Simply Losing wrote

Simply losing-Do you miss many turnings when you are out driving?

SEB wrote:I keep seeing people saying they think lots of good work is going on around London but aren't sure. Here is a very useful website: http://www.londonrl.com/ I've lifted the following headline figures off there, which are from last year so presumably will be even better now: SEB noone, well certainly not I, denies the fine well intentioned work at grass roots level across the UK as a whole. But surely we cannot ignore a striking fact that there are broadly a similar number of people engaged to develop RL in London here http://www.londonrl.com/london_rl/contacts and those who attended the game at Wire on Sunday.

SEB wrote:I keep seeing people saying they think lots of good work is going on around London but aren't sure. Here is a very useful website: http://www.londonrl.com/ I've lifted the following headline figures off there, which are from last year so presumably will be even better now: SEB noone, well certainly not I, denies the fine well intentioned work at grass roots level across the UK as a whole. But surely we cannot ignore a striking fact that there are broadly a similar number of people engaged to develop RL in London here http://www.londonrl.com/london_rl/contacts and those who attended the game at Wire on Sunday.

You really dont get it do you. Just to make it simple for you to understand Warrington is probably the nearest away match from London and that is 220 miles with a similar number back. Try doing that every second week. Infact this week its a little further its Hull FC.

So Warrington and back on Sunday, Hull and back the following Sunday are you now starting to get the drift.

I'd like to see your logical counter argument to one subsidy example I gave (and why it is false in premise) and also comment as to why London after 30 years of trying fail to average > 2.5K? home attendance in a major World capital with a circa 8.2M urban population. Before the usual argument of competing sporting demands from football in the area Warrington average 10K from a population of 200K living near LFC, EFC, MUFC, MCFC, BWFC, BRFC, WAFC) etc.

In truth some people like me are just luddites, old school losers, has beens who can't see the big picture but have come to the naive belief that RL is just not sufficently popular at pro level in the South to justify a SL berth. We are limited and provincial in thinking admittedly and believe in an organic, adjacent geographic growth strategy. Harnessing neglected regions in the North first. South Wales proved a stretch too far, than sadly Wrexham about 20 miles from Widnes followed suit.

It's a real shame as I'd like to see SL played all over the UK. But I know it's not happened in the last 100 years and won't happen in the next.

I think you make my point for me. Insufficent support to overcome distance issues to away games. The fact your home crowds are abysmal seems to have escaped consideration.

Some of you seem to have forgotten the awful atmos at Wilderspool for the pre Super League visits of Wakefield, Fev, Hull KR, Sheffield, Workington, Doncaster and any lower league team we played in the cup.

Hello Chaps n Chapesses
Leyther here to give my take on things.
Expansion needs 2 London clubs, S.East and East London should be the area we hit, not Twickersland.
We also need 2 French clubs and a BIG S.Wales club in Swansea or Cardiff, not some depressed village it was based in. We shouldn't be partnering with RU clubs, its soccer clubs we must partner with - RU will always be the anti-christ.
The problem with our structure is that Wakey/Hudds/Cas/HKR/Salford/Widnes are no bigger than Leigh/Fax/Oldham/Fev as RL clubs - the difference being SL funding.
The solution for expansion is to expand the player pool, increase intensity at the top and create a platform for ambitious clubs to grow to. No automatic P&R is killing the game outside SL for those clubs with ambition and history, yet those clubs cannot survive with annual P&R in place.
The solution is 2 divisions of 10 in SL with strictly controlled non Nationals, this will allow the 2nd French club and Welsh club, whilst allowing Heartlands expansion and increasing the intensity and player pool needed for RL to once again become a draw on the international stage via a united game.
One up one down and a franchise review every 3 years.

The problem with the London SL team is that they haven't been subsidised or given extra funding. To succeed they have to have more financial backing than the heartland teams.

However, when you have many of the heartland teams needing support (e.g. buying Odsal) then it's difficult to justify I admit.

It's a vicious circle really - to expand you need money, to get the money you need to be national, but to expand...

This is why for me the International game has to be the device to expand the game at the highest level and particularly London and the SE.

I still think a magic event at either Chelsea, Arsenal or Olympic stadium possibly even Twickenham should be on the cards even though we have the challenge cup in London.

Do you really think that the Challenge Cup at Wembley does anything at all to raise interest levels of RL in the South, beyond perhaps a fleating curiousity that the area is full of northern hoards including fans of different teams not even in the Final that attend an a yearly pilgramage? Oh and im sure a few landlords will be pleased