

Much of that can be attributed to the decline of the traditional working class in many other walks of society, but that is the reality in which we live in today, and RL is not immune from that.

I get that North America represents a leap into the unknown - a degree of uncertainty. My argument is that that particular uncertainty is the better option than the certainty that we currently have - a further decline in crowds, a further decline in the player pool and a further decline of the sport whilst those around us get stronger and stronger.

I'd love to think that we could redress the problems we face by persisting with what we have, but try as I might I can't see it. And what's telling is that those who decry expansionism don't seem to have an answer either. Their response is just "we're happy with what we have", "it is what it is" or "it's all the RFL's / Nigel Woods' fault".



And how do we do this? It's down to Rochdale and York to bring themselves up to that level, rather than bring those above them down or to rely on an increasingly dwindling (in real terms) pool of central funding. It's down to clubs to engage with their communities to increase the talent pool and to develop players through high quality academies that offer the right facilities, the right player welfare and the right "after rugby" support. I don't envisage a situation where enough clubs could offer that.

As a Leeds fan it's arguably in my interests to retain the status quo. The team I support will keep attracting a better share of the limited talent, and will keep getting to Grand Finals, whilst smaller clubs will keep being happy fighting for the few crumbs that there are and doing what they can to keep HMRC and the administrators at bay for another month. But I don't think it's "snobbish" in the slightest to think that the sport can be better than that.

It depends how you measure this. Playing numbers in the south have grown massively, TV viewers of sky RL is significant not to mention the numbers attending Wembley and The Olympic stadiums for internationals from the south.

The Broncos have 'failed' due to the owners approach to marketing etc. Hes a wealthy guy who is happy to fund his Sunday drinking club whilst watching his team.

In November 2016 we had 40,042 people attend a Rugby League match in a City that used to have a Professional Rugby League club.

Why did we not capitalise on this, why instead are we going to Denver? Why don't we spend some time and a franchise operation on things like this?

The other thing is the biggest exansion recently is across Europe and the RLIF, RFL, NRL and SL are no involved in this and it is being ignored for matches like the Eng v NZ games.... Why? Why go to Denver? I do not see the reason.

Anyhow, back to expansion that above to me shows that we can expand locally still more if we put the effort in we are trying to put in elsewhere.......

We move the Challenge Cup to Cardiff, a great success but no Pro Club on the back of it comes about, we move it to Murrayfield, again nothing.

There is a trend. We should be going to these places and leaving a legacy not just a flash in the pan one off.

The most sensible posts so far





Just one thing to add though, Perez does seem to have the drive and ambition to actually try and achieve something in North America, something horribly lacking from ANYONE involved on this side of the pond.

Perhaps we should give Perez Nigel Woods old job

I would let him carry on, and anyone else who wishes to get involved would have full support, just don't go looking in places that we do not have a Perez's or a history or RL is my thoughts, except to promote the game at lower levelsl.

What inverse snobbery! I have no issue with expansion but it needs to be done properly and not at the expense of what we already have - if you want a golden egg you don't kill the Goose thats laying it do you.

Love to see the game in London, Paris and New York but why does that have to be at the expense of the games heartland - the heartland that so many pseudo intellectuals on hear sneer at at. No other supporters of other sports seem so hell bent on junking their heritage as we do and that shows to me that we suffer a massive lack of self esteem.

People like you are not 'expansionists' you are dreamers and fantasists and they are a million miles apart. It's all quick fixes and bling or to put it in a Northern way it's all Fur and no knickers.

Get the heartland game vibrant and strong. Make the M62 corridor a fortress of the game - make it work in the hinterlands and the rest will follow - like most things it's simple, what part of it don't you get?

Absolutely spot on there vasty.