Do you really think I am going to rise at the obvious provocation in the previous post



[size=50Still, one post nearer to Gold Member Status[/size

Nah you don't need to, was purely TIC.

unsurprisingly you have confused yourself, for some strange reason you seemed to think that saying Hull KR havent competed in the national leagues for 4 years really meant they had to win the challenge cup in the last 4 years.

Hull KR have competed in the challenge cup for the last 10 years, they have competed in SL for the last four. They have got to 0 finals.

Leeds have competed in 3 challenge cup finals, 5 grand finals and won 4 in the last 10 years.

Wigan have competed in 2 challenge cup finals, winning 1 and 3 grand finals winning 0 in the last 10 years,

it is a whole stand you know? there isnt a quarter of it missing.

ignoring the obvious issue that attendances have moved on since the 80's leeds competed in plenty of finals in the 80s and 90s, its winning them where we had issues

Not confused at all apart from why you seem to think that it's fair to expect either a national league club to perform in the Challenge Cup at the same level as SL clubs (and ultimately win it) or a newly promoted SL club should be realistically able to win the grand final within four years. And if they don't this in some way reflects poorly on that club.

Class Roofs, pure class.

i dont expect them to, i never said i did.

thats why they arent a big club. They arent expected to win comps. Its fairly simple

OK, so by the same token South Sydney arent really expected to win anything. Are they a small time club in Aus? (clue: they are widely considered to be one of the BIGGEST names in RL down under despite their years in the wilderness, just like my own club curiously).

Interesting. You wouldn't expect a National League club to win the Challenge Cup, you wouldn't expect Hull KR to be able to win the SL Grand Final and yet you do expect Hull KR to have youth systems equal to Wigan, Leeds, Hull, and Saints and to have brought through comparable numbers of SL quality players into the first team after only four years in SL?

All at the same time as building a first team squad capable of beating anyone on their day and spending hundreds of thousands on improvements to Craven Park. Hmm...

For what its worth my definition of a "big" club would be:

10K+ fans
top 4 finish every year
contesting finals regularly
high media profile and public awareness of brand
the type of club everyone looks for on the fixture list when it comes out
strong travelling support

Sadly there are probably only 3 or 4 in SL who I would call big clubs, 1 or 2 on the borderline and the rest a varying distance behind.

I am proud of what my club has achieved in our 4 years in SL, reasonable crowds, good league finishes, making the playoffs in the last two years and competitive on the whole against any club we've come up against. Still some way to go till i would call us a "big" club but we are heading in the right direction.

A sane and balanced Hull Kingston Australian fan


I agree, HKA are making moves in the right direction and are in the 'middle order'.....decent ground, development and fan behaviour and you are looking at a Wigan of the East (that will compete with your neighbours on every level).

FFA HKA?

If I checked the squads of every SL club (which I'm not going to as it would be sad) I bet we don't have many more Australian born players then most other SL clubs.

What's this about fan behaviour, when was the last time we got fined or whatever for crowd trouble? Probably 3 years ago at that derby.

Going back to the Australian thing, we recently had to let two Aussies go (Ben & Clint).



Have however signed a couple of English kids named B.Galea & C.Newton, but not got much faith in them to be honest.

If you have to finish in the top 4 every year to be classed as a big club by you, then how the hell can there possibly be more than 4 clubs that are "big clubs"

The whole franchise thing IMO is a bit like "The Emperors New Clothes" but few are prepared to admit it.

The RFL and sooooperdooooper league have done more damage to the game in its short existance than RU ever could and which game apears on the up and up and which is even more the media darlings (and that includes SKY).

When SL started the Biggest opportunity available to the game as a whole was there but the narrow minded, myopic, my club, my club inc the Cougars ensured that it was wasted and 14 years on has the game as a WHOLE benefited?

You can show signs of success but the game, which had the opportunity to become THE game, blew it, and now we still have this farce of clubs in the same position they were 14 years ago.

The number of people who have "walked away" from the game at ALL levels is indicative of the whole mess RL is in in this country.

The only live pro game I will attend this season is the Cup Final and even the people who have been running this weekend away, for the last 20 years, are walking away.

It's so so sad and the posts on these forums show what a state the game is in and this is only a small section of the entire RL family.

I would love to believe that in the next 14 years there will be a TRUE European Superleague with vibrant domestic competitions supporting.

I won't hold my breathe though..

The most important change this time is to change a poor organisation for a similar one within the geographical confines of the existing organisations. FFS you are creating your own competition for the leisure £.

Has the game/clubs learned anything in the last 14 years.?

Nicking my analogy



A true European SL was and always will be an impossible dream

You cannot create a true Euro comp out of 1 and a 1/2 countries

You need a couple of generations to create a decent fan base of 2/3,000 at any club

In the meantime the fans and clubs you already have suffer

The whole ethos is based on TV revenue , but as we are now starting to see in football , too much exposure can result in lazyness , then the spectacle isn't as good , that is without doubt one of the reasons the Challenge cup is not as well attended as it once was , 20 years ago we had less matches on TV despite having a lot more live coverage than football

Define MANY more. 1 too many? 2 too many?

Correct.......but if you hark back to the 90's with our team full of Aussies I will hark back 3 years to the behaviour of your fans.



Sad day for the club you love when you offload 2 Australians to abide by the rules laid down by the sports governing body regarding overseas players?
Hull Kingston Australia need to accept that they will not win SL in the next 3 years, bin their overseas talent, cut down on their operational losses and get back to the community that made them great. Stop worrying about FC. Stop worrying about Quins crowds.....stop worrying about anything other than getting a squad of Local lads who in 3 to 5 years time will be fit to run out at wembley or even Old trafford.
Stop the quick fix.....think long term and you will once again be Hull Kingston Rovers.

I prefer to let the current board decide the direction of our club, they're doing pretty well aren't they?

SL Club of the year 2008 in fact. Four players in last season's SL dream team (more than any other single club I think). Coach of the month for July and 3 players in the dream team for that month, the academy side in the top group and play off status secured for the second season running for the first team. Not bad eh?

Define pretty well. 3 million in debt, crumbling ground, no yoof set up.....it's all in the eye of the beholder...but yes, I would say you are in the top 8 of the 14 currently in SL when it comes to business management.

well done, but about as worthwhile as the fair play taps when it comes to worthyness in the eyes of the RFL.

BTW....according to who?


Not bad at all....especially when you consider the 100+ year head start you have had compared to the clubs your 'trolls" attack on these boards and the respective number of foreigners in their squads.
Only Crusaders have more overseas players in their squad this year..........and only HKA have dispensation from RFL rules on overseas players, even though Salford joined the league later and have managed to cope with English players

now he's just trolling, leave him be lads he needs to get back to writing the next draft of his "how to gt more than two men and a jar of jellied eels to a London RL match"" action document!

Yep. I think we learnt something from Paris and Gateshead, RL has never been afraid to try something new, it's what the game was founded in. Whilst there have been mistakes along the way, as always there will be when you are challenging the status quo, on the whole RL has come along way in 14 years, on and off the field. But then I'm a glass half full kind of guy!

Dont underestimate the damage done by the ' stigma ' of being a NL/Championship club with a SL club as a near neighbour when it comes to trying to develop junior players , you know full well that in another 3/4 years Rovers will start seeing players coming through

we already are, but shush dont tell gutter that we actually have a decent "yoof" system!

Right I'll tell you what Gutterfax, let's just see where both clubs are in 5 years time eh. My belief is:

Rovers:

- Averaging 9000 at home (with the East Stand able to accomodate more after getting the extension work completed)

- Finishing in a play-off position in at least 3 of the 5 seasons, and providing a true test for the Big Four/Five

- Made improvements to the ground, such as the afforementioned East Stand extension, which by the way is also going to include community facilities, so you'll be proven wrong yet agani that we contribute nothing to the area.

- Continued to make a lot of our own income such as through merchandise, inc a sustained sale of 5000+ replica shirts per year (as all successful clubs do really)

- Chipped away at our debt in the same way Hull & Saints have (though noticeably you never slate these two for recent debts)

- Possibly have finally made our first major final since the 80's (the Challenge Cup perhaps). If we did, I guarantee also a sold-out allocation for us, unlike some who faily miserably to shift an allocation for Wembley even when that's the club's home city.



- Gradually improving the youth set-up year-by-year. One of the things you won't have been aware of whilst slating us on here re youth is that we recently paraded 7 or 8 youngsters in the local paper who had just been given developmental contracts


Quins:

- Still bringing youth through (which I have never said you don't deserve a lot of credit for)

- Failing to achieve any real increase in home crowds though (simply because there is not sufficient interest in London for professional RL and unfortunately there never will be, for a range of reasons)

- Consequently still mostly missing out on the play-offs and general success, due to having to rely too much on youth because the club cannot afford the blend of youth & experience that successful teams have, due to a lack of income through the gate, merchandise sales (which will also stay low) etc.

- Still taking very few fans away, thus still contributing very little to other clubs' income, whilst many SL clubs (such as Hull, Wire & ourselves) will continue bringing hundreds of fans to Quins each year and contributing well to your income.

mate he already knows Quins are poop and only getting worse. As soon as the backer has had enough of sub 3k crowds it is all over red rover for the mighty Quins, and will anyone notice?

oops our "yoof" system fails again!