What annoys people about London is that they have, to be frank, been treated as a special case for too long now with no discernible improvement in fortunes either on the field or off.

At the same time the likes of Salford, Wakefield, Bradford plus a host of traditional clubs in the heartlands have pretty much been left to fend for themselves, for the most part, and have all but vanished as a consequence.

There's no doubt a vibrant London SL team is a boon to the competition, as is a French presence, but it has to be a level playing field for all. You can understand the likes of Featherstone throwing their hands up in despair when they try and do everything right on-and-off the pitch, put their houses in order and play by the rules and are continually snubbed by the games "elite".

Bradford been left to fend for themselves


Didn't the RFL give them money early and buy there ground, Yea point well made

However, in Australia Melbourne Storm were given lots of special treatment to enable the expansion of NRL there to work. OK, they abused it with the salary cap breech, but the clubs went along with it.

The RFL did indeed buy Odsal, taking over the tenancy from the Bulls. It undoubtedly assisted Bradford's financial plight short-term but was a reciprocal agreement; Bradford now pay the RFL rent for use of the ground so it wasn't a gift, parachute payment or part of a rescue package.

My point is that there is are a host of clubs like Rochdale, Workington, Oldham, Salford, Wakefield and, not so long ago Warrington, who have a proud and long history of achievement in the game and have faced serious financial difficulties or extinction in recent times, but who didn't expect or receive any favours from the RFL in the way London have.

The RFL have never done London any favors as far as i know, they've always had backers to cover the debt

I think the problem is that central funding can only do so much to help a company (important to remember that a sports club is still a company like any other) in free fall.

It is a common misconception that the RFL 'bails out' London all the time (I don't think this has ever been the case?) and does nothing for 'heartland' clubs yet when Leigh had problems two years ago they were supportive and more recently they have advanced payments to Swinton. Only last year Nigel Wood was key to bringing in Marwan Koukash. But if for example a few years ago the RFL had thrown a load of money at Blackpool Panthers would they have achieved anything? I think the answer is that the money would have just gone down a black hole.

London is vital to SL first and foremost because it is very difficult to gain national sponsorship or coverage when the game is confined to a motorway in the north of England. There is also a lot of good work being done at grass roots level throughout the south of England which is starting to come into fruition, we need to offer a clear pathway for talented RL players south of Warrington otherwise these lads will simply be lost to the other code.

I'm not sure whether this is already the case, but there needs to be a generous 'London Living Allowance' on top of their salary cap. If I was the new owner I would be getting on to the phone to Koukash and asking how he managed to bring players into the club. During the RLWC I spoke to so many southerners who love the game but didn't have any interest in going to watch the Broncos because "they're not very good". Bring in some big names and that will soon change.

In citing assistance historically to London from the RFL in (any of) my posts I wasn't referring to purely financial assistance, but dispensation from the overseas quota.

Surely Catalan have had just as much assistance off the RFL regarding overseas quota and being exempt from relegation

You make some very well reasoned arguments.
However, the problem is that this London team is a nomadic gypsy, that has never put down any roots.
London is a city of small towns.
If they had stayed local to the boundaries of a few, they could have built some sort of fan base during the last 30 years.
Unfortunately they haven't, and the result is what we have today.
Compare this to Catalan, a resounding succes.
If any more expansionism occurs, then surly this is the model to follow?

I agree, from my experience going to uni with a lot of Londoners people identify themselves with whichever part of the city they are from which is why there are no other 'London' clubs (I am reluctant to include all that London Irish nonsense).

RFL strategy seems now to be to develop from the bottom up with Championship 1 now essentially an expansion league. Some of those clubs have great potential, I look forwards to Coventry in particular turning pro. I read a very good point in League Express on Monday, essentially saying that until Union started paying tax in the nineties (putting several brown paper envelope manufacturers out of business in the process!) introducing clubs in places like Oxford and Gloucester was impossible because if Union players so much as gave league a go they were banned for life and most universities banned the game. We are in a good position now to move on from all that now with many union clubs even setting up league sides to play in the summer.

Thing with Catalan is that it was already an area of Rugby League

Your point about Catalan is transferable to Cumbria.
It is a very big county with one professional sports team.
Rugby is in the blood up there.
Perpignan is in a remote region of France, with no big football teams locally.

If the RFL wants to expand, then surely getting a proper team off the ground in Cumbria, with the safeguards they gave Catalan, which was an amalgamation of local clubs, is the best way?

I am not adverse to them introducing a second French club along the same line either.

The London model has failed, and fans are fed up with it!

That said, corporate governance rules need to be properly enforced in the heartland areas.
There can be no more token punishments for clubs like Widnes, while Wakefield and Bradford get off scott free with repeated bankruptcies.

Despite all the best efforts of sky & the RFL to merge clubs in the past it hasn't worked because from, their small parochial beginnings, clubs in England will be held back by the parochial attitude of supporters of individual clubs who would not agree to club mergers. Probably the only way to get super clubs with regional franchises would be for the game to disappear altogether from the towns that play it now & get resurrected with a different format 10 years later.
Maybe the fault in London with the game is,like was mentioned a few posts back, that "London" is an umbrella term for umpteen smaller towns with their own identities ....the game might grow if there were a few teams in "London" called after their own boroughs. After all we don't have a "London" football team ,we have ten or so different clubs named after their own origins.

I don't think a merger in Cumbria will ever work, the fans will never accept it in the same way we did not want to merge with Widnes, but add to that the geography of it- very easy to forget that Barrow and Workington are separated by 50 miles of rural A roads.

If 'Cumbria' were given a place in in SL I think there would be a fan unification BUT Whitehaven/Workington/Barrow would still exist and their fan base would still be the same, it would be a means to 'recruiting'.

The London problem won't change with a name, I think people compare it to football regards the 'having a local name' forgetting how big football is and then how many people are in London.

Union have generic names Saracens, Harlequins, not exactly connecting with the locals.

Barnet Football club actually attract less than Broncos, so being Barnet Broncos isn't going to attract people in, people talk of multi cultural London but it's just pockets of nations and religions, each one as insular as the next, extremely hard to break into, the marketing is more complicated than simply putting the word out and I think way beyond the capabilities of Gus the goon.

I seem to remember them having viynls on a few black cabs two years ago, needle in a haystack springs to mind! To be fair there was a big billboard outside Twickenham Station last year though.

Has Rhys Williams found anywhere yet? He'd get a gig at London.

Any news on if they've even got a team signed up for next year?