Coventrinity?



Birmingham Devils might be doable although Manchester Devils is more likely and just stay where they are but claim the moving cash.



Move the Bulls to Scotland and rename them Aberdeen Angus?



It simply isn't going to happen, but the names are fun to play with.

It's a crap nicked idea from American sports.



The St Louis Rams and San Diego Chargers both relocated to Los Angeles and the Oakland Raiders want to move to Las Vegas...all that has happened in the last ~18 months. It's happened a number times in America in the past beyond that.

Oakland Raiders were LA Raiders, so they're really being pimped around the place!

Funny you should mention LA.....



Los Angeles, up until last year, was probably the most important city in the NFL. Every team that was in a deadlock with their local government over a new stadium, or stadium upgrade, could simply threaten to move to LA, and use it as a bargaining chip. We've since seen Oakland Raiders do it with Las Vegas, and I'm sure we'll get one soon enough threatening to move to London, Toronto or Mexico City.



I don't think that we'll see a Super League team suddenly become "Coventry Trinity", but I could certainly see a team making such suggestions in order to sharpen the mind an unhelpful councillor or two who really should have done a lot more to enforce a section 106 planning condition. Of course, that threat is pretty empty if the RFL were unlikely to ever approve such a move, but now it would seem that Red Hall would happily wave it through if it ever came to that.



The only question then is how much do those clubs bring to their local economy? If a club doesn't bring any sort of notable value to its town or city, then such a threat probably doesn't carry much weight. If they do, then it does potentially become an economic and political argument. There is currently a lot of pressure on Leeds City Council regarding the situation at Headingley, given the value that interational cricket has on the local economy.

It's a good point that you make about bringing in visitors etc.

Catalan did not have their local authority on board in the early days but, once they saw the opportunity of some decent tourist revenue, they quickly jumped on board.

500/1000 people coming across 11+ times a year will give their economy a boost.

That equates to 30,000 ish hotel beds + spend in the local bars and shops.

Of course, that wouldn't be the case in Barnsley or Sheffield but, if the local councils work with the clubs, there is a chance to boost the local economy with various add on's.

There's a political argument as well. Would any sitting councillor or MP want to stand for re-election having just seen the local rugby team (in some cases in RL land, the only thing that puts that town on the map) up sticks and move on?



I absolutely get that life isn't easy for local authorities at the moment and there's an ethical argument about sports clubs (which are ultimately private enterprises) making demands in the context of everything else councils are dealing with, but a rugby club with 7,000 supporters is a rugby club with 7,000 potential voters - all of whom have something in common.

It just doesn't make sense as an option in the context of our system or any system with P+R



What's the value in buying Wakefield and moving them lock stock and barrell to wherever if by the time you move them or shortly after Wakefield have been relegated?



And if you can buy your way in to super league why not just do that? Why as a sport would we be better off selling Wakefield or Salford or anyone else and moving them to some where else. Why not just sell a new SL spot

Re-locating or omitting new clubs into super league is the best way to expand the game along with franchising.



If Wakefield Wildcats or Salford Red Devil's were to relocate in Coventry or New York, and a new league 1 club formed in Wakefield this would be a positive not a negative.



It concerns me the RFL have absolutely no strategy. In the last two years they have omitted two clubs into league 1 and said they must work their way up through the leagues. They have now announced this isn't necessary and clubs can relocate. Perez could have taken over Bradford, relocated them to Toronto and by-passed league 1. Get a strategy RFL and stop making it up on the hoof.

Dont just pick on Wakefield and Salford.

I'd like Leeds to move as far away as possible





Seriously though, our game just doesn't have a high enough profile to move clubs around.

However, it may just be possible to "sell" a franchise to football club but, without some kind of guarantee of SL status for "x" years, who the hell would invest significant sums of cash on a possible, maybe.



You do wonder where all this emanated from and who is behind it.

Is it some kind of "leak" from HQ or just a speculative journalist.

There a team sat in London the most important city in the country that needs promoting without any rebranding.

I was converted to RL many years ago after growing disillusioned with the direction of top flight football under Sky.



After realising that pound for pound the entertainment was better, I actually started following Saints home and away trying to get to as many games as possible.



It was probably the most enjoyable time I've had for enjoying live sport (been to many football major events etc) and I thought the fact that there was little travelling to do only encouraged me to visit more away grounds.



The one thing I never understood was RFL's attitude towards it's traditional clubs and support. I'm an outsider to the RL family, but I always got the sense that for some reason Featherstone, Leigh, Hull KR etc were somehow seen as expendable in the pursuit of pots of gold at the end of rainbows in Paris, London and Wales.



Seems to be happening again and it's sad to see.



To me the RFL should be looking much closer to home and ensuring that there are no more Bradford style meltdowns.

It does seem an oddly specific and irrelevant idea.



I can only see it coming out now as either a naive attempt to strong arm a council or there is something in the pipeline. It would be awfully random for that information to just come out

There are numerous RL teams within 30 mins of either Manchester or Liverpool who have seemingly not tapped into their potential big city support base.

If you want football fans (lapsed or active) to start following RL in the summer then you might need to simplify the league system into a format that is universally understood.

As I put on the Toronto thread , I'd guess this was the intention of Mr Perez when he bid to buy Leigh in 2014 , get promoted into SL , then relocate to Toronto and either drop Leigh completely or use them as a feeder club in the Championship/C1

Featherstone is expendable. It is a tiny location built around Post Office Road. It is a little red pimple on the bum of the United Kingdom.



Leigh is a suburb of Wigan and deserves no respect other than for the Leigh Sports Village where, at the behest of Nigel Wood, important international are held before a crowd of less than 10,000.



Hull KR does deserve respect because it can mobilise over 8,000 fans to home games.

They all deserve respect and the opportunity to compete.



Each have played some part in the rich history of the game on these shores and could do again.

Not a fan of this idea, it just isn't part of the British sporting culture. Yes Wasps have done well so far, but its early days and who's to say what a downturn in form would do? despite all the hype, great ground MKDons are still in football's 3rd tier and are currently one place below the re-born Wimbledon team who started from the very bottom.



Best to keep following the strategy that Toulouse and now Toronto are following IMO, start low where costs and risk is lower, build a winning team (nothing brings the fans in like a winning side, regardless of the standard of opposition) and grow from there. We've been there and been burnt several times with the 'throw the team in SL, hand out free tickets and hope for the best' model.



I do agree that we should be looking to build in Manchester, Liverpool & Newcastle though, but not convinced on Coventry, the crowd at the 4 Nations game was mediocre for a double-header, Wasps have taken over the town, and it is a massive ground to fill (32k)

I like the sound of the Wolverhampton Warriors

I think it's the former rather than the latter. I assume it's in response to some of the West Yorkshire clubs struggles with their local councils over stadiums at the moment.

I don't think there are enough gimmicks in Rugby league me.

Are you completely insane, what a stupid response. Leigh deserve no respect, if it wasn't for them and others, Catalans, Toulouse etc would have a game to play, idiot

It's almost 23 years now (1994) the "Framing the Future" document was in draft form. The game is no further on, lots of Superleague don,t own there own stadiums, rely on imported overseas talent and exist on stagnant insufficient funding.



Relocation, how much money figure would you put on it, should we start at 30 million over a 5 year plan. Say 20 million for a new stadium and 2 million a year for player relocation and fan base instability.



We,ve had these nomadic aspirations for decades now, the expansion idea looked promising at one point for the Newcastle area and the West Midlands area.

Maybe send Leeds to Newcastle and Warrington to Coventry for a season experiment!

If a business wants to relocate I don't see why it shouldn't be able to though I'd be mightily peeved if it was my club.



I'm in favour of expansion and believe it is vital to the future of the sport. I think the current idea with Toronto and Toulouse working their way (hopefully) up the leagues is the right way to go. The clubs can then be built on decent foundations and hopefully set up a decent youth development system to produce their own players, that imo should be a condition of being allowed into the leagues (and for those already there but that's another debate).

All the talk of setting up a decent youth structure is just nonsense.

So you take a club from the heartlands, where they are surrounded with a host of amateur clubs all feeding players towards their local club (notwithstanding the face that Wigan and Leeds will hoover up just as much of the talent that they can) and drop that club into a new area, where RL may not even be played at school and where there are no amateur clubs.

How the hell do they set up a decent youth structure ?

The only way that they can succeed is to be given plenty of extra cash to sign "ready made players" or retain a strong base where they previously were and literally just play their SL games in the new location.



They could start the grass roots stuff but, as we have seen with London, this takes decades.