Leigh are a club who live under the domination of of St Helens and Wigan Warriors.

Leigh will be competing well WITH Saints & Wigan next season, whilst London will be finished.

To be fair, Leigh have a very good record against us even when we were a much better team than now.

Guys we have enough issues without getting into a spat with Leigh. Our only focus will be in whether we have a team next year who will be mid table or in the relegation spots.

RL as a sport is in massive decline, and will continue while its stuck in the M62 corridor, Sky will find better area's to spend there money on, and between cricket, football and F1, all your going to see on SKY in the coming years is US sport which is cheap for Sky to show.

Lets stop this thread, let Leigh enjoy their promotion season, I really don't care how they get on in SL, as I give SL less than 5 years to survive as it is now, unless they break out of a small section of the country (and no I am not saying London should be given a franchise, I would not give DH control of my neices under 8 girls netball team)

We have 2 wooden spoons and one MPG trophy thanks....if you're going to troll, back it up with accuracy.
As for licencing. If IMG decide to head down that route, don't be stunned if London are somehow a requirement.....your benefactor made a big point of Leigh bringing 1,000 away fans to games.....the reality is that's about £40,000 in REVENUE per host team......PER SEASON.....I hope IMG aren't into such simplistic maths and things like geographical reach and railway stations matter

Just responded (could not get to other site today)... Probably have all Hughes fan boys knocking me down over there now....

Just read it Crash - a fair assessment. Grim reading but it is what it is. In fairness consensus fell in with you. Which is a bit sad but for reasons gone into ad nauseum it’s not been great this year. It might be that the daddy had got himself into a positive mood at lunchtime and forgot that the move can’t really be described as a success on any metric. It happens. Monday is, I understand, the new Friday.

If the IMG do their maths, they'll be wondering why it cost more for the bus than the actual fans on it.

For information only: LSV is very easy and quick to get to.

Train to Manchester, train to Atherton (formerly part of Leigh), 10 minute (582) bus ride straight to Leigh bus station, cockstride to a great stadium.

Otherwise; train to Manchester, V1 bus (every 10 minutes, plush leatherette seats, WIFI, USB chargers, dedicated bus lane all the way through Salford to sail through any traffic, limited stopping, then (from the Salford border) the guided bus way (no cars bikes or trucks, lights automatically change in favour of the bus at crossroads as the transponder gets into range)) into Leigh bus station.

What's more, from next week the V1 will be two quid a trip.

The most arduous part of a Londoner's journey would be getting to Euston through traffic on a clapped out Routemaster or finding a tube train that didn't wait underground for an age. Missed many an APEXed train for that reason when working in The Smoke!

Point is that Leigh's lack of a train station is no obstacle and a non-argument.

Don't get me wrong. The game neds more blokes like your owner who assuredly wear their hearts on their sleeves, but it's very simplistic to say that 1,000 away fans benefits SL more than having a side like Toulouse in the competition.
I estimated 10 years ago that it was £4,000,000 turn over at a SL club to stand a chance of breaking even......I'd hazard a guess that figure is now £5,000,000 and if £40,000 from Leigh as opposed to £0,000 from Toulouse is the deal breaker, then the deal needs to be looked at....because each club needs to be generating £3,200,000 AFTER SKY money to break even and 1.25% of that shouldn't be the kicker.
Del the Deckbuilder will be throwing a million + at the club next year and you'll average 6/7k....piled up with sponsors and corporates, I reckon you'll be turning over close to £4.5 million......I reckon that's what clubs like Wakefield, Salford, Huddersfield and HKR operate with, so recruitment will be key for you guys.

Meanwhile, IMG need to sort London out and stage 1 is find a way to remove Hughes........

Almost certainly true Bongser but as it’s given so many so much pleasure over the years it seems churlish to let the facts get in the way. Just out of interest why don’t you have a train station. Is it a Beeching thing?

I should also say you have to be mad to get a bus in central London but that’s another matter.

London has an underground system that works just fine when not on strike. Tooting Broadway Tube station is some 1 mile on foot away.....10 minutes stroll or 5 minutes on the 493 bus.....

Euston Station to Tooting Broadway is a 27 minute journey....25 minutes from Kings Cross, so basically, arrive from the north on the Train after a 2hr journey and 30 minutes later your in your seat.......this is one game a year and hardly a huge expeditionary force type scenario.....10 minutes planning on-line and it's done!

Whilst I appreciate it must be nice to play teams from the same postcode every week, there's a reason why SKY aren't paying us what they used to and Wigan v Wire, Saints and now Leigh potentially 9 times a year may well be the reason...of we don't want to be ignored and then forgotten, we need fans who are prepared to travel, because soccer grounds look pretty full most weekends so the global economic slowdown must be 100% league

Yes it's part of that shenanigans. There was a station in Leigh, and another in Tyldesley ("Bongs" - like Atherton, "Bent" - historically part of Leigh). A section of the disused railway cutting than ran from Leigh then through Tyldesley and Salford to Manchester is now the above-mentioned guided busway. One thing that Andy Burnham got right as MP for Leigh.

I hope and wish Leigh all the best next year, yes they are in the shadow of Saints and Pies, but do wakefield or salford offer more than Leigh? Not sure to be honest. The issue that RL will die if it cannot get out of the M62 corridor is not the sole fault of Leigh, but the fault of the majority of the chairman in the north trying to hold onto a shrinking pot, which is only going to shrink more and more unless they can somehow attract more interest from outside that area of the UK.....

Remember Sky are run by comcast now, RL is just a fringe sport to them which fills up a thursday night spot, thats all it is.

Not wishing to turn this into a RU bashing thread, but RU has serious issues now, look at Worcester. They may still be way ahead of RL financially, but they've had to cut their salary cap, and a lot of pro RU clubs are treading water right now. If SL was restricted to genuinely viable professional clubs, those in reasonably modern stadiums with decent support, there'd probably only be 6 teams in the competition.

Wasn't Gus at Worcester for a bit......................

Hostile takeover?
'Oi Hughes!! Here's a fiver - now clear off!!''

No spat offered by this party, Crashers, mate

...a bit too long for the liking of their fans.
He also had a stint at Scottish Cricket...feel free to Google how that ended




You'd be overpaying for what's left

Best post ever. His posts are soooooo dull now. It used to be such a lively forum but he's chased most of the intesresting posters away with his relentless dedication to repitition.

In fairness Raggy poster turnover is just a thing and with the bizarre way the club has behaved in recent seasons I suspect many simply became disillusioned and cut their ties, although I agree the more the merrier. Many of these threads do turn negative but you know...in fairness... difficult to see the positives sometimes. The good thing about the internet is everyone can shout loud as each other. The one positive with the way the club have been going there is always something to comment on so do chip in.

Jog on!
Most of the posters who were here and on other forums don't post anymore because they don't follow the club anymore......a FACT that is backed up by yet more statistics and data.
And you, like others are incorrect in your sweeping assessment. I am sure Hughes is a lovely bloke ...he's just ruined a club with terrible decisions and appointments. And all they've done this year is double down on bad decision after bad decision, from the move, the blue shirt, the pricing, the lack of matchday experience, no programmes, no after match bands....and now they put on an event, they want £20 for it.....but you carry on cheerleading.