Radical thought(?)which has been discussed previously: give an NRL licence to London. Although a logistical nightmare, it would draw in the Aussie/NZ community much more than Superleague. It would attract the better English players as well as top Aussie stars. Also, NRL would probably give more support for publicity in the lead up to London's participation than the RFL have ever done.

Radical, but not even the NRL has sufficient cash to pay for the sort of travelling budget you'd need. Sadly.

Unless some sort of fantastically rich white knight is about to ride out of the trees and pump a LOT of money into London, I'm afraid that the very best outcome likely would be for the RFL and other clubs to agree to put just enough money into London to allow the club to nomadically stagger on for another year on a 40% playing budget with zero infrastructure, thus allowing the better planning of a different league structure in 2015. However, I think even that is unlikely, as very few SL clubs would be willing to dip into their own pockets (as they'd see it), to subsidise London (or indeed anyone - altruism and the bigger picture aren't often concepts which get a hearing in RL boardrooms).

The only non-white-knight option now would be for SKY to call in Big Nigel and tell him outright that losing London will reduce the TV deal by significantly more than a 14th of the overall price. However, earlier this year, I heard definitely Carney and possibly Stevo utter - on sky - the view that London had failed, and it was time to move on, so I don't see SKY as riding to the rescue either.

Obviously I'm hoping someone's going to surprise me, but I fear this is the end for the Broncos. It's a real shame.

Probably irrelevant but:

CoventryBearsRL ‏@CoventryBearsRL 1h

We will be making a big announcement on the future development of the club as a professional club very soon. Stay tuned it will be worth it.

It has been said, which I posted about on another thread, Sally Bolton who ran the World Cup 2013 is staying with the RFL, what better person to send into London for a 12 or 18 month period, yes she would do other RFL work, Sally did an amazing job with the World Cup, even if someone else likes to take all the credit!

Bollox they are!
Has Knock-down Nigel found us a new owner?
Has Knock-down Nigel bought us an "iconic" ground?
Has Knock-down Nigel secured major national sponsors who in turn would attract further investment?

Has he !

Fat boy will dine out on the PERCEIVED success of the RLWC (less than 1% increase on the average attendance BTW....but that's another matter) and secure himself a job for another 4 years at least. I suspect a sponsor for SL will be rolled out during this meeting in an attempt to ambush Lenagan et al, but in reality, papering over the cracks will do little for the domestic game other than let it (at best) continue to tread water whilst other sports snap up the sponsorship revenue that is available.

The NRL can see the benefit of a team in the capital but a few small minded owners of pit town clubs can't......and there lies the problem. If you want a prosperous NATIONAL and INTERNATIONAL game, then support the break away...if you like things the way they were in the 80's, then vote for Nigel.....he'll drive the game forward and by 2016 you'll need to subscribe to Premier TV to watch Superleague......as a semi-professional HKR take on Wigan in front of 4,000 fans in the Brains Faggots Superleague!

The Super League clubs that want to challenge the governance of SL by the RFL have in mind that SL become like the Premier League in soccer and the Premiership in Union.
They want to have their own Chairman and CEO, not as now where the RFL's Chairman and CEO are also SL's.
The soccer Premiership has set the template as to how this should be done and have been spectacularly successful. The Union Premiership has done well too. Ian Lenagan and his fellow like minded Chairmen think they are capable of doing the same. They are all successful business people so why should they not be able to bring that success to SL?
If they do achieve their own re-alignment then SL IMO would prosper as never before. London's future would at first be secured and IL I'm sure would put in place a structure to enable the Broncos become a very successful club.
BTW Wigan is a former northern pit town but we have a chairman who you know well who wants London to prosper and I as another sone of Wigan want the same.
We know well that London needs extra funding, extra salary cap and flexibility on federation trained players as you've no federation SL clubs near you.
The only way to get those aspects in place is to support Ian Lenegan in trying to take SL forward and not reverse the progress made.

I'm not sure how you can say that the RLWC was not a huge success. Less than 1% attendance increase. Compared to what? Certainly not compared to the last world cup held here which flopped.

The NRL side in Canberra pays its own way. I've yet to hear about any special measures required to keep them afloat. If Broncos were able to pay their own way and put out a competitive side, who would complain about that?

I don't really think it fair to castigate "small minded pit town clubs". The owners and management of those clubs just want to see those clubs prosper. Is it odd that they tend to be in favour of measures that give their club just a chance of a return to the good old days? I certainly don't think it normal to put the interests of another club ahead of your own.

Nor have I seen much that would suggest that Ian Lenighan's proposed breakaway is in favour of more cash for Broncos. It would be an odd sort of "club power" that reduced the rebel clubs' TV cash.

0.0027 increase in average attendance over 2008, Australia conceding 4 tries in one game and then no other 4 pointers in 5 more games, including 3 dottings and a QF, SF and final that delivered 160-2 a score-line, 89% of the players born in 5 countries with not 1 Irishman in the Ireland squad.....Don't get me wrong, 460k is fantastic and other than Limerick, the venues all pretty much delivered and the foundations for 2021 are set, but in real terms, the RLWC exceeded most peoples expectations but was hardly a "National" event that captured the GB Publics attention.


Very hard to tell the difference between the Raiders and the Brumbies supporter groups as they are pretty much Identical. Nothing else to do in a city that was essentially built to run the country.....packed with Civil Servants, it's hardly a coup that both teams (14,287 Brumbies/10,226 Raiders) attract average crowds to games.....both franchises are paid to play their games by the local authority. Canberra is not like London.........Melbourne is, where there is a dominant code and the NRL team is an expansion one......Canberra is not an expansion area......and there is also the small matter of the MASSIVE difference in the cost of living in London compared to the pit towns....not really a valid comparison.


10,000 is the often used "holy grail of averages" used by the games administrators when it comes to average gates that would deliver self sufficiency......a quick glance at the record books shows that Halifax could hope to get 7k, Fev haven't cracked 5k since the 1970's and the rest of the Championship clubs would all struggle to get past 5k....the only difference to the other SL clubs would be about 20k a year in away fans ticket sales....less than 1/2% of most clubs turn overs. Replacing London with one of these teams, or defining London as a failed experiment shows the narrow mindedness of some club owners....who would soon change their tune if they were having to plough 7 figures a year into their clubs once the fans don't show up....Bradford are a bigger club than any of the Championship clubs and look what nearly happened to them AGAIN on a bigger average attendance?



I suspect that IL and the other clubs have a strategic business plan that involves quantifiable and measurable KPI's and was not written on the back of a fag packet. Nigel et al have probably managed to secure a sponsor for SL next year, but I doubt they'll announce the financials....Engage were the last one they were happy to crow about.

Happy to be proven wrong, but a SL that involves M62 Teams and a French outpost will struggle to nail down "national" sponsors and increased TV deals......The BBC will have been pleased with their audiences for their 6 games, but they will have been just as pleased with the other sports they showed that either delivered equal or bigger audiences.......SKY didn't miss anything and Premier TV is still a niche channel that will see thousands of cancelled subscriptions across the M62 now the RLWC is over....and if you think they'll get them back for wall to wall NRL coverage next year you need your bumps felt.

Fans who knock us need to look at Huddersfield Giants, rich in history, top of Super League last season and attendances of 5,000

Be interesting if the Salford Koukash Devils will attract more than Sale Sharks next year.

Add to that Bradford and Wakefield! It's time for Big Nigel to come off his The World Cup was a success all down to me!

Super League Has to take the Premiership route and bring in top staff! or the legacy of RLWC2013 will soon fade away.

At the risk of derailing the thread...what "legacy"?


Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy, USA etc will get what exactly from this tournament? 2017 RLWC semi-finalists will be England, NZ, Australia and 1 other.......same again in 2021......and again in 2025.....no amount of fixed pools delivering even but essentially pointless games will change this.....the QF's delivered 158-14 score-line.....Australia's last 3 games delivered 160-2.

I think each country should get a six figure sum so that's pretty big.

The clubs get plenty of data on fans who bought tickets (unless the fans opted out on purchase) so they can be contacted and marketed to.

There are other community follow ups planned as well but that's all I know about so as a legacy, it's a good start.

I do wonder sometimes how you get away with chatting such utter rubbish.

This WC was IMO very important in that quality players turned out for the smaller nations. This structure needs to carry on to keep those nations improving. Part of the issue is that these second / third tier nations do not play regularly enough to keep a strong set of players together and build teams between world cups.

Record attendances at both the semis and final - yeah its been a failure hasn't it.

I've had loads of feedback from mates saying how impressed they were not just with the latter stages but also the fact that teams like Italy and Samoa were competing against the big boys.

Yes, in the short-medium term Aus, NZ and England will dominate, but what should happen after this WC is building on the positive performances and even contests the lesser nations have produced. The only failure in this regard in 2013 was France, who were hopeless and that is the bigger worry for me.

The biggest legacy is getting RL respect in this country. Believe me England's appearances on the BBC have had a massive impact on the general public outside the North, a huge amount of people didn't even know RL existed before the tournament and now do and like it.

Sky news believes the talks are positive:
[urlhttp://www1.skysports.com/rugby-league/news/12212/9055286/london-broncos-in-positive-talks-as-they-battle-administration[/url

Shame we don't know what to believe

5pm today is the deadline for administration if no deal is made.

The Hive it is then

The Hive it is then

The countdown is on......

I just wish i knew who was negotiating with who about what? What have the RFL/SL clubs agreed with us if anything. Is it just the ground that needs sorting?

You need to get rid of that chip on your shoulder. No one, as far as I know, wants London to fail. As I see it, people just want a level playing field instead of competing against clubs with special dispensations. It is looking like your club will get dispensations regarding the overseas quota. I've no real problem with that, but some might, and it's a fair point to make.

Why should the owner of a northern club turn round to its fans and say that they will sacrifice their chance of success so that we can all have another go at making London successful, particularly when its fans appear to regard those northern fans as just followers of "pit town clubs"? And it has to be noted that 4,000 people watching a semi-professional HKR take on Wigan would be a record crowd for you in recent years.

I hope it works in London or the south, I really do, but continual expectation of special favours or slagging of the paying northern customers does not do greatly for your cause. It isn't the fault of the RFL that not enough people turned up to the Stoop, and that's the bottom line.

We don't all slag off northerners and northern clubs. Some of us appreciate that the north is the life blood of our game and has a lot of heritage to be proud of.

Gutterfax doesn't even live in this hemisphere so ignore him.

Woods etc is hardly responsible for Australia being very, very good at RL nor the Irish not playing much RL.

I don't think it fair to compare with Australia 2008 as a benchmark. Australia has RL as first or second sport and their team were favourites to win.

Fair play to the RFL. They be crap at many things but this worked very, very well. I know the argument that Woods isn't really responible for this but he picked the right person. If he had picked the wrong one then we'd blame him for that so credit to him. (But more to Sally Bolton).



It was ever thus. The thing is that RL is not considered to be a national sport by many and Broncos (or Crusaders) didn't change that. Is the Super League Show shown in London or Wales at peak times? No, it never was. Oddly enough it was and is shown in the North East.

Engage are an insurance company from Harrogate less than 20 miles drive from Red Hall. Few people have heard of them in any context other than sponsoring SL.

To be any different, we need more than just a token outpost club.

Absolutely effing ridiculous. Another 10 days as if the past 10 months hasn't been long enough. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/25207002

Absolutely effing ridiculous. Another 10 days as if the past 10 months hasn't been long enough. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-league/25207002

Ah....a differing point of view is rubbish now is it?

0.0027% increase in average attendances.
167,000 more fans or 57% delivering only 10% more profit
BBC viewing figures beaten by friendly Union Internationals?


2 Italians and 7 Samoans out of 34 players.......window dressing is exactly that, window dressing


The only thing that will break this dominance is a team of ex-pat Aussies playing under a flag of convenience! Short-medium term????d040.gif


Ireland were 5th in 2008.......REMIND ME HOW THEY KICKED ON?? How's the international calendar looking for 2014? Will those NRL players be flying to Italy for the games v Serbia/Russia?


Yet they are still ranked #4 in the world.......



You call it rubbish, I call it factual analysis. I know which one is backed up by facts and which one is fanciful bollox

Great RLWC 2013 BTW, just not the game changer that some are claiming it to be!

Hey at least we are predictable another 10 days ok 10 working days sooo we WILL know in 2 weeks