Beaumont has left as the club will have a £1m per annum shortfall in funding. Looking for new investors for 2019. https://leighrl.co.uk/wp/blog/2018/07/2 ... atement-2/ Sad times in RL.

Beaumont has left as the club will have a £1m per annum shortfall in funding. Looking for new investors for 2019. https://leighrl.co.uk/wp/blog/2018/07/2 ... atement-2/ Sad times in RL.

Really hope they secure some new investment!

It's a shame how difficult it is for championship clubs to become sustainable super league clubs

Someone, somewhere has got their sums wrong or put the family silver on red.

I think Derek Beaumont gambled on assembling a squad on the £1.2M parachute payment on them making it back into SL. This has not worked out for them, so they have an expensive squad but TV money drops to £200K for next year. I guess he was not prepared (or able) to stump up the £1M difference.

Leigh tried to run before they could walk. They were strutting round the championship like a big member in a changing room whilst they were fulltime unlike the rest of their opposition. They got brought back down to earth with a bang once they moved up putting the odd decent display on here and there but for the whole part looked out of place. The arrogance of the club is extremely off putting and due to that arrogance they thought they would jump back up SL easy peasy.

I cant help but see the same thing happening to Toronto, however I actually hope they don't as north American project has to work IMO for the good of the game. The Canadians and the Yanks would market the game in ways the Small minded, flat cap, whippet owning RFL chiefs could never imagine.

Very harsh IMO. They had a go, they showed some ambition in a decent stadium with a decent following. Yes they gambled, but, I for one am not rejoicing that the 'project' appears to have failed/stalled.

Shirley, we need more teams, more competition, not failure and less, we need Toronto AND Leigh why do you hope that their (Toronto's) gamble pays off?

Turn your attention to my last paragraph,

"north American project has to work IMO for the good of the game. The Canadians and the Yanks would market the game in ways the Small minded, flat cap, whippet owning RFL chiefs could never imagine."

It was an empty stadium except for two stands. Yes they give it their best but they poo'd it when it came to facing 11 other teams in the league who could outmatch them physically and that's when they showed themselves for who they were. A team of has beens who wanted to bully their way through a game. If Toronto gain promotion they will have to replace Rowley as soon as they find out because that's all he's good for.

This is what is worrying. Leigh are a team with a great stadium and facilities, with a wealthy backer, ambition, slap bang in the heartlands with a decent support base. Yet still they fail.

I read all of your post including your last paragraph.

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but, you seemed to be saying that Leigh were set to fail or even deserved to on the basis of the way that they went about their business, you almost seemed pleased. You admit that Toronto might still fail but you hope that they don't for the good of the game, yet they are basically doing a Leigh aren't they?

A few on here should be casting their minds back 10 months, when Leigh played Les Cats, in the £1,000,000 game. There were more than a few [i begging[/i for a French win, and to hell with the consequences, all in the name of expansion.
Personally, I had splinters up my Aris, saying [i what will be, will be[/i.
Beaumont put all his eggs in one basket, and it's not worked out well for him. That's sport. He took the risk, and it's bitten him on the proverbial.

A once proud club, that's given the game the likes of Woods and Drummond (oh, the NOISE Hilton Park made whenever Dessie got the ball) is in big trouble. As are Salford if rumours are to be believed. A powerhouse like Bradford, now a basket case. Big clubs, traditional clubs, are going the way of the dodo, and expansion is what's wanted at the top.

As I said, they took the risks, and it's failed. C'est la vie. C'est sport.
Just be careful of what you wish for. There's more to life than L"escargots and maple syrup. There's lobby, too.

Widnes just announced Harrison Hansen.

Leigh's situation shows just how steep the cliff is between SL and the Championship, as well as from the top end the the bottom end of that same league.

There is nothing to rejoice with the demise of 2 of our nearest & dearest .I doubt Catalans or Toronto will ever bring enough fans to sing the punk version of Oh Warry ,Warry at the HJ, or to remind us that it is always our year. Trying to imitate the spread of Rugby Union is one thing ,but being able to compete is a different matter.

Indeed ninearches
Let's not forget (oh go on, s, only joking) the demise of Widnes.
Dougie Laughton broke the bank for the likes of Davies, Moriarty, Tait et Al, which broke the club financially, and have (and probably never will) recovered.

Speculate to accumulate, yes.
Don't put all your chips on black, as soon as you walk into the Casino

The comparison with Union is interesting, a fair few “big” teams went to the wall trying to buy success. Think about the number of Union clubs that are based in the North West with a lengthy history but the only one in the top tier is Sale. A number of teams that considered themselves to be Union royalty have struggled. Waterloo, Bristol, Nuneaton, the “exiles” teams.
Times are hard.
For RL teams clumped together in a very small area the battle for survival is vicious. Consolidation in the heartlands and expansion into new areas is the only realistic route to survival in my view. It is sad that traditional teams are struggling for survival but for all we blame administrators if fans don’t go through the turnstiles the clubs will struggle.

But, could it not be argued that it is the drab current offering that is causing the decline of spectator numbers is due to the administrators ?

1. The salary cap has effectively meant we lose our star players and cannot recruit them from the NRL.
2. Weak enforcement of the rules against slowing the play the ball.
3. Weak enforcement of the rules against mithering the ref for penalties.
4. Weak enforcement of rules governing feigning injury.
5. Rules encourage more kicking than running rugby.
6. League structure that causes too many games against the same teams.

They basically are doing a leigh yes. except Toronto bring something to the table and Leigh bring a smaller fanbase and a town without a train station.

Im not happy they are in financial trouble but after the sheer arrogance they displayed whilst knocking part time clubs about and giving it the big'un about how they'd be more of a competative side than the bottom f SL clubs then yes. I am happy they've been relegated. After the way they handled their relegations and how they'd still be more than a match for the championship and how they'd bounce back, yes im glad they've not managed promotion.

they talk a good game but in the end thats all they can do.

whilst toronto are doing the same thing now and it seems hypocritical of me to not wish the same upon Toronto; Toronto actually bring something to the game that we don't currently have. An expansion club in a city with 7 other professional sports teams yet still attract higher crowds than Salford, Huddersfield, Widnes & Wakefield. They've promoted the game better in their two year existence than the RFL, SL or sky have managed in the last 10 years.

so whilst i don't particularly like Toronto or Leigh, I can actually get behind Toronto due to what they offer and what benifts they can bring to the game.

Point 1 is the main issue there, but its also that our clubs don't have the financial power compared to the Aussie clubs especially given the depreciation of the pound. If you scrapped the salary cap you would probably get a handful more biggish name Aussies coming over, but you'd also see wage inflation amongst existing players and some SL clubs getting themselves in financial trouble.

I remember about 10 years or so ago on these forums the general view was that there were too many Aussies over here and if we clamped down on Aussie imports a load of superstar young British players who were not currently getting their chance, would pop up to replace them. Well that hasn't happened. Since it has become harder for clubs to use the NRL route we've just seen more home-grown players who are really Championship standard, coming through and playing 3 or 4 seasons before they get moved down to the Championship whereas before they would go down more quickly. You see that with the self-congratulatory posts on here about how many Warrington Academy players became regulars or semi-regulars in our first team over the past 5 years. Apart from Currie how many are actually top drawer...?

On the other points about the rules the interesting thing is that people also say the NRL is a boring over-structured league these days and SL is a more exciting product.

As for the league structure I think the Super 8s is a bit crap. We had good playoff systems in the past with a top 5 or top 6 playoff and one-up, one-down providing the Championship winners meet the criteria for SL. That was one thing that wasn't broken, that we tried to meddle with rather than fixing things that are broken.

Good post. My next concern for the rules is that we will adopt the "armpit or lower" rule for tackling for player safety (as being trialled in RU). This will sterilise our game even further. People refer to RL as "the greatest game on Earth". The fact is, it isn't and people are voting with their feet.

I agree that the NRL style of rugby is boring. The strange thing is that they have posted a 5.5% year on year increase in attendances to an average of 16k+ and an increase in TV money*

As you know I have never argued that Warrington would develop their own star players. We have an abysmal track record. You mention Currie as an exception but he was developed at Wigan.

*https://www.nrl.com/news/2018/05/22/nrl-crowds-and-ratings/

The game needs to get back to being the slick handling spectacle it once was with less emphasis on kicks. Maybe do away with the tackle count for a start ,& use player stat technology to give bonus points for entertaining & enterprising rugby .

My proposed changes would be :

1. An increase in tackle count to 8 may be helpful to allow a team to have attacking aspirations in their own half and to reduce the number of end of set kicks.

2. Reduce the interchanges to 4 substitutions.

3. All players (except the player tackled and dummy half) must be behind the ball when it is kicked to be onside. This will get rid of the "downtown" feature and reduce the benefit of the kick which is basically where the ball is fielded less 10-15m.

4. 5 points for a try.

5. Ball to go down middle channel of the scrum.

I think these changes would encourage more running rugby, less kicking, less predictability.