You can cut and paste this all you like, but you ignore entirely the point I have made. I repeat: the sheer amount of comment/criticism about expansion clubs dwarfs comparative comment about heartlands teams and gives the impression down here that there are a considerable number of people who are excited by the chance to make comment/put the boot in.

If not, why was there an extensive thread about Gateshead's financial plight but there is ziltch about Keighley's?

I know this. I've been trying to set up a local schools league, a la the RU set-ups, with trophies, merit tables and the like, but it's heavy going. And watching the talent and potential go to waste, or go to RU (which is the same thing) is a very frustrating position. Which is why I get a little shirty when some people (not all) take opportunities like the current one to demand that the drawbridge be pulled up completely. I get equally frustrated when incompetent administrators take potentially good opportunities to provide the sort of lasting structure which is needed, like in South Wales, and piddle it away, thereby giving ammunition to the aforementioned.

The point is that it is invariably put forward as constructive criticism by the poster/writer. May be it is meant to be, but I think we both know that most reasonably intelligent people can manage to imply something without saying it outright. People will rarely put in writing what they might say in the pub to their mates.

Having for over 25 years listened to this "criticism" of the club I support and expansion generally I find it difficult not to question some or even many of the writers' motives now (and to make it clear I am not suggesting that you are one of them - your position is clear)

I have read a considerable number of your posts albeit I must admit to skipping large chunks of the semantic borefests with Smokey TA.



I answered your post simply because it is one of a number I have seen claiming that no one is happy about the situation. You think that. I'm afraid I don't agree.

As to expansion I'm afraid I have no answers and I'm not sure what your different solution is. There is no evidence that creeping expansion from the heartlands works (in 115 years it has been pretty negligable and in fact ground has probably been lost in places like Liverpool and Manchester).

I have seen people praise bottom up expansion in the likes of Hemel and Skolars, but the position of Hemel has hardly changed in 20 years of my watching them and I somehow doubt it will. Skolars are a bit of a shoestring operation and again I can't see this changing much. Both clubs are admirable in many ways but I don't think they prove the bottom up thesis.

On the face of it top down doesn't work desperately well either, but it has shown how expansion clubs are far more at risk through bad planning, bad management and sheer bad luck than heartlands clubs.

Of course participation at an amateur level outside the heartlands is another entirely different matter and that clearly has been a success when one compares it to 15 years ago. Hopefully that will continue to grow, but, like you, I am worried about the continued growth in South Wales with the Crusaders disaster at a time when it appears for the first time good quality Welsh born RL players are coming through.

There is one on totalrl and there is one in the Keighley sub-forum.

The reason why expansion clubs get such extensive threads is that expansionloonies pop up and start bringing up irrelevancies such as what they imagine your motives for posting are, whether Andy Wilson is just a miserable git, whether Widnes are any better and whether Crusaders add to the value of the Sky contract.

If you cut out all the personal attacks and spam, the amount of on-topic posts would be about the same.

Every post involving Smokey becomes a semantic borefest, it's like some sort of naff superpower that he has. In fact he probably wears his underpants on top and a Semantic Boy vest (string probably) while he's at the keyboard.



Firstly, I think "expansion" does not [uneed[/u to mean geographical expansion. There should be a whole lot more strategic direction from the RFL aimed at getting more bums on seats at all levels from SL to Championship 1.

If we want geographical expansion then we need to make the game attractive to investors, such that a well run SL club can turn a profit or at least operate with tolerable losses. For most SL clubs now this is not the case, half a million pound losses per year (and much more apparently in some cases) is not sustainable.

I don't know what the RFL's strategy for expansion (if it had one) in the past has been, but targeting locations 20/30 miles away from an existing SL club, I think, would be more beneficial (to both the new club and the existing one). Who knows if this would have worked but maybe by now we could be talking about the M1 corridor as well as the M62.

This is by no means "pulling up the drawbridge"or "demanding a retreat to the M62". The clubs in SL are what they are, and it seems clear to me that right now, they need to be made to work (including Quins and Crusaders) before any further geographical expansion (for its own sake) is contemplated (with, possibly, the exception of Toulouse, which isn't really geographical expansion of RL anyway, as with Catalan previously).

Unfortunately for you "expansion" in the context of the entire code does actually mean geographic expansion. Clubs that have been around for the best part of a century improving their business models and their operating practices isn't expansion of RL as a whole, it may be an expansion of their particular businesses but it has limited impact on RL as a national and international professional sport. Any strategy at a sport wide level needs to consider competitive positioning in the professional sports market, that doesn't exclude individual clubs who have been around a century or so strengthening themeslves, but it does exclude a return to a focus on RL as a small time regional sport, unless the objective is for RL to be a small time regional sport.

What it may mean, what you think it means and what I think it should mean are different things. I did not say what it is, merely what it needn't be.

Have Quins and Crusaders been around for the best part of a century?

And what is the point of geographical expansion if it does not lead to more support for the game? How long will SL clubs running full time teams playing in front of 3 or 4 thousand people last do you think?

You see this is the kind of thing that winds people up, I did not say "a return to a focus on RL as a small time regional sport" or anything of the sort. What I do advocate is a period of concentration on making the existing SL clubs more viable [ubefore[/u further geographical expansion.

Are you suggesting that in light of the recent troubles at the Crusaders and mutterings from the RFL about Quins level of support, the best thing for RL is more satelite clubs in areas with no history of RL and little interest in it. Yes given the Crusaders woes the investors will be queueing up won't they?

You're right that these threads being infected, which is the main reason I rarely comment on them, but let's be honest about it. These people are just trolls. By describing them as expansionloonies or the other despicable name that does the rounds simply rubs off on sensible posters who believe in for instance top down expansion.

No one in the real world believes the stuff posted by these trolls and if they pretend to, one can only wonder why. There is no need to give these people creedence by rising to it. It would stop if they were ignored.

As you mention totalrl, you will be aware that there is a troll on there at the moment starting multiple anti-expansion club threads. He too should just be ignored until he crawls off to get his sad kicks elsewhere.

Even cutting out the rubbish I am afraid I do not agree that the number of posts would be the same though. We'll just have to agree to differ.

It is clear that the strength of our game is in the heartlands and shouldn't be allowed to wither there as it was in the seventies. Clearly continued development in crowds, finance and participation is required there but a policy of concentration on the heartlands doesn't appear sensible to me, as it can easily slip into inertia.

After 115 years it is sad that this could be contemplated as there should be no question as to development/expansion there. The game should instead have been in the position to expand in modern times while union as a professsional code was still relatively week and underdeveloped. I fear that time is gone and I'm afraid people in the game still seem to be arguing about the same issues as 20 or 30 years ago without resolution.

As to your method of spreading the game one might suggest Doncaster and Sheffield haven't exactly been rip roaring successes (although I rather feel neither have been given the support to lead to anything but a precarious life - ie the lack of amateur clubs in Sheffield). Unfortunately I don't think there is any magic wand solution but some sort of thought out plan might be nice.

One thing that is often forgotten is that expansion away from the heartlands can be beneficial to the heartlands, rather than the financial millstone it is often portrayed as. A good example is the recent Sport England award which dwarfs previous awards and this was primarily put down to the spread of the game at grassroots. While it is difficult to ever imagine parity with RU in terms of sponsorship I can't help but feel that the position would improve if the sport had more credibility than just as a regional curio.

Nothing to do with Richard Lewis being involved with Sport England then

I said "primarily" not "entirely". If you want to do the game down by suggesting it was only because of a friend in high places (and there is hardly anything wrong with the game developing its influence in such places) that's up to you. If Richard Lewis had been the CEO of English Korfball instead, do you really think that sport would be getting the size of award RL got?

Fair comment Mr Dally.

Not doing the sport down, just being realistic. Londons average hasn't gone above 4200 for the last 10 years, and Crusaders are all but dead. Richard Lewis was thrown out of Tennis and we should be doing the same from RL. We will be a minority sport for years to come, and I think that has to be accepted before we have no RL at all.

The expansion of RL as a sport played in the UK does for all practical and meaningful purposes mean geographic expansion, you can redefine expansion into any contrarian definition you like, but it won't change what it means in practice.



The point of geographical expansion is RL's objective to be a national professional sport competing effectively in the UK market of professional national sports, getting attention from the media, attracting major sponsors and commercial partners. It's not a national sport if it's based around being a traditional regional sport in the north of England. That's just the way it is.



If it winds people up it's because they're thick and parochial and they can't see beyond the end of the village they live in then that's just tought. It they fail to see that if RL's not going to be a national professional sport then it's going to be an archaic regional sport, a novelty as far as commercial partners and the media is concerned, and easy pickings for more aggressive and ambitious competitors in the sports marketplace. Besides the RFL isn't going around stopping existing SL clubs from being viable, so what would you hope to achieve by getting them to take a more insular attitude?



The RFL's "mutterings" came from an RFL briefing, that flatcappers can dress it up into something far deeper is a sign only of parochialism. The RFL has a choice, it can be expansive (in practical terms, rather than contrarian rambling terms) and can try to position the game as a professional sport spreading across the UK, competing effectively in the marketplace. Or, it can listen to people who think we're living in 1975, who bang on about tradition and how their 100+ year old club should be the focus, because it's a local sport for local people, and we can get by with sponsorship from the local brewery and a few local business men on the board.

That the parochialism of some RL fans makes them incapable of seeing that the UK sports market is vastly more competitive and commercialised to what it was 20 years ago is very depressing, I just don't understand why they can't see that RL can either aim to be a professional, national sport, with all the risks that poses (and all the small time noses it puts out of joint) or it can be a throwback curiosity sport played by semi-professional players "oop north"?

So according to you he secures a big grant for the sport but he should be thrown out. Perhaps we should go back to the good old days of club chairmen running things?

The grant was for grassroots so I really have no idea what London's and Crusaders' supposed involvement was.

We must still be in the good old days then



(SL Club Chairmen)

This scenario doesn't really exist, going to potential commercial partners in a highly competitive professional sports market and saying "can we just put you on hold for a few years whilst we indulge in a spot of insular, navel gazing driven by our parochical tendency's fear of ambition?" is not going to work. The sport is riddled with parochialism and small time fear of new rival clubs in expansion areas, hence the million and one nutjob conspiracy theories about expansion clubs, in such an environment there wil be no funding for long-term investment if the RFL steps back from being ambitious about expansion. I just can't see ambitious potential commercial partners being convinced with the argument that the bright future has only been temporarily postponed, so it's worth persisiting with RL because ambition will be resumed again at some point when the flatcappers have got over their fear of not being a local sport for local people!

To get the big deals with the big partners we have to show we think big, not that we'll think big in a few years time, especially when the parochial tendency is clearly scared to death of thinking big, that's not what partners want!

In the meantime the game goes bust , Whats the saying " a bird in the hand "

Thank you for stating the bleeding obvious. Maybe one day we can make it work.




How is stemming the flow of losses insular? How is making the sport viable and more attractive to investors wishing to expand the game insular? How many investors do you think would be happy to take over Quins right now? Would the likelyhood of further investment be increased or decreased if Quins were breaking even?



The RFL highlighting the poor crowds at Quins is fact, you can stick your head in the sand all you want. And Quins have had as long as anyone as a full time professional club, so it's no good you blaming your woes and the state of RL on the "heartland" clubs, your club is as much responsible as any and more than most "heartland" clubs.

Still the RFL is being expansive, it's got North and South Wales covered with one club. Way to go!



Maybe the UK sports market is more competitive and commercialised now, it's a shame RL isn't.

No one is suggesting a return to a part time game played oop north, what is your problem?

Crusaders? PSG? Gateshead? All good ideas under your viewpoint

another pro expansion post

RL has to take risks to develop into a game which can make a proper claim to being a national professional sport, with a real international system on top of that. I'd love it if the RFL (and the RLIF for that matter) had substantial resources to put behind expansion, but the flatcappers would only scream their heads off, they already indulge in fairytales about London being "bailed out" with millions of pounds of imaginary money, what would they be like if real money was put behind investing in expansion?

Besides the whole flatcapper arguments for softly, softly expansion, not too far away and not too high up the league structure so it doesn’t compete with their own interests are just rubbish, they know as well as anyone there’s no point in doing it at all if the results aren’t even going to trouble the little fish in the little ponds. If many of the flatcappers had their way we’d be trading SL expansion clubs for a few more mediocre “traditional” clubs nestled conveniently in the “heartlands” who don’t bring anything new to the table except maybe a romanticised view of RL “tradition”, and this in return for an implicit admission that RL should just settle to be a small time regional sport.

PSG and gateshead actually worked fairly well given the limitations of each model which were stupid.

but the anti expansionist wont recognize these unfair penalties

for those that dont know :

1. gateshead got good crowds for the comp back then but had to survive on hardly / no Sky TV money.

2. PSG got very good crowds but the players had to play for their local LER clubs at the same time. when the club failed they eventually joined union and become Stade Francaise.

but all you hear from the anti expansion bridgade is it failed in these areas.

mention the failure in widnes, or leigh or other places and there are valid excuses