I know what you are saying and why you are saying it, But to be fair where are you going to get even half a team of league players in Canada, the game has never been player there. We have been playing the game for 150 years and our teams are riddled with foreign players.

I'm not convinced they will be accepted long term myself but we'll have to see, If they are it will be a poor effort to blame them for the failure of local sides, they have been failing on and off for decades, long before Toronto were thought of , Who do Fartown blame for the number of times they were on the brink, and certainly Sheffield were sacrificed for us .

If we get replaced in S league it won't be the fault of Toronto or anyone else except Fartown, The club has been run in the most unprofessional way imaginable and sooner or later you get found out.

We all hope we don't go out but should we finish in the middle 8 if we don't win enough games then we deserve to go down, it will be no ones fault but ours. Regarding all these Traditional club you speak of , they are nearly all on the verge of collapse and will more than likely do so when ESL withdraws it's funding.

What are your thoughts on that, should the Giants and the other SL clubs cough up some of their money to keep them afloat, ( as they do now ) knowing they can never again amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Many people believe that Catalan, Toulouse and Toronto and expansion teams are the only chance league has to survive. Then again most league fans don't care about any of it as long as they can nip over to Wakey or wherever to support there own team, It's the nature of the Rugby league fan ( in general ) .

I think the idea is to get the game going over there jools not prop up a load of failing clubs along the m62. We have had 150 years to grow the game , and failed miserably, after all those years only half a dozen clubs are anything like secure, and all have very wealthy owners.

Where it leaves us long term is exactly where we have put ourselves, Toronto makes no difference to that either way , but i agree with you that one club in Canada is of little use to us, they need a league but that takes time, why you think that would somehow be at our expense i don't know.

Utter tripe. They bring absolutely nothing to the game and are playing to different rules to the rest of us. Shame on the RFL.

f

It’s failjng miserably because the RFL does sweet FA to support the game at grassroots level- without young people playing and watching the game it fails.
Case in point- in order to run a junior team coaches have to have a minimum amount of training-in safeguarding and also coaching.
Currently the one and only single training course the RFL has made available for level 2 coaching is full- and there are no safeguarding courses available-which is a minimum requirement! Bearing in mind all junior coaches are VOLUNTEERS. so any junior clubs wanting to start a team cannot. But the RFL have the money to jet off to Canada.....

your correct on this as for a Canadian team it simply will cost too much for the smaller clubs to fund, I don't want to be right as it will be the end of the game as we know it

Again i understand your point and agree with what you say about the RFL, i just don't see how it is the fault of Toronto, As far as i know they stand the cost of every game they play at home for both teams.

Teams flown half way round the world and put up in substandard accommodation. Not great for professional sport.
Do you not think it costs clubs to sort out a trip, visas, equipment, insurance etc.
Not to mention missed training sessions/jet lag/ that interferes with other games.
And they get nothing out of doing that.
If there were any Canadians in the squad, or a Canadian coach then I’d perhaps be behind it.
Toronto may just as well be Birmingham, or Glasgow, or indeed anywhere in the UK.

Except they have tried everywhere else in the UK jools, They can't even get it going in Rugby mad Wales, It's dying on it's feet even along the M62's much vaunted heartlands, while Union grows ever bigger. Sad to say something needs to change, and as i have already said one team over there is a nonsense, but if after 150 years we can only boast Half a dozen stable teams, who themselves are completely reliant on Sky for survival, there is not much hope long term.

The most sensible way forward would be for mergers ( as far as survival goes ) but we all know the thinking on that " I'll give up watching the game first ". (Maybe sooner than we think). Anyway lets see what S league have in mind when they take over.

The fault with Toronto as a team Jo nothing, the fault lies with the team construction ie too few Canadians too many overseas players.But the root cause is back to money once again.By the way the RFL have shown a loss of£2 million this last season and a sizable chunk of this went in golden handshakes to departing directors.

They wouldn't have been getting golden handshakes had it been up to me. Iv'e been saying for years that S league should break away from the rfl, You'll hear the whinging start when the gravy bowl disapears.

Regarding Toronto, i can only repeat what i have already said, Where are you going to get Canadian players from, it takes years from a standing start.

And just as a matter of interest does anyone know how many foreign player we have playing League here, We all seem perfectly happy with that, In fact at the Giants alone we are getting all exited about the rumour of signing a new one, so it appears to me we are quite happy with these imports as long as they are coming here.

Anyway there are big changes coming and they had better work, or there will be no one to watch, When you are involved in the fortunes of your own team and their up's and down's and struggles, it's easy to miss the sorry state the game as a whole is in, Hence this move by S League.

Until they start putting money in at grassroots level things won’t improve.

Again i see your point jools, So i take it you are in favour of ESL " the breadwinners " including the Giants coughing up more of their earnings to fund the Grass roots of the sport as well as the championship and below that.

The SL owners have reputedly voted the opposite way to that claiming that they need more money to keep the level of SL up ,so that the value of the TV deal has a chance of at least staying as high as it is now.

The argument being that without SL there is no TV deal, without the TV deal there is no Rugby league at any kind of pro level. The challenge cup has diminished in importance and value alarmingly, So the only thing making any money to talk of is SL. So what do you reckon, share the money out more ,or every man for himself, I'll be really interested to hear what people think.

And without talent coming through from grass roots SL will all collapse anyway.

Then there is the answer the TWP cannot possibly meet the criteria so in all reality cannot be accepted into SL.

Wrong jools, Sky money will keep it going and we can always import enough Aussies for a certain level to be maintained.

So what about my question which side are you on.

Bikko , both you and me know the main criteria is Money, otherwise the Giants for example would more than likely be in the bottom league.

What about my question should the big clubs fund everything else as well.

Sorry Scotland and Ireland haven’t had their turn yet

In my opinion there are too many clubs who cannot generate the cash flow needed to survive without handouts from the RL.Ask yourself this without these hand outs these clubs would fold so what do we want several clubs to go to the wall or carry on throwing good money after bad? The thought of losing clubs, unpalatable as it may be, in my opinion it is the only way forward. It is only an opinion but I would expand the academy system starting at U15 level using top grade coaches up to u21 with a rule to play up to 5-6 players that could maybe be used to give players from the first teams game time.The present system does not allow clubs at season end to blood young players for fear of being relegated so,go back to no promotion or relegation.I would then expand SL to 17-18 clubs ie take the top 4-5 clubs into SL(this is the number that are capable of sustaining a place in SL) .I would then limit overseas players to 2 strictly enforced.This may stop the number of young players leaving for RU.The game of Rugby League is fraught with problems created by a management and the clubs themselves ie making rules and then overlooking them as suits, this has to stop.I realise this in part will upset some people but as I say it is only an opinion people may have other ideas and may have things too add to this or disagree with it is just how I see RL now. I emailed a similar letter to the RL quite a few years ago which was returned without them even bothering to read it ,I suppose they think that very long term supporters only watch games and do not see what is happening to the game we have loved for a huge part of their lives.There are a lot of things in the pipe line that no doubt we shall hear about when it's signed sealed and delivered I believe they do not give a damn what their spectators want!!

Not much there not to agree with Bilko but it doesn't really answer my question , Yes you accept that some clubs need to go, but what you don't say about all this grass roots stuff is , Who is to pay for it ? S League clubs are saying it's not going to be them , they need every penny, The RFL are skint and i don't think they even cover their running costs.( Nobody makes any money except SL)
That's what i have been saying, There is more money in Darts and tiddlywinks than Rugby league and yet you are saying we don't want any truck with your Aussie Billionaires, whatever you call your Canadian team full of English and foreign players, All that said i don't see them being in SL long term unless some of that dosh finds it's way to ESL.

Think there are interesting times ahead in the next few years, going to be big changes, at least on a par with when Sky took over, and Sky themselves seem to be in a battle with Amazon , Netflix , Disney etc. maybe League will come out of that better with better deals.

Well said...to the others quickly shake that head 20 times one way and then 20 times the other way...thats right get those cobwebs right out of there...its 2018 by the way. Toronto isn't going anywhere except straight to the top and no one can stop it...its like a tsunami!

"Believe With The Pack!"

Young lads after 15 years (sometimes younger) have conflicting interests that most certainly interferes with RL.Usually it is only the keen ones that seem to be able to unite the interests.I both played and coached for a long number of years so I do have first hand knowledge of this and I do keep in touch with a lot of my old teamates both here and abroad who cannot understand why we do not improve a great deal at any level all we seem to do is continually keep shooting ourselves in the foot.Some posters on here seem to think that gate money does not matter a 2000 gate nowadays generate circa £50,000 enough to pay 5 academy players wages for a season if each side brought in a couple of thousand spectators it would go a fair way to alleviate a lot of clubs cash flow.(yes it is pie in the sky).this is my own personal gripe against Catalans Toronto or Toulouse the league will bend over backwards for these clubs who do not/will not bring anything to the ESL table.I do no not pretend to know all the answers just a few and even they are scoffed at by some of the ruling body.Change must come but we may not like it when it does.Once again just an opinion.

You will have to get some Canuck players first.

Well said. The sooner we move away from heartland clubs who contribute nothing to the bigger picture the better

Regards

King James

Our chairman at Hull KR, Neil Hudgell has made it clear that Toronto are still the subject of due diligence. They are in the competition courtesy of the RFL but Neil Hudgell says the RFL failed to conduct due diligence, the RFL are not in charge of Super League any longer and the Super League clubs have a number of reservations.

The biggest being the inability of Toronto to host home matches during the first 2/3 months of the competition due to the harsh Canadian winter. Neil Hudgell has made it clear that the Super League clubs will not allow Toronto to have a skewed fixture list, during the frozen Canadian months of February & March they will not be allowed to play all games away...they can join the competition but only with the same conditions as every other club.

Whatever happens in the qualifiers don't bank on Toronto being in Super League next year.

Like hudgell has any clout