cardiff and swansea in football popular aswell?

Yes, well. Being commonly said does not mean it is true! It is not true. Ask Shaun MacRae. He was the coach of Gateshead at the time. He has spoken openly about his disappointment with the RFL over the Hull-Gateshead merger because it gave HULL something stupid like 45 players for their squad and left zip in Gateshead. Hull were on the brink of bankruptcy and Gateshead were sacrificed for the heartlands cause, which is a damn shame because Gateshead had a good crowd attending matches at that time. Had they been allowed to develop naturally who knows what might have happened?

I do.

They would have lost even more money.

Have heard today that the Crusaders look like moving lock stock and barrel to Wrexham where the money man there is Geoff Moss who heads up Elegant Resorts in Chester.
Newport could not raise the cash however they are looking to play three or four games in South Wales however it stills needs Leighton Samuels to sell the shares and the problem is Wrexham are willing to take most of the debt but not pay for doing so
Two are in the frame for a new Championship 1 side in South Wales one being a former director of the Ospreys who has fallen out with them.

Of all top down sides they had the best chance of successding as they got higher crowds than Newcastle Falcons then got (who since grew theirs massively) and their debt wasn't much more than the Sky money they weren't given. They still might not have succeeded though, although if they got half the stuff thrown at them that Crusaders get or Paris got and London used to get they'd have succeeded in my opinion

Steve Fox,

As with your unsubstantiated opinions, I have one too.

You are an utter edit – watch the language. tb An arrogant stupid one at that.

Of all the pork-pie-eating, pigeon-fancying, ferret-worrying, clog-stomping, strike-breaking, coal-industry-betraying, flat-capped, backwards-looking, change-resistant, incest-afficianados that frequent this site, you are one of the most ignorant in a highly competitive pool.

I will miss the sport. I will miss the great supporters of all sides I have met (except the two punchy Hull FC fans and Evil Solly who plagues Salford) and the forward thinking supports I've met on here.

Hell I'll even miss Starbug and Barry McKenzie.

But I won't miss Glorious League Freak and I won't miss you Steve Fox. Don't die horribly or anything!

I disagree. I think it was a ridiculous decision to put them in there based on little more than a handful of decent attendances at representative matches and I don't see the point of a comparison between them and a RU side that was built on much firmer foundations.

I don't think that the north east has the same potential for hosting a pro-rugby league side that, for example, South Wales has. They don't have same traditional links with RL that Wales has because of the RU converts and, though there are a handful of amateur clubs, they don't have the same level of participation that exists in Wales.

In the absence of some investor with serious money I can't see RL ever thriving in Gateshead.

I don't necessarily think it was right, so much as the least bad trial (I exclude Catalans as they moved up from the French league and thus were an existing club). I don't see things taking off now though, gone wrong too many times.

This is signature material and ban worthy. And untrue.

Crusaders till I die eh Grendel? You wouldn't know the meaning of the word even though I've seen YOU far more negative about CC on your own board than ANYONE here. You are a hypocrite. An abusive one.