I was just reading an article by the above who fails to understand why the fate of Toronto was in the hands of teams like Castleford or Wakefield. It should be weighed in favour on the clubs with the most investment like St Helens. He suggests that players do not feel special going to Wakefield or Castleford.
What he should think is why did the owner of Toronto who withdrew from the league at the last minute and left him and his fellow colleagues unpaid. Then we had the business wanting to take over who could not produce an acceptable proposal and tried to force the clubs into reinstating them in SL.

I wonder if players from Wakefield and Cas ever felt special going to Knowsley Road. If only we had got lucky with a developer and a supermarket eh John?

Full of his own self importance. Whinger on the field as well.

I do believe more than two clubs voted against Toronto, Mr Wilkin.

Not sure that the word of someone with a heavily biased view should be taken as balanced.
Not for the first time, Trinity and Cas are singled out for unfair criticism.

ALL of his angst should be aimed at Toronto's previous owner, who decided to stop pumping $millions into an unsustainable project and maybe, he should also take a look in the mirror and question his own judgement, after all, he backed the wrong horse in this race.

Maybe if he had gone to a less fashionable club, he may have been paid for his services.

We’ve lived with similar statements like this about Wakey for decades from as beens like Wilkins, at least he’s a few thousand less in his bank account due to his beloved Toronto

Wilkin will have done OK out of the BBC during the CC, while his former team mates received nothing. His opinions are of no importance.

The man is a bell with an end.
Needs to change his name to Richard Head.
Who gives a flying f**k what he thinks?
The best games are between Wakey and Cas.
I'm sure that all the players are proud to run out and represent either club at either Belle Vue or The Jungle.

always been a whinger and a 'cheap shot' merchant in my opinion. I'll treat whatever he says with the contempt it deserves.

Bet Wilkins really felt something special when playing for Hull KR.

Full of his own importance and his words carry very little value when he speaks. Toronto have been as big an embarrassment to Rugby League as Wakefield and Cas have ever been.

feeling more respect to ryan bailey than wilkins

what have I just said

The elder Tomkins brothers are proving to be a bigger embarrassment then either us or Cas

Two of the biggest whingers (not wingers) in Super League have been Wilkins and his Saints cohort Wellens.

I can honestly say, as a Hull fan, I certainly prefer trips to Wakey and Cas over trips to Wigan and St Helens. We seem to get a far superior welcome from the fans.

I would add McGuire, potentially even Brough. I have never liked Wilkin.

And a better chance of 2 points?

Hardly. I was there the last time Wakey gave us a right reaming. Still managed to have a laugh with the fans though.

72-10 mate?
It was a lovely sunny day though....

Funnily enough 72-10 was the error count too.

Was a lovely day. Better than the last game before lockdown. Our Carlsberg bottles were icing up on the outside.

And even Sir Kevin himself if I dare say so.

Wellens bird impressions were legendary

Stench of entitlement from anyone involved with Toronto just stinks the place out. No surprise this type of nonsense is coming from a man who spends his life in tanning salons.

i just dont understand why some people including some members of the RFL, journalists who write for League Express , Forty 20 magazine wallies who do some of the rugby podcasts etc , want to see a Super League made up of teams with names like Toronto, New York Ottawa etc who havent a single american/canadian in them, no avadamy , no local leagues, flown in to places where it is too cold to play half the year in front of crowds who have been given free tickets and are only there for the beer watching super league has beens like Wilkins and second rate Aussies rather than teams like Wakefield, Castleford Feathersone , leigh, Barrow, Whitehaven etc who are the heart of there local communities and the birthplace of the game.

l

It's all about the money.
RL is torn between protecting it's core audience (as you describe) and needing new fans, players and investment.
If we cant break out of the heartland's, we face a slow lingering death.
However, the answer isn't just to have a headline name (like Toronto) with no roots and no real connection to the sport.

The brutal reality is that there arent enough hardcore supporters to sustain a top level professional sport and we do have to find a way to attract new/more people into the game, at every level.

If you look at London, for instance, despite their nomadic status, RL started with the headline club and then built around it but, it took 20+ years before their were any "southerners" breaking into their side and it will take a similar amount of time for any other "new" club.
It's a classic catch 22

Places like Cas, Fev, and Wakey (to a smaller degree) are not expanding towns with increasing numbers of people moving to them, being exposed to RL for the first time and becoming fans of teams in those places. More often, you either have people who are from the area and stay there (so a captive market) or people from there / fans of those teams who move elsewhere and may / may not come back for games.

I live in Ponte and if I go 7 miles one way from my house I pass the turn off for Fev's ground and go past Wakey's too. If I go 4 miles the other way I get to Cas' ground. It is a saturated market RL wise and the towns are not ballooning in population. So I get where he is coming from. I am a Leeds fan but am from elsewhere in the country, outside the 'M62 corridor' and support Leeds because I moved for uni there 15-20 years ago and they were the nearest team. I have only been to Cas and Wakey to watch Leeds play there and have no particular desire to watch games at either otherwise.

I think the game needs to be played in and have teams in bigger cities but what he says does make sense - teams will vote for what benefits them the most. Similar to how people vote for parties / MPs whose policies will benefit themselves more than others. Small teams based in smaller towns and cities a few miles apart in a saturated market place are at increasing risk of being adversely impacted by any new expansion or development plans so are increasingly likely to vote it down. It helps them as a club in the short (and maybe mid) term but ultimately limits opportunity for the game in the mid and long term.

You can see similar in the football leagues last season and the votes on how they should be ended - most voted in a way that would benefit their club rather than the league and competition as a whole. This is not wrong per se, but when a lot of clubs have similar growth development issues (either the size of their town/city, the distance of rival teams and future town development) it means that the plodders end up having more power collectively than the challengers will.

Canada was definitely a wrong choice - equivalent to getting a 6 bed, artisan detached house as your first home rather than aiming for something more viable and expansionist but realistic - setting up a presence in places like Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham or focusing on developing further in Newcastle, York, or London or potentially even Toulouse if you want to be further optimistic and developmental.

Clubs having a direct influence on the development of the game that also impacts on their development brings a conflict of interest. Unfortunately for the game and its chiefs, they either are best making those decisions itself, or if it wants the clubs to have direct say, hand the league's organisation and development over to them to self-manage. At the moment the set up provides a worst of both worlds and actually this is holding it back more than it is developing it.