The North West of England-

Population 6.8m

Super League Clubs: 4

West Yorkshire

Population: 2.1m

Super League Clubs: 5

Whilst there are a lot of teams in West Yorkshire is it fair to compare a region with a county?

This fairer??

West Yorkshire

Population 2.1m

Super League Clubs 5

Greater Manchester

Population 2.5m

Super League Clubs 2

Merseyside

Population: 1.3m

Super League Clubs 1

Cheshire

Population 1m

Super League Clubs 1

Lancashire

Population 1.4 m

Super League Clubs 0

Cumbria

Population 0.5m

Super League Clubs 0

Or how about...

Yorkshire Region

Population 5.1m

Super League Clubs 7

North West Region

Population 6.8m

Super League Clubs 4

Not a fair assessment and means little. Why don't you include London and South Wales in your assessment?

You would think that a thread entitled "a thought on expansion" would at least mention these expansion area's

Why? A thread about one aspect of expansion does not have to encompass all ideas on expansion.

FWIW I think the original post is an interesting thought. We've been told in the past by quite a few about how we're in an already over represented area but West Yorkshire is even more so and there isn't the same drive to balance it out.

A thought is exactly that, ONE THOUGHT!

As for fairness then I don't seem to recall posting any kind of conclusion about the figures just the figures themselves. I left the conclusions to be drawn by you lot and it looks like the conclusion is that these simple figures make the Yorkshire folk paranoid for some reason.

Can't think why though??

The comparison of these regions wold be

Yorkshire & Humberside + North East (As these would be a comparible land mass) versus North West. Like all stats you can fudge them to show the findings you're looking for.

For example, today i read in the paper that swine flu was going to cost the country £90 billion this year. However that was based on the fact that a statistician had arranged his numbers to say how many people were going to be off sick and what it would cost in lost work days. However the same days would still cost £90 billion regardless of the people being at work or not. Therefore the stat was useless, but sounds mindboggling!

At the end of the day, do you really think at the moment the RFL are looking at these stats your producing and thinking these are good stats for expansion or are they really thinking Scotland or Ireland or Russia or some other country. They're not thinking Lancashire or Yorkshire in my opinion. As proved with previous expansions.