Forum owners apologies for linking to another forum but this needs to be in the words of the author. Who I believe is / was a man of substance at Skolars. Not sure it's as damning as he thinks, loan fees are the norm in many sports and it makes total sense for Broncos to ask to meet those buying into Skolars. But... https://www.totalrl.com/forums/index.ph ... n-skolars/

Forum owners apologies for linking to another forum but this needs to be in the words of the author. Who I believe is / was a man of substance at Skolars. Not sure it's as damning as he thinks, loan fees are the norm in many sports and it makes total sense for Broncos to ask to meet those buying into Skolars. But... https://www.totalrl.com/forums/index.ph ... n-skolars/

Halfdan of t'wide embrace wrote:Forum owners apologies for linking to another forum but this needs to be in the words of the author. Who I believe is / was a man of substance at Skolars. Not sure it's as damning as he thinks, loan fees are the norm in many sports and it makes total sense for Broncos to ask to meet those buying into Skolars. But... https://www.totalrl.com/forums/index.ph ... n-skolars/ Hmm. Broncos rightly deserve to be rinsed for the way they plundered Skolars last season. It was a loss all round and most of the players appears to have drifted out of the game including the coach. Totally muddled thinking by the club’s management. Bearing in mind the way we appear to have had a sponsors/external buy in failure not really a major surprise if we were sniffing around Skolars who seem to have done better. The ref to £400 for DR looks extraordinarily tin pot. You’d pick it up if you saw it on the floor but if that is the ball park we are playing in well I don’t know. I’d look for any opportunity to get the kids game time because where we are as a club we can’t afford to play them in 1 st team as we are right in the mix for relegation and other clubs have quite strong Dr arrangements with SL clubs. If they don’t play they’ll never get up to the standard. All a bit depressing.

Halfdan of t'wide embrace wrote:Forum owners apologies for linking to another forum but this needs to be in the words of the author. Who I believe is / was a man of substance at Skolars. Not sure it's as damning as he thinks, loan fees are the norm in many sports and it makes total sense for Broncos to ask to meet those buying into Skolars. But... https://www.totalrl.com/forums/index.ph ... n-skolars/ Hmm. Broncos rightly deserve to be rinsed for the way they plundered Skolars last season. It was a loss all round and most of the players appears to have drifted out of the game including the coach. Totally muddled thinking by the club’s management. Bearing in mind the way we appear to have had a sponsors/external buy in failure not really a major surprise if we were sniffing around Skolars who seem to have done better. The ref to £400 for DR looks extraordinarily tin pot. You’d pick it up if you saw it on the floor but if that is the ball park we are playing in well I don’t know. I’d look for any opportunity to get the kids game time because where we are as a club we can’t afford to play them in 1 st team as we are right in the mix for relegation and other clubs have quite strong Dr arrangements with SL clubs. If they don’t play they’ll never get up to the standard. All a bit depressing.

Hughes isn't satisfied with ruining one club.

All a bit unseemly isn't it? Your point on our recruitment of Skolars players and Colman last season is spot on and it's a real shame some players appear to have been lost to the game more broadly. The alleged poaching of Skolars investors shows the club in an extremely poor light and smacks of desperation on the part of DH. I guess it speaks volumes of his/the clubs current credibility the ARC investors appear to have turned him down flat.

I don't have any knowledge of the going rates for loans/DR, however it does seem churlish to be putting financial barriers in the way of sending players to the only neighbouring club operating at the elite level. That being said, if Skolars are serious about progressing under the new investment, they perhaps need to appreciate they are going to need to operate at a very different level of outlay.

Hughes doesn't own the club anymore. He's given it to his son who seems hellbent on ploughing on like his old man.
As for tapping up the supposed sklars investors....lol.....if ever there was further proof of Hughes being nowt more than a barrow boy with 1 trick, then that's it. He's Arthur Daly without the humour.

I suppose it's possible that Broncos, with Skolars receiving an investment may see them as rivals? On the IMG criteria Skolars would score well on catchment. If they could get a decent groundshare (Orient, if Matchroom saw an opportunity in RL - the Hearns still own the stadium?) They might be pitching for the premier London club tag, hence Broncos being less coopetative?

Maybe, I think any genuine Skolars/Broncos rivalry will be a slow burn however. I guess there are a lot of London/Southern based RL fans that support both teams, or at least take an interest in both and want to see both do well. How Skolars go about building a larger and more consistent following moving forward is the big challenge. You could argue that the Midlands and to a certain extent Cornwall are already outperforming them in certain aspects, how do you bring them up when you're not even the strongest performing expansion club? Needs to be a bit more than just branding yourself as the 'new' premier London RL club for me. The Hearns won't be involved, because they won't have control of the sports broader operations, certainly not now that IMG are involved. It was the whole reason they didn't get involved previously when Rimmer sounded them out.

I don't see Skolars moving in the short to medium term, unless another sporting franchise made them an offer they couldn't refuse. Don't they own their clubhouse at New River? They are also fairly well embedded in North London, which you would assume would form the basis of their catchment area moving forward. The information on the takeover that has been published (very little) has centred on the investment being a 'long term commitment'. It doesn't look like it's going to be IMG 2.0 investing a huge amount of cash very quickly.

All of this is pure speculation of course, until the due diligence is done and the prospective owners set their stall out.