Toronto's first league game was in London. Their first home game was v Oxford. Toronto agreed that with the RFL in order to ensure people mulling over whether or not to try a new sport out viewed it as credible opposition i.e a place they had heard of.

North American expansion is creating a real opportunity for London assuming franchising returns, pretty much nailed on, and there is someone willing to run a franchise. That bit may be the challenge but don't totally write it off.

A very reliable birdie told me there was a serious attempt to put a consortium together to buy Broncos three or so years ago. Franchising and a possible return to the top tier may see another go. Stress may, I have no inside info on any current plans.

A consortium 3 or 4 years ago means nothing today though.

The problem is the more the word of rugby league spreads in N America, the less important "known city names in UK" is! When the word has spread the importance to Toronto, NY, Hamilton, whoever, will be names in rugby league not big city names!!! They are going to want to see Wigan St Helens Leeds not London Skolars or Oxford Cavaliers.

The hard part with franchise is going to be how many teams. So assuming similar business set up you will have: leeds wire saints wigan hull hkr Hudds Catalan Widnes cas wakey leigh salford Toronto london broncos
That's 15 possible teams
Stick with 12 who do you lose? Out of that lot at the moment wakey, due to stadium, us same reason, the rfl will want Toronto in so Leigh Widnes or salford are out
Make it 14 teams that could play better for us, but even when we were SL our crowds didn't really stack up. So even if we got a stadium I don't think our history helps outr cause, Toronto would get the nod ahead of us

I suspect the ultimate aim would be conferences which would allow you to have more teams in Superleague. That won't be for a while, if ever, realistically.

I'd agree London franchise would be a leap of faith financially by the backers and would probably have to happen early in the process. The cachet of the name London would be at its most valuable then.

Whether a consortium a few years ago is still relevant depends on what the potential members think. Franchising would change the situation substantially, whether they would consider it attractive enough to try to get involved is down to them. If it happened we wouldn't be up against Toronto for a franchise, it would be the British teams in danger if a London franchise happened.

i disagree, selling something in NY, Hamilton etc would be easier if you have to say "and we will play London" saying "and we will play Widnes" doesn't have the same ring to it..........

Quite right Brian, Most North Americans would have no knowledge of where Wigan, Widnes or St Helens are. London they would know.
Their knowledge of the outside world is not that good.

Brian, bosty, true for what happened with Toronto, but they are now up and running and the success of other teams will be built on the back of what they do. Toronto was in effect virgin territory hence the mention f known cities in the uk rather than rugby league. May I suggest that next year Toronto will not be saying we need london first!!!
Hamilton if that rumour is true, is not that far from Toronto, the marketing (sounding like dog now) will be very different to an audience that has already had exposure to the game.
Once knowledge of the game spreads so will the names of the teams involved.

Not necessarily......the current owner is owed a considerable sum of money and any "sale" would have to involve DH walking away with nothing....at the time, we were borderline as to whether we'd fulfill our 2014 fixtures and we did still have our SL status, but if the same little birdie who told "Halfden" was the one communicating wih me, then there were a number of stumbling blocks, not least the level of debt a new owner would be prepared to take on.....but the same people are still around, based out of the Capital and still of the belief that the club can be a success if given the right backing by the RFL and other clubs.

The interesting words in there are backing by the RFL and other clubs!!!!!!

A number of things that were on the table included the ability to field NRL loanees, no "quota" although the academy and reserve grades would have continued, additional salary cap room to account for the increased cost of living and to tempt English players south.......the kind of things that smaller clubs and their fans would roll out as proof that London didn't deserve to be in SL.......like they did for 20 years anyway



The RFL would probably agree to it, but the likes of Leigh, Fev et al would be up in arms claiming unfairness.......so the game will applaud a Toronto outfit bankrolled independently and stacked with NRL/UK talent as "expansion" and simply ignore the number of Players at this years RLWC who either came from our ranks or who passed through our club when unwanted by the bigger teams. We have a good number of current players at the RLWC and even more past players there too.....London RL was starting to pay dividends but as the game insisted that DH foot the bill, it was never going to last.....

So why should we be allowed no quota?

Developing a successful side of London grown players would take 2 generations.......we were getting there and have continued with the academy and yoof sides to DH's credit, but to attract crowds, which is the route to self sufficiency, we need success.....Melbourne Storm cheated their way to relative stabilization......stripped titles and fines only galvanised their audience into a "Millwall" menatality....nobody likes us we don't care.......crowds have nearly doubled in 10 years....

I am all for the quota system to ensure that the UK game develops a larger talent pool, but expansion sides should be allowed to import more talent SO LONG AS THEY RUN ACADEMY AND YOOF PROGRAMES.

Once Toronto hit SL they should be forced to run academy and youth set ups (as should all sl sides) or receive reduced central funding....said funding should go to clubs outside SL that are trying....like us and Halifax....
...we need more LMS and Clubbs on TV with their cockney accents.....we need a successful side winning things.....we need raz-a-amataz around the promotion.....all these things will attract players to the game in the south and fans to the sport.

So.
We have been around for 30 plus years. We should now be able and expected to stand on our own 2 feet and compete under the same rules as everyone else.
Yr suggesting that we should be exempt the quota rules every other team has to abide by? Not sure how that works?
No one has ever suggested we have a team of london born players, no club in the land can claim that.
So scenario, we are given free reign to sign who we want with no quota, we win super league!!! What does that achieve?

The key is - is there anyone/group out there who would invest in us? I bought a lottery ticket last night, but no success.............

if DH decides, and I would not criticise him, to either say no more/or reduce funding then it seems we will drift in the lower leagues. I am all for Toronto/NY/etc, but actually for credibility a London franchise is crucial I would have thought. The Melbourne example is really interesting and does show what can be achieved, but the RL management appears to have little vision, and the northern clubs (I am from Hull) resents any move to move from the northern heartland

There has been no RFL support apart from the token effort in 2014 to get Barnet on board. There has never been any recognition of the extra costs of a club in the south. We either cheat our way to success as in Melbourne or settle for life as a piddling Championship side who is a feeder club for SL sides in the north.. The only other way out is someone with megabucks (as in Toronto) to buy our way to success.

There is a deep seated belief among the Northern fans that London receive massive amounts of financial support from the RFL. The belief is that for example the Cumbrian game is being starved of funds to support London. Whitehaven even stated this in the programme notes the last time we played them away.
The truth is Bradford, who themselves cheated the salary cap. Have had more money than From Red Hall than London.
Had the RFL had the vision to invest in London many years ago, things would have been markedly different. Not a few bob here and there, but proper investment.

This isn't surprising at all. I have had hundreds of conversations with bitter fans of clubs in the north who claimed that we were bunged millions in funds and not once, ever has anyone ever shown me proof of this. Given the RFL accounts are laid bare and 5 years of financials of the RL Quins were published on forums a few years back, you'd have though some northern super sleuth would have found these funds........as for Cumbria. They were gifted a test match last year and delivered 3,400 empty seats in a 10k seat stadium, so their problems is apathy and geography, not funding.
The reality was this years NRL Grand Final was between North Queensland and South Queensland with the winners boasting arguably 3 of the top 5 players on the planet......it would be like London beating Wigan with London having a couple of Burgess brothers, Jammer Graham, cooper cronk and Sam Tomkins in their ranks....

...I expect Toronto to add to their squad with a couple of stars from this world Cup whilst we'll promote a couple of kids from our U19's.....

BTW.....Eric Watson is close to selling the NZ Warriors.......he lives in London......just saying like!

Not true. Substantial assistance in various forms was provided after we re-formed after going bust mid season in the Superleague days. How do you think we got through a season with basically no income - the season ticket money went with the bankruptcy so we were left with match day revenue only.

The RFL brokered the solution that permitted us to reform. This cost others money. Without that deal we probably couldn't have re-formed.

It's also one of the reasons we got so little sympathy from others in the game when we stuffed up a few years later.

March 2005 we were given the "go ahead" to continue to the end of 2005 season, but had to find a savior by the end of the season or face the circumstances......and Lenagan with the QRL rie in delivered us from that fate. In that season we received the backing of Lewis (not the RFL as a whole) and the vote o our future was pretty close, but we got there. We did not receive a brass farthing from the RFL.....but BAD ADVICE in spades!


Agreed, other than it was Lewis and not the RFL.......who did royally f^^^k us 18 months later by telling IL to walk if he wanted Wigan.......


[uWE [/udidn't stuff up collectively.....the car crash took 5 long years to happen and we could see as far back as 2009 that we were "going too fast to take the corner"........but no amount of screaming, yelling, advising or communication with the owner, his 2 INSANE CHOICES AS CEO and idiot coaching selections was heeded.......Hughes killed us as surely as he kept us on life support since (probably out of a sense of guilt more than anything else)

Eric is not a popular fella at Mt Smart, but he's about to get NZ$20,000,000 from the AUCKLAND RL and does have a very soft spot for the Broncos.....watch this space!

A new investor with experience of running a RL club would be brilliant for the broncos. Lets just hope something comes off

He is worth around 230-240 million sterling!!! We can but dream. Out of interest, how much is our current owner worth??

There are many people in the UK who dont know where these places are

I agree with didn't get a brass farthing from the RFL directly as far as I am aware. They brokered a deal that saw a lot of other people giving London money to get through the season. This is why our attempts to sign players after were rejected, the less willing "donors" thought we were taking liberties with their money.

I also agree Richard Lewis was key and others inside the RFL were uneasy / unhappy. It is public record that it was so touch and go whether the "donors" signed the deal off he threatened to resign if they didn't. However he headed the RFL and think we'd struggle to argue the final deal wasn't RFL driven.

More.