That is quite possibly the worst argument I have ever heard.

Based on the "atmosphere" point, how much atmosphere do you expect in one sided games that are pretty much won by half time??

It is not just in RL. In every sport atmosphere can be a big problem, particuarly for the more successful clubs. You go to Anfield or Old Trafford to watch a normal premiership league game and you'll hear a huge roar when the teams come out and within 30 seconds of kick off it is almost a deadly silence.

Some games create atmosphere because they become classic games, wheras other games create atmosphere because of what is at stake such as knock out games (challenge cup, play-offs etc).

You tend to find that once fans get used to success and expect to win games, the atmosphere is never as good, especially in those run of the mill games that you find yourself miles ahead early on.

Simply Losing wrote

Simply losing-Do you miss many turnings when you are out driving?

Quote ="SEB"I keep seeing people saying they think lots of good work is going on around London but aren't sure. Here is a very useful website: www.londonrl.com/ I've lifted the following headline figures off there, which are from last year so presumably will be even better now: '" SEB noone, well certainly not I, denies the fine well intentioned work at grass roots level across the UK as a whole. But surely we cannot ignore a striking fact that there are broadly a similar number of people engaged to develop RL in London here www.londonrl.com/london_rl/contacts and those who attended the game at Wire on Sunday.

Quote ="SEB"I keep seeing people saying they think lots of good work is going on around London but aren't sure. Here is a very useful website: www.londonrl.com/ I've lifted the following headline figures off there, which are from last year so presumably will be even better now: '" SEB noone, well certainly not I, denies the fine well intentioned work at grass roots level across the UK as a whole. But surely we cannot ignore a striking fact that there are broadly a similar number of people engaged to develop RL in London here www.londonrl.com/london_rl/contacts and those who attended the game at Wire on Sunday.

You really dont get it do you. Just to make it simple for you to understand Warrington is probably the nearest away match from London and that is 220 miles with a similar number back. Try doing that every second week. Infact this week its a little further its Hull FC.

So Warrington and back on Sunday, Hull and back the following Sunday are you now starting to get the drift.

I'd like to see your logical counter argument to one subsidy example I gave (and why it is false in premise) and also comment as to why London after 30 years of trying fail to average > 2.5K? home attendance in a major World capital with a circa 8.2M urban population. Before the usual argument of competing sporting demands from football in the area Warrington average 10K from a population of 200K living near LFC, EFC, MUFC, MCFC, BWFC, BRFC, WAFC) etc.

In truth some people like me are just luddites, old school losers, has beens who can't see the big picture but have come to the naive belief that RL is just not sufficently popular at pro level in the South to justify a SL berth. We are limited and provincial in thinking admittedly and believe in an organic, adjacent geographic growth strategy. Harnessing neglected regions in the North first. South Wales proved a stretch too far, than sadly Wrexham about 20 miles from Widnes followed suit.

It's a real shame as I'd like to see SL played all over the UK. But I know it's not happened in the last 100 years and won't happen in the next.

I think you make my point for me. Insufficent support to overcome distance issues to away games. The fact your home crowds are abysmal seems to have escaped consideration.

Some of you seem to have forgotten the awful atmos at Wilderspool for the pre Super League visits of Wakefield, Fev, Hull KR, Sheffield, Workington, Doncaster and any lower league team we played in the cup.

Hello Chaps n Chapesses
Leyther here to give my take on things.
Expansion needs 2 London clubs, S.East and East London should be the area we hit, not Twickersland.
We also need 2 French clubs and a BIG S.Wales club in Swansea or Cardiff, not some depressed village it was based in. We shouldn't be partnering with RU clubs, its soccer clubs we must partner with - RU will always be the anti-christ.
The problem with our structure is that Wakey/Hudds/Cas/HKR/Salford/Widnes are no bigger than Leigh/Fax/Oldham/Fev as RL clubs - the difference being SL funding.
The solution for expansion is to expand the player pool, increase intensity at the top and create a platform for ambitious clubs to grow to. No automatic P&R is killing the game outside SL for those clubs with ambition and history, yet those clubs cannot survive with annual P&R in place.
The solution is 2 divisions of 10 in SL with strictly controlled non Nationals, this will allow the 2nd French club and Welsh club, whilst allowing Heartlands expansion and increasing the intensity and player pool needed for RL to once again become a draw on the international stage via a united game.
One up one down and a franchise review every 3 years.

The problem with the London SL team is that they haven't been subsidised or given extra funding. To succeed they have to have more financial backing than the heartland teams.

However, when you have many of the heartland teams needing support (e.g. buying Odsal) then it's difficult to justify I admit.

It's a vicious circle really - to expand you need money, to get the money you need to be national, but to expand...

This is why for me the International game has to be the device to expand the game at the highest level and particularly London and the SE.

I still think a magic event at either Chelsea, Arsenal or Olympic stadium possibly even Twickenham should be on the cards even though we have the challenge cup in London.

Do you really think that the Challenge Cup at Wembley does anything at all to raise interest levels of RL in the South, beyond perhaps a fleating curiousity that the area is full of northern hoards including fans of different teams not even in the Final that attend an a yearly pilgramage? Oh and im sure a few landlords will be pleased

That's not too bad an idea on paper. But whenever I think through the two divisions of 10 idea, I realise you are then going to end up with daft fixture lists and playing teams more than twice. We've been there before and people went off it.

Just a question...
Could that not resolve the too many fixtures issue? No need to start the season in winter (1st week of Feb) and pull the GF forward a bit? Higher intensity and te season is shorter. Also, space to include origin or international games. Speaking theoretically of course.

Obvious things like gate receipts as less matches take a hit, more teams for SL money to be spread between, etc.

I don't think there are too many games. Currently each club only has a guaranteed 13 home games. If they don't get a home draw in the cup and don't get a home playoff, that's it. I don't think financially we can go lower than that.

In addition to reduced gate receipts, I also see another disadvantage in potentially shortening the season for some as the off season does seem like a mighty long time without an RL 'fix'. Although as AL2 said it could be bolstered with representative games and that may help the game's profile if marketed correctly I think that this should be in addition to and not instead of

Taking HY's suggestion - personally I think the World Club Challenge could be held in London. With plenty of Aussies it could be a major event. Somewhere like the Emirates would be good and you'd get plenty of national coverage as it would be held in London. Put it to the start of the season and have the SL press KO at the same time.

The SL clubs have to go into partnership with the RFL for the international games. If you reduce the number of games - set up a joint company to operate the international game. All the profit from that should be split 50 / 50 between the SL clubs and the RFL. This then means the SL clubs have a stake in growing the international game and promoting it. Again the Etihad could be a good location - I'm sure Arsenal would be up for a deal!

No, that wouldn't work, there's never any atmosphere at the Emirates Stadium

I'm sure Arsenal wouldnt be up for a game which would pull in about 5,000

First off I would like to say thank you for the great hospitality and respect shown to the London Broncos by true and genuine Rugby League supporters on Sunday; these are the kind of supporters who the game needs with their unbridled passion and love for their club and by implication also the game; the kind of guys who do not just make condescending comments but come down to the Stoop and are looked after year on year by their southern Rugby League brothers and who stand by side through thick and thin, year on year and in all weathers for their club.

Anybody who has any knowledge of the history of Rugby League will know that almost all expansion clubs have failed be they almost adjacent to the heartlands in places like Chorley, Preston, Trafford or Blackpool or in any place further afield. London is a very special club as the sole survivor. Whether people see it as the Fulham dream or merely an experiment matters not; for these people can eat their words, for the club stands as its own entity despite four renames, over ten home grounds and what is more it attracts people who love Rugby League from all over the South. The generations playing now will come to the club when they are older and especially when the club is moved to the people, with our own ground rather than being amongst the snobs living around the National Rugby Union Stadium who watch Rugby to be seen at a social event.

The RFL are shortsighted and do almost nothing to kickstart the clubs or help them in anyway. To put in a new club against clubs who are the only show in town and have been for 100 years and to match them is a big ask. To put in a 31 year old club against a big and great club is also that. There are those who would rather that the small never grow, but then they are frightened of change, probably they have lived within a 5 mile radius of their birthplace for life, know nothing about any other place, with an insular view of the World.

But sometimes in life it does not matter whether you stand and win, or stand and fall, just that you make your stand. Week after week, through thick and thin. Because some days you can stand there as one of twenty and turn over the Grand Final winners and see tens of thousands go home scowling. Of course life is no dream and you go home without the points a lot, but that's the name of the game, that which is common is not appreciated.

I have seen London win away at St Helens, Wigan when we came back from 24-6 down , beat Leeds twice home and away just last season, win consecutively away at Warrington and put 60 on them, beat Catalans away, nil Huddersfield, thrash Hull KR away and beat all the rest over the past five years. We deserve our place in the competition. We've never finished bottom of the table. The league would exist without a London club but it would be a lot poorer for the competition to be an M62 corridor game, with no richness.

I'd challenge anyone who thinks there is no place for London to come down to the Stoop. enjoy the facilities, the bands, the bars and stand amongst the friendliest supporters in the game, then come on here after with barbed comments. Of course if you haven't been, then perhaps you shouldn't be as full of bile maybe.

Best Wishes
Mark

Mark, I share your views. I haven't been to the Stoop (hoping to remedy that this year), but I do have experience of watching a club outside the heartlands, and at one time being involved in that club. London can no longer be called an experiment. It's been around for 30 years and I firmly believe that it should get more active support from the RFL.
The team I watched was Gateshead in 1999. In just one year the club went from having 1000 supporters to a hard core of over 3000. If the experiment had been allowed to continue I have no doubt that the Thunder would be well supported and a Rugby League success. The problem was that the whole thing was badly under-financed, and when things started to go wrong the supporters were told blatant lies by the Management, who then upped sticks and went off to Hull, leaving debts and seriously disgruntled sponsors behind.
The RFL's role in this was initially to sit back and do nothing, then actively encourage the 'merger' by throwing money at Kath Hetherington and friends, leaving the fans at Gateshead with absolutely nothing. The RFL were then rewarded by the absolutely disgraceful scenes at a Rugby league Cup Semi Final some months later.
The new club that was formed afterwards got absolutely nothing. We raised money ourselves, and on reflection we should have waited a year before re-forming, and tried to build up more capital instead. We had no sponsors, basically because no-one would trust us after the SL fiasco and it is only now that the club are slowly recovering.
The point I am trying to make is that if the RFL wants clubs like London and Gateshead, then it has to actively encourage them financially or they haven't got a hope of success.
There, that's got that off my chest.

I came down last year, and posted thanks on your forum for what was a fantastic day out. I haven't posted on this thread yet, as I'm not sure what the answer is, and I'm not going to pretend I do.

Perhaps part of the answer would be to make it compulsory for any RL fan who has sold thier soul and moved to the capital to go and watch the Broncos at home. I spent some time living in Huddersfield, I used to go and watch them when I could. How many RL fans in London support the expansion?

I go occasionally, if i can't make Wire due to work and finish early enough to catch them i go.

Ive stood on the terraces at Wilderspool wearing primrose and blue in abysmal crowds and that wasnt to long ago-Warrington nearly died as a club, dont ever forget that.

I've no doubt you stood in crowds of two or three thousand at wilderspool in the 80's. But they would have been average attendances for the league at that time.

London's attendances have not moved on from that 2-3k average, all other clubs have.

You can argue loads of reasons for London being in the league but attendance figures can not be compared with any other club.