The cumbrian teams have very large catchment areas. Barrow - Ulverston, Askam, Dalton and Millom.
Whitehaven - Egremont. Workington - Cleator, Cockermouth, Maryport.
Its London thats the dead duck it has a catchment area of millions but can only raise an average of 2000+

The Cumbrian teams have massive catchment areas full of sheep. Cumbria is supposed to be part of the heartland area of the sport but cannot attract enough enthusiasm in the region to support Championship sides never mind a Superleague side.

London is a massive metropolis of over 6 million people representing every nation under the sun with massive competition from sports of all kinds plus every other leisure activity imaginable. It takes at least an hour to get from one side of the city to another, on a good day. It would take about five minutes to cross Cleator Moor!

Some RL fans need to spend time in London. If they did, they would quickly learn to appreciate the unique challenges of making anything a success in London, never mind the northern sport of rugby league.

Cumbria has a LOT of rugby league fans who do not turn up at matches because of the current system. Whitehaven used to get 2,000 + every week in the Championship before relegation was removed.

Dump London before they go bust again and add another team from Catalonia.

Exactly having been up there for the past 12 years the potential is massive there are probably just as many amateur teams as in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Here we have lots of rugby fans who associate themselves with superleague clubs like Leeds, Bradford, Wigan and St Helens, lots of fans here feel as though the RFL are treating them as a lost cause, when in reality the lost cause is 300 miles south.

Also correct me if I am wrong but if the broncos move to Gillingham FC next year they can,t call themselves London they are just as close to Southend on Sea and Margate in Kent, any London based fans would need to travel 40 miles into another county to watch a "London Superleague Team".

They seem to move back and forth every few years.

You can just imagine how Widnes fans felt over the years playing In lower division while London was playing super league. I imagine the likes of fev, Halifax etc feel the same now.

London was a great idea but its just not worked!

This is where I have problems with licensing. It muddy's the waters over why a team should be in SL. For me it's all about on the field performances. On that measure so far London should not be relegated. Their continued existence is a different matter. That is a business decision which is down to fans and owners.

Fans need to turn up to fund a club and owners cover any shortfall (if there is one).

The cumbria issue is a red herring. Cumbria is a consolidation issue. There is a good amature level and there is a fan base there, but the 3 dominant teams split this support. Merger will never work, so it's either a fight to the death, one team to get promotion, or for all 3 to agree to support some joint team,but I still question whether supporters of whitehaven, barrow and workington would buy into this rather than stick with their own club sides.

I think London being something of a travelling side has not helped them, but also the name London gives no local buy into the team. None of the London Football clubs work on the basis of calling themselves london. You may as well call yourself England RL club. London is as big population wise as some countries and people in London subdivide themselves when it comes to sporting competition.

For me the big error was not sticking by North Wales and the likes of Sheffield. This would expand our base whilst giving those clubs a chance for away fans to bolster the home crowd for a few years.

Hopefully London (or Gillingham) can make it to 2015 and if we get option 3 they will get a chance to get more competitive without having to spend the max every year. They need time to grow. At the moment they are being asked to compete and grow and just do not have the base to do both.

As for the TV deal, they are just bothered about viewers. Veiwers mean advertisers, which means revenue and subscriptions. That's what TV base their valuation of the game on. Whether thats 300k viewers in yorkshire or 300k views spread across the UK makes llittle difference.

A heavy investment in Wrexham would have improved SL.

A heavy investment in another French team would have improved SL

A heavy investment in a complete merger of the whole of Cumbria, to play under a Cumbrian banner would have improved SL.

A heavy investment seems to be a factor you'd think to success?

David Hughes has heavily invested in the Broncos.

All true, but you need fans to buy in and that's what has not occured in London.

What a total tragic sad thread, such bitterness, showing as I have always said the fault of our game How Parochial it is, we all-right Jack! Many clubs in Super League are 130 Years Old and are still only around 10,000 or under! is that progress?

The way the game is going it will be semi-pro within 10 years so it will not matter if there is a London, Sheffield, or North Wales side. At a time when the game is developing so fast in the south at youth, school & amateur level, yes we are struggling without a Chairman that has backed the club 110% we may not have survived until now! People forget the cost of living in London, rents and land, we have players houses many of the young players live together, we still do not own our own ground and we have paid so much in rental to football & union clubs over the years.

When we had to leave Fulham that is when the RFL should have invested in a ground and made it the RFL HQ in London a ground dedicated to nothing but Rugby League, used all the year for school finals, amateur finals etc, but no there was no foresight and people wonder why as a game we have No Sponsor for our Super League and No Sponsor for The Challenge Cup what a complete joke but week in week out people still think it is the Greatest Game ever, people who watched Wrestling on Saturday afternoon's way back on ITV used to think the same! and what has happened to that sport.

"If people think we're bad..." is the thread title, well before yesterday's disaster Saints were 8 Points ahead of us!

Money was put into buying Bradford's Odsal? Allowing Hull to take the Gateshead licence to survive, but what did I say about the game being parochial, do you genuinely think if there was one club in Cumbria they would attract more than 5,000 I seriously doubt they get less than 2,000 for a local derby! in fact Sheffield attract more than many Championship clubs. Without the licence system how does a club like Widnes survive? it takes time to build a club when you get into Super League and there attendances are nothing like in the Cup Glory days! The whole game of Rugby League needs to be looked at but not by a failed Halifax club secretary not acting as a CEO of the RFL!

In my most inbreded Lancashire accent! =#FF0000I will read the rules

Spot on - excellent post.

Well said.

Well I was born in Parr and have no imbreded Lancashire accent, not that I would be ashamed if I did, but I have never swore Once in my life and your comment says a lot! I was brought up there are Billions and Billions of words you can use rather than swear! so I will ignore your "parochial" swearing! I can always Hold my Head Up High! don't need to get to gutter talk!

The 'loyal' fan speaks. When London fizzle out you can always pick a new team.

The fact you support London despite being born in St helens says everything about what is wrong with todays society and country. No Loyalty or honour. Disgrace.

Alternatively, what is right about our country is that the people in it are free to follow the sports team of their choice.

apart from the fact he used to support saints and then changed his mind. pathetic really

We can't give up on London. To give up on London would be to basically give up on meaningful expansion, to the most important city in the country! If we give up on London then IMO we give up any hope of ever being a major sport in this country. Maybe a lot of fans would be happy to keep 'our' sport in our little section of the country where we keep ourselves to ourselves and maybe that's what us as fans deserve anyway, but it's not what the sport deserves. Unfortunately, it's what we're going to get with the attitudes of the majority.

You don't have give up on London but the Broncos are finished, there's no pride there, no heart, the fans have had enough, the club is effectively dead, terminal.

Absolutely.

But be careful of semi-literate flamers who take offence when you point out their parochial perspective might not be shared by everyone.

And you and certain others epitomise everything that's wrong with the post-industrial poo-hole which is St Helens. It's full of shaven-headed, chromosomal-deficient, tattooed knuckle-draggers with chips on their shoulders, anger management issues and a depressing line in inverse snobbery.

And that's said as someone who was born in St Helens and has lived here for over 40 years.

So i Epitomise everything that is wrong with St Helens because i disagree with you about giving London a chance or because i used such foul language in my feelings for it.

There's only 2 people from St Helens that show themselves up in this thread and i certainly aint one of them, that ugly git lurking as a reflection on your laptop is thou.

Got to go got a Anger Management meeting at 6.

Mate, why the attitude? I was born in St Helens but have lived in Berkshire since leaving uni eleven years ago. And guess what? I can see that the broncos are a basket case too.

You're blaming parochial attitudes, when the simple fact is that the broncos are a miserable failure and getting worse year by year.

Something needs to be done. I'm not saying pull out of London, but carrying on in this vein does more harm than good.

I worked in London for a long time with radio, and I was at the first Fulham game and missed very few games home and away since, I have sponsored many London players and Academy players, match balls etc, in football I have supported West Ham United since I was at school, ran one of the then England players fan clubs when I was at school, which became the largest in Europe, No I'm not disgraced in the least.

The only slight disappointment is seeing the game I was born into being run so badly and amateur, if London does fail due to the small minded attitude then I will not follow the sport any longer, it's been expensive following London and West Ham anyway.

No loyalty I wonder how many St Helens residents travel to Everton or Liverpool and why so many travel from London to Manchester United?