When did I say anyone can't express an opinion? No, all you need do is to change your opinion, if you disagree with mine, to the correct one. That's where I come in.

And I serve you all for free, ungrateful though some can appear

Lord, in the unlikely event that you do exist, send us a sign: send us an away fixture in Toronto in the Challenge Cup, and everyone on RAB will start going to church

All this talk of buying tickets to see them at Keighley is pessimistic. They may be coming to Odsal next year.(and I don't mean in the cup)

I think there is a greater chance they'll be shoved up into SL, myself..

No, you never said that FA. I think it may be the forensic dissection, of even the most anodyne posts, using multiple quotes which gives an impression of both your disagreement and displeasure.

Of course, I know your remarks are always on a pro bono basis, for which you are rarely thanked...



So, I'll not start now!

A single quote, from one Jamie Peacock on the Beeb, with which I am most pleased:

I think it's great and the sport isn't losing anything. If it fails, so what? The sports not lost anything.

Quote ="Budgiezilla"NO salary cap for Toronto Invaders.... The club will not receive central funding from the RFL but are likely to get special dispensation to exceed the salary cap to enable them to run a full-time team and have pledged to cover all costs of visiting teams, who will fly out on a Thursday, play on Saturday and return the following day. nicked from www.sportinglife.com'" Wow - that will be some jet lag by the time they get back. Then the part timers who have to go to work the following day won't know if they are Toronto or downtown Todmorden.

Quote ="Budgiezilla"NO salary cap for Toronto Invaders.... The club will not receive central funding from the RFL but are likely to get special dispensation to exceed the salary cap to enable them to run a full-time team and have pledged to cover all costs of visiting teams, who will fly out on a Thursday, play on Saturday and return the following day. nicked from www.sportinglife.com'" Wow - that will be some jet lag by the time they get back. Then the part timers who have to go to work the following day won't know if they are Toronto or downtown Todmorden.

Not so

With a time difference of 5 hrs and a flight of 8 hrs
Take off UK 12 noon Thursday, land Toronto 3pm.
All you've done is stretched your daylight by hours. Stay up until tired and then go to bed. Maybe catch up another couple of hours on Friday night.
Play Saturday
On Sunday, catch plane eg 6am Toronto, land Manchester 7pm
Go home, supper and a nightcap, go to bed, fresh as a bobbin Monday morning.

It's Toronto, not Sydney.

Do they not have any holiday entitlement?

I guess they will have to have 'full time' contracts to attract any players, can't be 'part time' with other employment, when you're living in Canada for 4 weeks, then England for 4 weeks etc...

The actual issue may not be Monday but Thursday/ Friday, if some of the players work in schools it's a difficult thing to manage.
I know it'll only be once a season but not all jobs can take time when they want.

They'll have to make sure that they play in the UK over Easter

I'm sure the vast majority of part-tiimers in League1 will be chompin' at the bit to have an exotic weekend away in Canada and will come to some agreement about hours worked. I'm certain that, in the same position, I would. Best team bonding exercise of the year and paid for by someone else. Not much to dislike, imo.

I'd be amazed if the same vast majority don't already have loose arrangements with outside employers about non regular rugby commitments and the Canada trip would fall under that. Surely, very few employers would make sanctions against a valued employee for the [very odd day off.

If someone told me that if I used 2-3 days of my holiday entitlement at work, I could have an all expenses paid few days trip to Toronto, I'd bite their bloody hand off.

Look, it's a done deal. The Canadians - and to their credit the RFL and the C1 clubs - have done it. All done with a can-do attitude.

Not sure what's to be gained by pointing out potential snaggles and niggles after the event, and its not as if the away fixture will be on short notice, when do the fixtures come out, January? But the ship has sailed. Move on.

Understanding of how things work by us, the fans, who have an interest?

For those that haven't heard this interview on Canadian radio..... www.sportsnet.ca/590/jeff-blair- ... er-canada/ 3,000 fans already registered an interest in a season ticket?????

For those that haven't heard this interview on Canadian radio..... www.sportsnet.ca/590/jeff-blair- ... er-canada/ 3,000 fans already registered an interest in a season ticket?????

I hope it's 2099 and me rather than all people like me.

2999 and you even...

Sigh.

They come across well. www.sportsnet.ca/590/jeff-blair- ... er-canada/ And [url=https://vimeo.com/34621611here's a video[/url I found of the owner, David Argyle. I post this mostly so you can get a more accurate picture of him and Derek in the same room. Not what you'd call an interesting guy, but an interesting guy. Australian mining investor based in Toronto. Seems to specialise in potash. I'm not convinced the money's going to run out. It's interesting, and totally right, that they're not currently playing up the difference between the two codes but they are pointing out the differences. In the press conference they were very limited in the number of times they referred to it as rugby league. They're unburdened by history and it's totally the way to go. There are inevitably questions from people interested in sport when they find out there are two codes. They give me a lot of confidence they're going to handle that well.

They come across well. www.sportsnet.ca/590/jeff-blair- ... er-canada/ And [url=https://vimeo.com/34621611here's a video[/url I found of the owner, David Argyle. I post this mostly so you can get a more accurate picture of him and Derek in the same room. Not what you'd call an interesting guy, but an interesting guy. Australian mining investor based in Toronto. Seems to specialise in potash. I'm not convinced the money's going to run out. It's interesting, and totally right, that they're not currently playing up the difference between the two codes but they are pointing out the differences. In the press conference they were very limited in the number of times they referred to it as rugby league. They're unburdened by history and it's totally the way to go. There are inevitably questions from people interested in sport when they find out there are two codes. They give me a lot of confidence they're going to handle that well.

Not sure if our resident expert is a regular transatlantic flyer but the jet lag would be an issue if you are an athlete who is meant to be performing at a high level. The Warriors use the flight to Oz as an excuse for playing sh*te in Australia and that is just 3 hours and only two hours time difference.

To be right, our clubs use the same excuse for the flight to Perpignan and that's only two hours flight and one hour difference. Before that we used, "the long trek up to Cumbria /down to London", excuse. I suppose there will always be something which gets into players minds if we let it, but these 'difficulties' can be, and should be managed, in a professional organisation or sport.

For reasons I've explained before, there really isn't a jet lag issue in the case of Manchester-Toronto. I'd agree that if a player gets such an excuse into his head, that would be the biggest risk by far The effective "jet lag" for example going from Manchester to Toronto is around 3 hours. But rugby league player's body clocks are not pre-programmed to play within a narrow band of the day. I would assume that everyone would agree that there's no reason why a player's body clock would perform any worse at an 8pm Uk kickoff than it would at a 3pm UK kickoff and that's a body clock differential of 5 hours.

So let's cut out the bollox.

It's harder for the Torontians coming the other way, as they are shortenung rather than stretching days, but even then the difference isn;t great and they had at least 2 days to sort themselves out. Plus, we don't really care about the Canadians, do we, as they will be much better than English teams so any equalizing our teams can get is fair dos