Saddened, I think I know you're just trolling. But in case you're not :

1) London have never been "bailed out" by anyone save their owners. In this sense, they are exactly the same as every other club who are regularly "bailed out" by wealthy benefactors.

2) Saying that Quins/Broncos, with their hardcore 2000 fans, successful youth teams and top-class facilities should be cast to the winds, while investment should be made in Skolars with their 200 hardcore fans, second team which failed to complete the RLC season last year and municipal-sports-centre-with-a-stand, is beyond parody.

I'm not trolling, what reason would I have for that? You cannot possibly run a viable professional team when you get attendances of just 1,900 with supposedly no central help.

You mention the 2,000 hardcore fans. I don't believe that. I would just love to see the figures for season ticket sales this season. As mentioned there were no more than 800 people there against Salford. The 1,900 figure is fantasy.

To be in Super League a club should be able to post crowds of 10,000 ideally. At the moment we're revising that figure down to 6,000 or so for your home games, even if there are no away fans. Catalans more than manage it and haven't been playing well either, so why can't London. They have the biggest market to play with in the competition. It is an absolute crime that they are allowed to carry on in SL when they make no effort at all to market the sport and sell tickets. If they were making an effort, for example ditching the Harlequins monicker, being inventive with ticket sales like Bradford or Widnes or moving to another location then I wouldn't mind them being there.

After a good 15 or so years on SL funding they have crowds of less than 2,000 which are falling. There appears to be no effort at all to increase that. One can only wonder just what is going on at Harlequins. One thing for sure is that unless they improve they won't be around for long.

Remove London and replace with any of the folwloing Crusaders, Hull, Salford, Wakefield ......at what position in the league would you start to fork out your money Phippsy

Hypothetical this, but if you know that you X amount of income GUARANTEED for a period, and you know that Y amount of expenditure is less than X then you should be ok.

If another source of income, say Z is available then this is a bonus.

Everyone would like as much Z as possible but will be happy as long as X exceeds Y.

perhaps there are some clubs who operate this way.

Of course it's only hypothetical.

You can run a team with no fans at all as long as you have a rich enough guy willing to put his hand in his own pocket. It's a red herring. The issue is not one for the RFL, or the other clubs in the game, it's for David Hughes. Just like Salford's crowds have always been the concern of Wilkinson, not the RFL.



Whether you believe it or not is hardly a reasonable criteria for franchise assessments. As for the idea that Quins would overstate their crowd by more than 100%, when they'll pay tax on the higher figure, is a bit silly. Quins' back office is pretty crap, but overstating their tax liabilities would be pushing it even for them.



Which would currently rule out the majority of our SL clubs, including Saints.



I am a Saints fan.



I think at present, Catalans' version of not playing well is a standard to which most Quins fans can only aspire.



If an ability to successfully market the sport was a franchise criteria, then we'd probably be down to matches between Wigan and Bradford every weekend. Quins' marketing is shocking. Gutterfax can happily explain why and how to improve it until he's blue in the face. Personally I think they're in a downward spiral right now - poor crowds, poor atmosphere, poor performance, poorer crowds, less money for marketing, poor crowds etc etc etc. Hard to see how they'll crack that for a while. Salford took decades, and still haven't cracked it. Huddersfield also took decades but now have cracked it after depending on Ken Davy for years - their own version of Ian Hughes. I can't recall anyone ever suggesting we should abandon our sport in Huddersfield or Salford.



It seems to me that part of the problem is that the only way to stop the spiral is to invest a large amount of cash in marketing and players (ultimately, Quins are taking the field with less player capital than every team they face, every week. In our game, that's unforgiving). But the more the usual suspects call for the end of RL in London, the less likely either Hughes or anyone else are to actually make that investment. Why would you hand over lots of cash if you think the decision to end London RL has already been taken ?

My issue with this is simply that I want all clubs to be successful, I want all clubs to grow their fans and budgets, and I want all clubs to develop and identify top new players. I would sooner cut my own arm off than call for the death of any RL club, and the more they struggle, the more I feel sympathy for them, and that includes clubs from the RLC, through the chanmpionship, to SL. I can't understand anyone who professes to be an RL fan who demands an end to any club, rather than demanding more help for them.

Crusaders no.

Other 3 yes.

They have lower crowds than the crusaders, and are lieing about their crowd totals. They must be adding season ticket holders even if they don't turn up.

Very sad to see. I want them to succeed, but something needs to happen drastically.

Problem is this is SL not PL. Our sugar daddys don;t have that deep a pocket and whilst they put in a fair whack it is clearly not enough for Quins. They are obviously not paying close to the salary cap and their marketing dept and other off field staff is poor. I'd love to know what their annual budget is, I would suspect it is 1/2 of most SL clubs and the results are there for all to see. The results of this should be a concern for the RFL.

I think it is. Hughes managed to get the RFL to take on some of the cost of youth development in London. I was pretty surprised to discover how much of the youth development in the South had historically been funded only by the Broncos/Quins, until this year. Some of that is now being helped by the RFL.

I think the problem is that we've approached RL in London (and elsewhere) in a typically half-d RL way. We say we'll do something, then sit back and wait for it to happen through the efforts of someone else, offering little more than warm words. A decision needs to be made about whether we are serious about establishing a successful professional presence in the capital. If we are, then we need to fund it, in the same way the Aussie sports' governing bodies fund their attempts to expand into each others' territory. If we don't think that it's a strategic necessity for our competition, then we carry on the way we are, and when Hughes runs out of cash/motivation, then Quins/Broncos will be history and 30 years of professional RL in the capital will come to an end. Ironically, that would happen just as the talent conveyor belt is beginning to start producing interesting results, but that would end too.

I think we are at a turning point, but I for one would like to see us finding ways of investing in what we want to achieve, rather than simply shrugging our shoulders and saying "well, it's all , let's get back to the M62".

Sadly bringing Widnes in has just done that.

RL has one thing that other sports lack, a real exciting game on the field.

The game just seems to struggle with the secondary aspects of running the sport.

There is a "hybrid" thread somewhere else about "merging"

Perhaps RL needs RU business acumen.

You would be correct but seeing as you and Starbug were talking about the best and worst team in either league, it's also redundant.

Ah ok. I thought by worst he meant the team(s) finishing lowest.

What did he mean by worst then?

Plenty of z's in that post.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz




You say in 79 words something which could have been said in 8.

But he SAYS it with such a sense of FLAMBOYANCE!!

Why can NO ONE underSTAND the IMPORTANCE of the post is beyond ME!!!

Just how many of the moaning mini's have bothered to attend the Stoop rather than slagging off the club?

I was their for that one boy it was a cold night and a crap game of Rugby.

I love for quins to do well but I'm now at a lost of how to do it. They couldn't even give away 2,500 pairs of tickets. For me the ground is great sometimes its a pain in the ass to get to. But I dont think the Quins brand works. I would drop it and I would like to them to leave the stoop but thats the question where to. There is no where unless they can build their own ground.

East End of London. Plenty of room at Dagenham now that Ford has slimmed down and released land for development. Next to the high speed line, M25, national rail and tube.

Not that simple though is it?

In spite of what some of the bores on this site say, analysing the current state of Harlequins is entirely fair. We're living in an era where clubs are being judged with a fine toothed comb on and off the pitch. Not just Harlequins. Everyone. It's pretty tough to run a club during a recession, any club. Yet the RFL are making large demands of clubs. Except one or two who are exempt. Are these for the good of the game as a whole? Probably. Can they be sustained in the long term without someone losing a lot of cash? Probably not.

Crowds in this game are a massive source of income. It's understandable that teams in danger of losing their super league place because of their off the pitch presentation and look towards the likes of quins with annoyance. Their crowds are getting worse. The likes of wakefield and cas have stronger clubs on the whole, and they're in rugby areas not dominated by a local union club. Yet they are the ones up for dropping out of super league for god knows how long. I suspect 3 years will be too optimistic considering there are teams waiting longer.

It is natural the quins question pops up now and again. It's not particularly helpful, they are probably a necessary evil and by that I mean a weaker team being kept up top artificially and to the expense of others. But they do have to change and it isn't always cloth cappery which brings a spotlight on their fragility. That's just a convenient and frustrating get out clause around here. It's okay to pour as much scourn on some clubs as you like but leave the RFL's projects alone and don't dare question their long term viability.

Of course, there are precious few answers to the big questions surrounding quins. They've moved here there and everywhere. There are always calls to move. Yet they move and then when the crowds don't turn up they need more time to settle because they've moved too much. Until people realise this latest move wasn't the answer and they move again. They even appear to be bumping crowds up to the 1900 mark judging by the television I saw on Saturday. With this in mind I can totally understand the frustration of any fan about to see their team significantly weakened by licensing maneuvres, I've been there myself, it feels like an injustice.

I suspect sky money or no sky money, London are going no where. They're staying in the top league. I do hope they manage to find a better solution than Quins though, as it isn't working there and that is obvious. But given the increased costs of life in the capital and the scarcity of suitable stadiums like I say the answer is difficult.

Which clubs are exempt and what evidence for this exemption do you have? All clubs are going through the license process so its difficult to see which are exempt.
If clubs cant get an SL license they only have their selves to blame. We arent demanding a particularly high standard.

The league does have some artificiality to it. Christ, we put limits on the teams clubs can and cant put out, we have a salary cap which has a stated purpose of artificially levelling the competition. If we are artificially creating competition why isnt artificially deciding who is in the competition simply a natural part of what we are already doing.

They do need to find answers, nobody denies that, nobody denies they need to increase crowds, but thats only one part

Smokey, I've told you. You are wasting your breath. I wont play your games so don't bother replying to me. Anyone else wants to reply, fine. But you, no.

For what it's worth - your post was bob on mate. Smokey's on a different planet to everyone.

Which was Doncaster was it not? If it wasn't then it was Toulouse, no?

Yes. Let's bring in Fax, Leigh, Barrow and Sheffield.

We've already established Toulouse were exempt.