Apparently nobody has pulled out for 2022 given the funding cuts, and Hemel Hempstead/Ottawa are due to land at Odsal and play there.........

Not sure who they will be posing as, or what the long term plan is? The venue isn't surprising as Perez has good links with Bradford Bulls......

It's gonna be a long and somewhat hard winter for a few clubs..........this could be the last chance for any of these clubs to step up and it'll be a real shame if the RFL announce 2x 10......killing the game as a pro sport at this level.
London, Coventry, Wales.....all cut adrift so west yorkshire can have a few more pit village sides

you would of thought they'd of found their multi millionaires by now, tell us again where these working pits are

Usual stale bait wasn't it? So stale it was nothing but a pile of mould..........

The north is where the most investment and interest is but of course such clubs need to make way for "expansion". Have spent many years reading thousands of posts telling me how the game will only survive if we spend Millions opening up clubs where nobody plays or invests in the game.

Even the London Broncos chairman is from Oldham IIRC.

how far have they come in over 40 years? What's his total "spend" and what has he got for that??

The north isn't where the most investment is - the USA owned Sky TV is the organisation that invests the most.
Which clubs have ' made way ' for expansion clubs - apart from when the M62 located RFL parachuted PSG into Super League instead of promoting Keighley Cougars?
The London Broncos owner hails from Swinton - because of the cost of living in the capital city,he would have,over his time at the club,spent more money than the majority,if not all,M62 club owners.
Apart from that,you are correct. Well done on starting a thread which involves an overseas club being mentioned in your OP.
I was surprised...

so if he's spent more than M62 clubs what your saying money doesn't buy success

Wigan's a pit town.Like most of the places.. up North..

Quite a bit to unpack here.
Firstly, being from the South, I consider anywhere north of the Watford Gap "THE NORTH" and often refer to some places with RL sides as Pit Villages as a term of affection. It's like Northern Monkeys.....just a bit of banter.
In terms of making way for expansion, before SKY came along and we parachuted London ad PSG into the sport at the expense of Keighly, Wigan were buying everything and the top flight had an average attendance of about 5.5k. PSG folded pretty much straight out of the traps and London began their nomadic existence. Meanwhile, the 2nd tier carried on with some pretty average attendance figures with various sides attempting to reach the SL an the supposed riches there. Teams to win promotion include Salford, Wakefield, Hull Sharks, Hull Kingstone Rovers, Castleford & Widnes. Of those sides, the Hull Teams and Castleford have increased their fan base, whilst Wakefield and Salford are embarrassingly low in terms of support. London used to be bemoaned for having a average of 4,900 in 2006......both wakefield and Salford had fewer average gates than that in 2018.
In terms of Hughes and his investment. The bloke is a cast iron RL legend, but a fool too boot. If he's flushed about 30 million of his own cash away, he's also flushed another 50 in Central Funding. With little planning, he is has essentially stumbled from season to season, ground to ground with not a clue of what to do. To his credit, the youth system at London is paying dividends with the Likes of LMS picking up SL rings, but in real terms, Hughes and London haven't done any harm to the game and certainly offer more in terms of growth than many of the 2nd and 3rd tier West Yorkshire sides do. In terms of Keighly. they had their chance to get promoted in 1996 and blew it....last year of full comp they were thankful for West Wales stopping them being the worst side in the three tiers. They don't bring anything to the table in terms of growth and development of the game and have a track record of being very VERY badly run. But you'd have them in rather than Toulouse



Back to the original topic. League 1 in 2022 is currently an unknown entity. Until te RFL announce the exact level of funding and the nextt format of the tiers of the game, the likes of Coventry and Skolars will hold back on any major spending or signings. If the Game does got to 2 x 10 with a third division split into regional sections, then these clubs along with the unlucky bottom 6 of the Championship will need to make their own way. If there is funding available, I'd argue it would be better spent in Wales, London and Coventry than Keighly, but that's just my opinion. The Broncos going part time has seen a great number of their own developed players being signed in the North and this shows the benefit of a strong presence in the Capital, but if you're of the opinion that Bradford bring more to the table, then let's see them earn it without any hand outs (or more handouts) from the RFL.

Not interested in what he's saying, he exists to just say the opposite







I remember when Brian McDermott was coaching London and trying to keep the club in Superleague. Although Hughes had the money, players did not want to go down to London and live there, they were more "at home" (whether they were overseas players or M62 born players) on the M62 along with their families and mates and the latter included overseas players who may have signed at different clubs but still socially met up with other NRL players.

In short and in theory there was a player pool for all SL clubs, but a large part of that pool was unavailable when McDermott called.

Still I suppose (as many fans say) clubs should [i"develop their own players"[/i. I suppose if they could all do that then we would not see them max out on overseas players. The issue for the league one clubs outside the M62 is there is no professional RL player pool in most of the locations they choose to provide us "expansion" from......

As for "give it time", London are 40 years on. We used to hear the same about Toronto even though they made no effort to develop players.....

£30,000,000 didn't buy success. And finally what are people gonna do when LMS and Clubb retire, and they can no longer be hailed as London's great success?

add that to the comments from McDermott when he was at Toronto saying how the game needs to think bigger than little pit villages, looks like eating humble pie every day now that he's at Featherstone, I hope he chokes on it

Quote ="snowie"add that to the comments from McDermott when he was at Toronto saying how the game needs to think bigger than little pit villages, looks like eating humble pie every day now that he's at Featherstone, I hope he chokes on it '" https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/ ... pack-works IIRC he got cornered in an interview when he had to admit that TWP hadn't bothered about player development and Canadian TV weren't bothered about screening them.... I think Mac could redeem himself if he took it upon himself to wear a miners helmet during the course of next season, Should that chafe a little too much then he can wear a flat cap instead......

Quote ="snowie"add that to the comments from McDermott when he was at Toronto saying how the game needs to think bigger than little pit villages, looks like eating humble pie every day now that he's at Featherstone, I hope he chokes on it '" https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/ ... pack-works IIRC he got cornered in an interview when he had to admit that TWP hadn't bothered about player development and Canadian TV weren't bothered about screening them.... I think Mac could redeem himself if he took it upon himself to wear a miners helmet during the course of next season, Should that chafe a little too much then he can wear a flat cap instead......

there isn't one big enough for his head

Yep going to be intetresting , he is not liked in Feth so either he will not last long or for once the locals are going to have to forgive and forget and that would be a first

Exactly we should stick to England n France in areas where there's an interest !

But the interest in those areas is dwindling and the areas are shrinking.

Wow, Toronto have moved on but this forum clearly hasn't.

This reminds me of the time another Brian went to manage Leeds United, that didn’t work out too we’ll either.

London or the M62 corridor? Really should have been a no brainer.

You can say the same about pit villages as the last pit shut nearly seven year ago but still some on this forum can't see that areas change

[urlhttps://www.yorkshire.com/inspiration/heritage/industrial-heritage[/url
Forget your heritage at your leisure....

I think we need to wait until a full season without the covid factor to see what the interest is. Player interest may well be reducing but you can find this in soccer and rugby union as well and head knocks won't help.. Investor interest is holding up, TV interest hit a high with the last contract and has maybe dropped back to the levels before that spiked. Not sure the "areas" are shrinking, we still have a decent M62 heartland and a scattering of small outposts.

The real low point in interest was probably 1970.........

Confirmed that Ottawa will move to Cornwall.

Not bad considering some of the nonsense options of playing out of Odsal (where the locals already have a team to go watch) Liverpool where there isn't a suitable ground or Harrogate that is just too small. If costs can be kept low by sharing with Union this could be a good semi-pro club and hopefully a few new Cornish talents are unearthed.

Also should be to RL's advantage that Cornwalls population swells in summer, if they market the games as a good value family event to tourists that could draw a few in.

truly wish the best of good luck to Perez in his dream of becoming that revolutionary, bringing Ottawa to Cornwall is just as a braver move as was his Canadian dream, I can honestly say I wouldn't be travelling that distance unless I was down there for an holiday break having spent over 10 hrs travelling back from Bude the other month which normally is around 7 hrs with breaks but this is more realistic in saying its expansion

This is mental ha ha ha ha

I think they’re missing a trick here. Get Coventry to relocate to Stornaway that’s what league one needs

They’re playing in Penryn which is a small town on the outskirts of Falmouth on the south coast. It’s a good hour and half from Bude on those little Cornish roads so I doubt you’d bother unless it was Wakefield playing there.

It’s a big rugby Union area but is so sply populated that Cornish Pirates only get an average attendance of 1500. It can’t even sustain a professional football team. You’ll be able to count the number of fans for this lot on one hand.