Quote ="Donnyman"The problem here is with respect to you.... people dream of RL expanding all over the place, and they dream it so hard and so passionately that they lose all sense of logic.'"
I don't think I have lost sense of logic. I've said previously on this forum that the first generation of Canadian SL players are, at best, still in pampers. I have also said previously that securing a TV deal is far from a sure bet - but being present in North America does at the very least give the sport an opportunity to knock on doors and make its case.
The comments about converting gridiron players to RL were, I believe, made by Eric Perez rather than Argyle. Perez is no longer involved with the club, so to hold any business to the ideas of a former employee seems, to me, to be "losing sense of logic".
Even if that were still the agenda, if TW have tried to develop players via that route and concluded that isn't viable, do we hold that against them? Theories, hypotheses and ideas are proven wrong far more often than they are proven right. Again, do we continue to hold that over their head for all eternity? Where is the sense of logic in that? How does that encourage new thinking?
For me, there is no inherent reason why RL cannot be sold to an audience in most markets in the world. There isn't something genetic about being born within earshot of the M62 that gives you a predisposition to liking RL. If what we have is a product that people want to buy, whether that is in Toronto or Thatto Heath, that should be celebrated and encouraged. The history of RL expansion shows that we've done neither more often than we've done either and TW is just the latest chapter in that story. In their three years of existence they've been shaken down for TV money, Challenge Cup bonds and business class flights, met resistance from almost every quarter of the game and decried at almost every juncture. Is it any wonder RL struggles to attract investment if that is how we respond?
And we shouldn't be trying to impose British sporting culture onto those markets. I highly doubt many people watching TW care that there aren't any Canadians in the team. I think they care even less about going to every away game, yet these are, for some reason, sticks to beat them with. North American sporting and fan culture is different to ours. Not better, not worse, just different.
What is frustrating about this whole debate is the rancorous opposition that I talked about above. The idea that Toronto shouldn't be allowed to succeed, even if they could, because people are worried about it taking food off the plate of the club they support. It's fear of change and it's not a positive mentality for any professional sport to have.
It's the same logic that sees people placing unrealistic expectations and demands on Catalans Dragons, rather than allowing them to be a successful club in their own right, just so that they can decry their achievements. If the measure of success for Catalans Dragons is "yeah, but is the French national team still crap", we should be applying the same logic to English teams and throwing plenty of them out of SL because England can't beat Australia.
