Jaybs, you are so right. With the lack of resources that are committed to developing the sport by the RFL. How are these Northern clubs going to identify this talent, without London Broncos or Skolars doing the ground work.
Further, they would need to come away from their insular world to find them.

How do you think I feel being born in St Helens, and still living in the Metropolitan area, it summed it up for me when the Saints club had a ballot for the statue at the new ground, and the majority vote was for Cunningham? what a joke! like the name of the stadium or more ground! 90% did not have a clue who the like of Tom Van Vollenhoven was! as a youngster I read about the history of the club! now there is a statue of someone they sacked?

Jaybs, oddly we are going to agree on something. With you re that statue! But as it was a fans vote, they werr only ever going to vote for players they have watched. 2 very different players you mention, no doubt a talented player but i never liked cunningham, Tom would have been more deserving of a statue.
How did he come to play RL though?

It was interesting two years before Tom joined St Helens in 1955 both Wigan & the Saints were in a real what became known in books as a 'cloak & dagger operation' to sign him, my brother was 11 years older than me, so he told me a lot about him, he worked? on a large record shop in St Helens town centre, it was said he was a real gentleman, I was at the1961 Challenge Cup Final but in the arms of my Dad, as all the family went on that hot day!

Cunningham was the golden boy, knowing what went on a lot at St Helens over the years, I never trusted the vote, was it chosen in advance? it should never have included current players, in my opinion.

Both sport & politics people are rarely going to ever agree fully, that is life! one time it worried me when I was younger, but no longer lol

I'd be quietly confident that DH will have multiple income streams, even in retirement. He's been setting his money on fire for decades, he's got plenty of it I'm sure.

Listy, but my point is, quite likely less than previous.

So listy, whats your thoughts on what the promotion cost would be? Irrelivent of who is going to have to or who can afford to pay for it

However much it is, i suspect it will be more than it might have cost to keep us in SL!!

Still waiting for you to submit any evidence to support this claim.

I've no idea - its not worth thinking about, it'll never happen again. We've had numerous chances and DH has flushed them all down the toilet.

He won't have any as he's just got a fertile imagination.

NB you keep going on about the cost of SL. There are many factors to take into account, but principally the strategy a club approaches being the most important; If you commit to marketing and the fan base grows then potentially your outlay lowers. If you go with a 70% academy squad the likelihood is the overall cost will be lower than what Toronto did. See how differing factors affect the overall cost? Toronto bought a squad, Wigan developed a squad and enhanced it....

Clarky said on TV some time back average salary of SL player was 60k

60 x 23
10 x circa 20-30k for kids
coach, asst coach, fitness coach (Thats minimum coaching squad, marketing, ........
Ground cost
Academy, reserve teams

You do the maths

So listy what yr saying is yr not really interesting of giving your opinion on the title of the the thread thats fine.
Thanks WQ you made a stab at yr thoughts.
As for your comparison with Wigan, london have had 40 years plus to build a team around home grown! Still nowhere near, so yes to get into SL you need to bring experience in.
Fyi all those years ago when danny orr played for us he was on around 80k LMS before he left just under 20 as a kid.

Melling if I remember rightly played for England whilst at Wigan on 15k- something like that! Haven't Wigan been brought to account for breaching Minimum wage recently

Chris Melling played for Great Britain against France in 2007 when he played for us

Might have been GF. Something of note on a very small wage

Errrrr! This is our 41st year is it not? Not sure then how we could have spent 40 years plus years developing young players. I would guess we have been doing this for 15/20 years at most against by your reckoning Wigan's 130 odd years plus.

Perhaps if Broncos hadn't had to contend with an uneven playing field regarding salary cap, maybe all those London trained juniors might have been able to stay & formed a fair old team.

Not really sure what the point here is. I simply stated my thoughts on promotion cost, it was another poster who suggested that long term aim was a team made up of 70% acadamy players.
Broncos are a long long way from achieving that level.
So yup only way to SL is to buy our way in

Maybe another question for listy! Why so you think DH is cutting back on players wage bill rather than spending to get quality and experience?

Saw some figures last month that showed that for example Wigan was 13% less expensive than London excluding rent. Also on average rent in Wigan is 72% less expensive than London. While obviously other parts of the North are more expensive than Wigan, it does go to show that to create a level playing field London needed to be given more central funding than other SL clubs to compete fairly.