Personally I think we have to expand, I was unsure as to whether having a Welsh side in SL so early was a good thing, however I hope they are here to stay. They need the backing of all clubs & especially the RFL.

On the point about London:
To start quoting how many people live in London in an attempt to belittle Harlequins attendance is just ridiculous. There are so many differing reasons why it is taking a long time to get the numbers up.
1. Soccer, plus every other sport you can think of is played in schools/clubs. League is still relatively new
2. Ethnicity % of Greater London population. This has a huge effect on who will be interested.
3. London spans a huge area. Fulham/London have moved about a lot in their relatively short history so fan bases lost. Try travelling across London at any time of day and see how long it takes!
4. Marketing, as had been said already. Fairly inept & non existant, the RFL don't have a clue how to really push the game down here.
5. Schools, it is taking time but steadily the numbers are going up, parents are seeing that league is less dangerous than union, however soccer is still the big thing far and away as that's where the money is at.
LOads of others but I'm 3 sheets to the wind & its late



However the game is blossoming, my own club St.Albans cents have been in the Challenge cup a few times, won the National Conference and South London storm has mini rugby as young as u7's & all the way up to having 2 senior sides and an academy team.
Even in the local schools around St.Albans which is a massive union heartland our coach has gotten leagues going. We even had an u14's 9's day in August were a team from West Hull came down along with a Northampton team. The Northampton team won BTW.
It will take time for expansion and for the game to really take off away from the heartlands could take another 10-20 years but only IF the RFL can develop it properly. Sadly I just don't think the present encumbants have the ability to do so. I wish I could say we will have a truly national proffesional league in the future but the ways things are panning out I can't see it happening in the next 50 years that's for certain.

Oh Boy I had to check I was still on RL fans you do talk a lot of sense, in fact a lot of good reasoning all round, its simple we have a really great, great product, but our administrators and some of the newer clubs have no idea what the market is or even which segments they need to attract, its all magic and development, a sort of announce a team and they will come mentality that time and tie again has failed.

With some out of the box thinking and a lot of measured and strategic ground work we could expand successfully but tragically the quality of the product is once again being tarnish by the RL's inaility to get things right from the off and now with the move to wrexham and the new championship one club in South Wales we are just seeing the back covering by the RL that always comes along to try and save face.

The move will be a disaster or at least take years to come to any sort of fruition. Whilst the RL save face, the money they spend on doing so would be better channelled ito estalished clubs who are having a torrid time at the moment. There is no point in expanding in an ad hoc way if the established clubs fall by the wayside.

The Visagate affair, lack of promised ground improvements, quality of squad, poor attendances etc.etc. bear all the hallmarks of previous failed excursions into the realms of expansion.

But there is no doubt that history proves that we will now pour money into the black hole of Northy Wales an area with no infrastucture, whilst in the mean time, teams like Wakey will be on the brink and Rovers losing £8000 a week. With several others relying on Sugar Daddies to keep going. Measured, calculated and pre determined development and expansion is right but not at the expense of heartland clubs, one or more of whom will go under soon!!

Working outside the box....... I could not agree more....... however sadly I don't think that the RL has even got into the box yet!!!

People actually working within the RL structure there beg to differ. But I guess you know better.

Crowds were decent compared to some other more established sides, given that they barely won a game all year and were owned by someone who had already pi$$ed off most of the ptential fan base before he even got involved with Crusaders. The potential is there if someone can make a better than half-d attempt to exploit it.


Return on investment is always kind of hard to quantify in cases like this, although Crusaders tanking puts any return at risk now anyway.

And I don't have numbers to hand because I'm not using any to try and justify things nor making unsubstantiated claims culled from gossip on these boards instead of actual research.



So it's all paranoid guesswork and unsubstantiated whinging?

Thought so.


South Wales IS an area that wants to get on board FFS.

Deary me.

I don`t know better unlike you, as you have stated .
Just expressing an opinion that expansionism on the whole has not worked . Catalans has proved successful . London in various different venues have survived .
But how long can London go on ?
We as Hull FC fans should be thankful expanding the game in the North East failed ! Remember the merger ?
Cardiff , Nottingham , Kent Invicta , Mansfield have tried and failed.
Clubs from outside the M62 corridor may survive in the lower leagues , apart from Catalans and to a lesser degree Harlequins may survive.
As for people within the RL strucuture ? If you are talking about the idiots that run our game then deary me .
SL Clubs are in financial difficulties . Without SKY SL would fold. All Clubs are heavily reliant on the money from SKY. Without it they would not survive.

Is this not the case with most sports

Home crowds were comparable in their paucity only with Harlequins, the other British expansion project. Quins still aren't pulling them in after 20 odd years but at least the profile of RL is at an all time high in London schools and is the fastest growing sport down there. It's taken a hell of a long time, though.

I don't know the history of Samuel and friends - what did he do to so pi$$ off the Welsh? Genuine question.




You're right.

And neither did I.




Not really. The general consensus of opinion that is acknowledged to be true.



But IS it? You keep making sweeping statements like:

"People actually working within the RL structure there beg to differ. But I guess you know better." and

"Yes they are. The grass roots development there is strong, and considering the rubbish season they had, crowds were decent. And this is with many people staying away because of who owned the club."

...but not really backing it up with any evidence. Come on, Mr Scientist, you know you'd get a D- if you tried to write a conclusion to an experiment without justifying that conclusion by quoting your results.

Frankly, I've seen nothing to convince me that RL will take off big style in South Wales. I'd love to be shown otherwise, honestly. But I think the sport at this time cannot afford to have another 20 years of "establishment" of a new club to reluctant locals with the financial input from the authorities that that entails. That's crazy while so many Super League clubs look so rocky financially at the moment. What we really need to raise the profile is another success story like Catalans, not a continual relighting of a damp firework that may finally ignite in a decade or so.

Why force the issue when there's other places crying out for a bit of our wonderful game? Establish first with those who want it and then the others will clamour to get on board without having to be forced.

(And can we please stop replying in this "tit-for-tat" manner as all the copy and pasting is doing my nut in?

)

So because London took 20 years, Wales will as well? What evidence is there to support that exactly?

Done correctly and imo it would take a season or two. If it carries on been run like it is currently and it will absolutely fail, never mind take 20 years imo.

Again, its simply about how its done, as per my previous post.

What evidence is there to say it won't? Do you think the RFL will learn from the London mistakes? And why is everyone so convinced that it MUST be Wales? I'm not anti-Wales and am certainly for expansion. So I really am happy to be convinced that this will work there and quickly.

But let's face it, the only expansion success has been Catalans - all credit to them and not the RFL. Surely THAT'S the model we should look to be repeating?

They weren't far behind Salford either, for what that's worth. And given their diabolical performances all season I don't think that's as bad as all that. Significantly higher than any of the Championship sides BTW.

And the profile of RL in the area is on a similar trajectory as in London (still a long way behind of course). Which is why it's such a farce that it's even being considered that they move to Wrexham.


Basically screwed over two RU clubs and a soccer club in similar fashion to what he did at Celtic. The RFL should never have got involved with him IMO.


You made a claim that lots of money had been spent. Just because you didn't put an actual figure on it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to justify such a claim when challenged.


Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.



I can't believe you actually typed that.




This isn't science.

There are no links to provide because the information comes from talking to people living and working in the area. There is actually some decent information buried in the threads on the VT - even died-in-the-wool 'flatcappers' admit the good work that has been done there and the potential that exists in South Wales.


How hard have you been looking?


Where are these places? Apart from Tolouse, who are already in the development 'pipeline'?


Sorry - I didn't see this until I'd finished.



Next time I'll try a single block reply. Promise.

The problem is that Catalan isn't really expansion at all. RL was already established in the region - the SL side just tapped into that ready-made pool of support and players. The only other place where similar conditions apply is Tolouse, and they're already in the programme.

The dreaded "M" word may rear its head again from the RFL .
Remember at the inception of SL the RFL wanted Clubs to merge . Hull and Rovers , Cas ,Fev and Wakey . Hudds and Halifax etc .... That may now be for some less wealthy SL Clubs the only option?

That will be the same Catalans who had to have their Sky money for the next season while they were still taking part in the current one and the same Harlequins who were allowed to welch on all their debts and re-start with a clean financial sheet then? Thats what I call expansion!

You do remember FC also took their Sky monies early?

[url=http://www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=rleague/09/12/07/RUGBYL_Crusaders.htmlI'd be furious if were a Widnes/Leigh/Halifax fan[/url

A few did this year but not when they were still "in-season"!!!

Thought you already answered this before?







Or were you playing devil's advocate?

Farcical. And all because nobody thought to check out Samuels' chequered past.

Feel really sorry for the Crusaders fans and the folk in South Wales who've worked hard on building a fledgling infrastructure there. I hope that the new Championship side can tap into that and keep the good work going.

So, essentially, it all boils down to your gut feeling that South Wales will be (edited would have been!

) successful quickly versus mine that it will take years and be costly.

Fair enough.



I'm curious about the Samuel issues. He's still the owner, so what has he done that's so bad?

I'm interested in what you would consider to be evidence of potential if not testimony from people actually involved in RL in the area. And why you think that your 'gut feeling' is superior to the actual experiences of people in the region.

Samuels appointed a management team that basically ran the club into the ground while trying to maximising the return on his investment. He then screwed up the move to Newport and decided to pull the plug on the club when it became clear that he'd sucked as much cash out of them as he could.

There were plenty of people warning that he'd do this at the time of Crusaders promotion to SL. Sadly they weren't listened to.

so its been announced that all of crusaders games are to be played at wrexham apart from two, where would you rather play?

hopefully our game will be at wrexham, only if it is just to cut down on travelling time

It would appear you can now book Wrexham folks! www.crusadersrfl.com/media/seasonticket1.jpg The two "on the road games" look like being v Harlequins and the Bulls. And our game seems to have been changed to a Sunday afternoon fixture. Great stuff.

It would appear you can now book Wrexham folks! www.crusadersrfl.com/media/seasonticket1.jpg The two "on the road games" look like being v Harlequins and the Bulls. And our game seems to have been changed to a Sunday afternoon fixture. Great stuff.

Quote ="old frightful"It would appear you can now book Wrexham folks! www.crusadersrfl.com/media/seasonticket1.jpg The two "on the road games" look like being v Harlequins and the Bulls. And our game seems to have been changed to a Sunday afternoon fixture. Great stuff.'" hope you are right with our game being sunday afternoon, as it is the first day of a weeks holiday, (the saturday before would have been tricky to get off )

Quote ="old frightful"It would appear you can now book Wrexham folks! www.crusadersrfl.com/media/seasonticket1.jpg The two "on the road games" look like being v Harlequins and the Bulls. And our game seems to have been changed to a Sunday afternoon fixture. Great stuff.'" hope you are right with our game being sunday afternoon, as it is the first day of a weeks holiday, (the saturday before would have been tricky to get off )

2hrs 40 mins according to AA so leave there 5.30 still be home for 8.30-9.00 not too bad
the ground looks decent holds 10,500(seems to add to more but the kop is unused) and prices for football for 2009 where about £18 to get in.
[urlhttp://www.wrexhamafc.co.uk/page/Racecourse/0,,10311,00.html[/url