I used to really, really love watching the team in the 2000’s. There were some wonderful characters and while they got beat plenty of times, I generally enjoyed the rugby they played. Also, the players, and the staff (including Tony as coach) were so accessible. I had a tonne of fun days and nights, and it always seemed like the club was doing something.

I thought they tried some really good things marketing wise in a tough city to market anything (pre-social media) – it was usually pretty interesting, anyway. Back in that period they seemed to have much greater financial restrictions than they do now, and things like databases and CRM systems were more expensive and difficult to manage. I can’t particularly knock them for trying the Harlequins brand or the Stoop.

Hopefully, I’m not just worn out by it, but it seriously seems like they’ve just completely abandoned any pretense of operating that club in a way you might consider professionally the last 3-4 years. I guess they compile 25 players and pay them each £1.6m a year – that probably qualifies as professionalism.

The rebrand didn’t do much to inspire anyone. The colours look lucky dip. The jerseys are bland and late every year. Incredibly, this year, we’re the only team that didn’t change either home OR away jersey. The season tickets are late. We off our landlords who raise the rent and we don’t have any other options except becoming…. The Non-London Broncos. We search for coaches by not searching, which doesn’t do anyone any favours - coach, players or club. I’ll defer to Gutterfax or other smart people on what would work marketing-wise, but whatever we’re doing is creating crowds that are worse, not better. They don’t seem to have any actual staff there that might create any interest in anything beyond a few hundred friends and family and whatever the away team bring. These things just all seem like they're handled in a half-assed way.

Some things just don’t sell, and I understand the club is going to lose money ad infinitum, so maybe all they’re actually trying to do is just field a team of rugby players and pay them £1.6m a year and do whatever else it takes to keep the Sky money and licence (like have under 20s, London training, and scholarship programs). It certainly looks like they care about it a whole lot less than we do. I'd probably respect them if they just said "we're just trying to field a team - we have no plans".

Winning more would be nice, but I’m usually pretty lubed up win or lose, so losing’s not the end of the world for me. But it’s just really, really hard to like anything else about the place.

The stench of death has been hanging around the London pro side for several years now. To be fair, though, there's more than a few rotting corpses along the M62 as well.

It's very hard to see where a recovery starts. The whole sport can't even find a sponsor for its heavily televised national competition, so it seems unlikely a white knight is about to ride out and replace DH. But unless something fairly major changes - leadership, funding, location, publicity... then I think the club's beginning to run out of chambers in this particular game of Russian Roulette.

I hope a good start to the season on the field brings in more optimism and more returning bodies. But that'll only take the cllub so far. Anyone know any Kuwaiti millionaires ?

I recently met up with the co owners of the Warriors Mad Butcher (Sir Peter Leitch) and Owen Glenn in Auckland.....bent both their ears about how a 20 million pound investment in London Broncos over 8 years would make the club self sufficient and do wonders for the global reach of the game....Mr Glenn said he'd be in London later this year, so I have emailed him our fixture list.......you never know!

St George Illawara

Sheffied/Hudds
Gateshead/Hull
Manly/Norths

not the last one.