The RFL shouldn’t have to pander to Toronto, or any other one specific club with scheduling. There are other considerations such as availability of stadia which have been known by the RFL for some time. Its clearly a deal or they wouldn’t have mentioned it.

No one is asking anyone to pander to someone. A little consideration would have been nice after all that Toronto has done for everyone, but it is what it is what it is....very minor issue; you are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.

What are you referring too when you say "all that Toronto has done for everyone " Canoeman

Well one down six/seven to go and we get a trip to Canada next year.

Nobles rant about a level playing field for Toronto is a bit rich saying that making them travel weekly is unfair. Seems that they are a ‘house of sand’ be interesting to see if Hull KR get both outstanding Visa’s.

If a player who’s English can play in England or France but not in Canada it’s time to call this stupid experiment off.

And don’t say every SL and Championship team should have signed players and checked they could get a Canadian Visa because in an English game that’s rubbish.

Time the RL made a decision and if it’s a Canadian team playing at an English ground until the winters over this stupidity should end there cos if that’s the future I’m a Dutchman.

They haven’t defied logic this week. Lost narrowly, but at home, to KR.
Shame.

Hull KR deserved to win the multi lined ‘field’ was awful and the Canada and UK anthems a joke it’s a club game.

Where this would improve the game is beyond me....

However Canoemans Wolfpack have bestowed blessings on Hull KR two points

They ran Hull very close, and good crowd at the game, I think they'l be a close bet for promotion, its not KR they have to beat its Widnes and by their showing against Salford, I can't see how they will beat the Wolfpack.

I think Noble has a good point, the game is not awash with money or players and having a tweek to the schedule would have made sense on both the former points, but it is what it is.

I hope they make it, would like to add Toronto to my away games roster, and one end of the ground full of beer tents, very tempting.

Close with the assistance of the chief clown that is James Child. The first Toronto try would have gone to the VR ref over here as it was very close to what looked like the touch line, the white line I think.

Noble has no good points anymore Toronto is his last chance saloon in RL and you can’t have a competition where the one team outside the Country where the game is played does less travelling then the other eleven, oh unless it’s unfair for Toronto to have to do what the Catalans have done ?

If they can’t play to a normal fixture pattern and start in Feb like the rest of the league it’s surely a no go but then the RFL work in mysterious way.

Sorry but beer tents or not this is doomed to failure hence the silence from the RFL

It may be the clubs that have the final say about the Wolfpack.

Attendance yesterday 7540, seems to me we have some playground bullies on here, you can't play with us, lets stay a small minority sport for the next 123 years ehh!

Bullies... no substitute common sense give me a team from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy, Belgium who get promoted but an 8 hour flight and no play before April at home, get real Toulouse would be expansion but yeah let’s let a club go to the wall to support Toronto who will fold as soon as the tycoon gets fed up.

If there’s noises about Catalans salary cap then looking at all the ins and outs etc what about Torontos ?

8 hour flight about the same as the Cowboys have to do play Warriors, like I say lets keep it all to ourselves in our little part of the world, we like it as a minority sport, where we can't be told to play games mid week as we need our weekends for the big boys like football and rugby union.

Lets get real shall we?

Reality is we have undersold the TV rights, the best looking games on TV tend to be local derbies as more people tend to go to these games and generate a better atmosphere, you can put a team in Timbuktu but as long as the NRL is awash with cash we will lose players and be unable to attract the better Aussies again so ok let’s have 12 teams each in different countries administered by a brainless organisation in Leeds yeah that works.

Sad to say RL is heading fast for the exit door call me a flat capper but our best option was to become the best minority game we could be as at the end of the day a great game/spectacle is what puts bums on seats and attracts TV cash just look at the NRL it ain’t much different....

This thread is an embarrassment to the Huddersfield club. Rather than worrying about the fact The Toronto Wolfpack could become a bigger club than Huddersfield Giants, try getting your own house in order.

Maybe even try copying some of the Wolfpack’s ideas to get fans to your games, they get crowds Huddersfield could only dream about.

If Toronto are going to be a success - and I'll be honest they've already been around for a lot longer than I thought they would be - then the league needs to accommodate their needs. It's as simple as that.

I have done a lot of long distance business travel across timezones - I once spent three or four months commuting between the UK and Australia (2 weeks in Adelaide, 2 weeks in Bristol, 2 weeks in Adelaide...) and I can assure you that it's not sustainable for much longer than I managed it.
Ten years back I actually turned down a really good job because it was based 50% of the time in the UK and 50% in the US. It would have killed me - I just couldn't face the travel.

The idea of maintaining any level of athletic performance with weekly transatlantic flights and permanent jetlag is pure folly.

If Toronto are to be in, the league has no choice to but to schedule their fixtures in blocks. To do anything else will kill them within a year.

NZ Warriors face a trans-Tasman trip every other week. Auckland to Sydney is 3 hours 30 and a two hour time difference. And I think NZW underperform as a result.

Toronto to Manchester is seven or eight hours - and it's a five or six hour time difference.

Again here, I speak from personal experience - long haul flying for short trips is possible but only North/South. A flight down to Johannesburg is a long day of travelling, but there's no jet lag. I could just about imagine it working. It will be interesting to see how the RU teams from Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth handle playing in a league based in Wales and Ireland - although they have set up the fixtures to help with travel as much as possible.

In my view long east/west flights are not sustainable for any length of time. If Toronto are in the league, the travel needs to be worked around.

So Toronto will need their season in home and away blocks. And the visiting team will need to play Thursday at home -> Saturday in Toronto -> Sunday at home to allow travel time and recovery over three weeks. They simply cannot play Sunday in the UK then Thursday in Canada or vice versa.

Agreed.

Ditto

I agree with what you're saying, and is why we should take onboard some of the things Toronto are doing to build the sport, because to grow something that didn't exist to something thats growing fast is something we could learn from, 7.5K fans last game in less than 2 seasons WOW.

The league should make allowance for the travel/time zone impact both from a players welfare view and a financial one - will they I'm not too sure about.

We have some stuck in the mud fans in RL who can't see an opportunity when its sat there in front of them.

Lets sit in our own little diminishing bubble sucking our sour grapes.

What ideas are these?

650 season ticket holders, 50% + free tickets let’s get real guys their 7,500 is no different to our 9,000 against Catalans.

Can’t play until April that sounds good no cold Rugby League evenings Friday night in Wigan next season works for me.

Beer tents behind the goals yes works for me the beers crap at the JS.

Will Town let us have a fully artificial pitch with a zillion lines ?

National anthems pre match...

A working men’s club singer to sing it

Don’t seem a right lot to this stick in the mud we can gain cos no monies coming into the UK side of the game so what’s the point ?

Oh and £2m Superleague money trotting off to Canada not the other way around and do they get a 125% exchange rate so they can have a extra players ?

I'm not one of the fans that want to see Toronto fail, In fact i want them and anybody else in an expansion area to succeed. I have big doubts about the whole thing though. One is i am not convinced that the S league clubs will let them in when it comes to the crunch. I know they are making all the right noises, but League is famous for saying one thing and doing the opposite.

As far as i know the reason for the " so called breakaway " by the s league clubs is because they need more of the TV money that they generate, which inevitably means less for the lower leagues, which i fear will be the end of some clubs " maybe quite a few. ( not in any way the fault of Toronto ).

At the time I thought PSG were going to be the huge boost for League that it promised to be but sadly it went the way of many many more attempts to spread the game, In fact history is littered with failed attempts to get league going in other areas, The sad fact is the only place there is any real passion for the game in Europe " with the exception of the South of France" is along the M 62 corridor,
How long has London been going now 30 some years, and they have a decent catchment area by anyone's standards, They just do not take to the game, end of.
So what is the story with Toronto, The hope is that the game will take off over there big style, and the dream is that we will all of a sudden have access to the biggest sporting market in the world, That is the dream and i'm not saying that it can't happen, and i have little info true, but it seems to me to be another PSG with a very wealthy man behind it " which may make the difference ".

My problem is that until such times as some of these other dreamed of teams over there come into being " of which as yet there is no sign but it is very early days " Till then it seems as though Toronto will just be adding costs to the S league clubs running costs at a time when they claim they need more money. They could of course be playing the long game and gambling that it will take off big style over there " and who knows " but playing the long game is a another trait that RL has not done well in the past.

So who knows, I certainly wish them the best of luck, I have watched the game for 60 years now " and there are plenty who have done longer " It needs a huge boost from somewhere because it is a shadow of the game it has been in past days. I have real reservations about Toronto but i will be hoping they can provide that boost.

I had a vacation home in USA for 10 years RL’s problem is that the NBA, NHL NASCAR etc etc and American Football is just the tip of the iceberg and fill the US TV channels and offer great day experiences to watch a live game.

College Football draws bigger crowds than Rugby League, minor league baseball draws half decent crowds and let’s be fair in a run in between the NRL and Superleague at the moment if you were a US TV channel which would you choose ?

jumbucks other comment ‘it’s a shadow of what it was’ speaks volumes to me as a ‘dinosaur’ as a lot won’t remember it as a winter game.

Lots of negatives but serious rugby at the major holidays at Xmas you planned around being at Thrum Hall for derby with Halifax.

At Easter you could spend two days and watch Wigan v Saints, Warrington v Widnes, Bradford v Leeds and Hudds v Wakefield travelling by car and except for the driver have a great two days with a few beers, meat pies that were things of legend, big crowds and good rugby.

Days that as Jumbuck says have gone but I think the cure for the game lies somewhere in the middle of taking the game forward with innovation but not forgetting that there’s an awful lot of good things we’ve got rid and still do of which people miss and the cure lies somewhere between both

Widnes had chosen to play their home fixture against Halifax on the Sunday before flying out to Toronto. They obviously didn’t envisage travel been a problem or they would have had the Halifax fixture down for the Friday.

The Halifax game has now been moved to Saturday by sky.