and 7,000+ crowds

Indeed
All those complaining about the one sided games are probably the same people who said that "expansion clubs" should work their way up from the bottom.
I know that hindsight is a wonderful thing but, we probably should have put Bradford in the bottom tier and allowed Toronto to stare in the Championship, which could have saved some of the "farce" that we've had this term.
I still feel that there needs to be some "benefit" (in terms of increased Sky sponsorship)to the ESL to have Toronto in the comp, as to keep the deal as previous will effectively mean spreading the jam more thinly but, yet again, we suffer from lack of strategy from the governing body.

Toronto is (or promises to be) a fantastic example of what happens when you put rugby people in charge of the rugby and marketing people in charge of the marketing, rather than following the usual rugby league way of putting rugby people in charge of the rugby, and accountants in charge of the marketing.

Next years Challenge Cup games....will they be allowed to to play at home (if drawn)?

Why not ?

Presumably if they make it to SL then they would bring in money from a Canadian TV deal. You could presumably attract more sponsors, even for teams in England, since you're being exposed to more people and in different countries.

Their home games are all played in the uk until may anyway!

They are too good for even Super League, they need to play in the NRL....can this be arranged ?

Dunno, who do you think I am, Todd Greenberg?

They'll give Leigh a pasting next year. Looking forward to that.

Indeed they might , possibly depending on which SL club they decide to pillage of players in winter , my monies on Cas , unless of course Montreal get there first

Montreal are a few years off yet, but I expect them to be up to Leigh standard pretty quickly once they're up & running.

And all this "pillaging" of players

, which of the "pillaged" players would get into the current Leigh side?

Worthington definitely.
Dixon probably into the 17.
Kay possibly.

The rest not so much.

Less about who would get into the team and more about the disruption caused last season.

Of those three, which ones were contracted to Leigh for 2017?

It disrupted you that much you flew through the 8's and didn't even need the MPG. If you're season had collapsed you'd maybe have a case. Surely it's time to move on from it? Worthington, Kay & Dixon are hardly worth being bitter about.

Was just answering your question.

I'm not bitter about Toronto, but if a club was tapping up your players from February onwards on the scale that Toronto were talking to Leigh players, you wouldn't be screaming your support for them from the rooftops.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you personally were bitter, more referring to those who have shown a lot of bitterness over the past year or so towards Toronto.

arent they changing the structure of the challenge cup anyway?

First I've heard of this. Anyone else know anything?

I can't see the structure of the challenge cup changing until the structure of Super League does which looks like it may be 2018.

On a different note, Warrington and Wigan organising pre-season friendlies with NRL clubs casts doubt on the World Club Challenge/Series.

Depends on how it's done. They might just follow football's example and have a small pre-season tour there. I for one encourage it, the more our teams play against the Aussies the more we will learn.

Don't you mean Hull and Wigan?

Having just watched some of the Toronto highlights (from their website), the crowd looked way smaller than 7000 ?, maybe a couple of thousand at the most.
Are they counting "members" or actual attendances ?

Also, in the context of what has gone before, the defeat against York was one hell of a shock.

Without being too disrespectful to York, Toronto should be all over them with their squad.
Did they rest players or just have a bad day at the office ?

thought same when i watched them too, didnt look like 7k to me.

Toronto loss to york doesnt mean much they will still go up, toulouse did a similar thing last season.

Well who knows how many the stand holds where they are filming from. Canadians have a tendency to turn up later in the game rather than get there for kickoff. I've watched every single one of Toronto's games on Premier Sports and I was shocked how empty the ground looked in the 10th minute but then by the 60th minute it looked really full! And they will count season ticket holders just like every other cub does.

Yes the York defeat was a shock but York played extremely well! Some fantastic rugby on show from them, they kept their discipline and Toronto did not hence the two sin bins from two team warnings. York coach must get a lot of praise too from taking points from their 64-22 loss in Toronto and using that to learn for this game.

You are right Toronto should have won and nope, no resting players. Toronto had a full team out minus the injured Andrew Dixon, Gary Wheeler, Sean Penkywicz and Ryan Bailey.

TORONTO - Quentin Togaga'e, Jonny Pownall, Greg Worthington, Craig Hall, Liam Kay, Blake Wallace, Ryan Brierley, Adam Sidlow, Bob Beswick, Jake Emmitt, James Laithwaite, Richard Whiting, Jack Bussey.

SUBS - Rhys Jacks, Fuifui Moimoi, Shaun Pick, Steve Crossley.

Am I missing something, the game was played at York.

What's Gary Wheeler's appearance record been like at Toronto? Has he managed to put a run of games together finally?