The Virtual Terrace • League One
Donnyman wrote:
Usual stale bait wasn't it? So stale it was nothing but a pile of mould..........
The north is where the most investment and interest is but of course such clubs need to make way for "expansion". Have spent many years reading thousands of posts telling me how the game will only survive if we spend Millions opening up clubs where nobody plays or invests in the game.
Even the London Broncos chairman is from Oldham IIRC. how far have they come in over 40 years? What's his total "spend" and what has he got for that??
Quite a bit to unpack here.
Firstly, being from the South, I consider anywhere north of the Watford Gap "THE NORTH" and often refer to some places with RL sides as Pit Villages as a term of affection. It's like Northern Monkeys.....just a bit of banter.
In terms of making way for expansion, before SKY came along and we parachuted London ad PSG into the sport at the expense of Keighly, Wigan were buying everything and the top flight had an average attendance of about 5.5k. PSG folded pretty much straight out of the traps and London began their nomadic existence. Meanwhile, the 2nd tier carried on with some pretty average attendance figures with various sides attempting to reach the SL an the supposed riches there. Teams to win promotion include Salford, Wakefield, Hull Sharks, Hull Kingstone Rovers, Castleford & Widnes. Of those sides, the Hull Teams and Castleford have increased their fan base, whilst Wakefield and Salford are embarrassingly low in terms of support. London used to be bemoaned for having a average of 4,900 in 2006......both wakefield and Salford had fewer average gates than that in 2018.
In terms of Hughes and his investment. The bloke is a cast iron RL legend, but a fool too boot. If he's flushed about 30 million of his own cash away, he's also flushed another 50 in Central Funding. With little planning, he is has essentially stumbled from season to season, ground to ground with not a clue of what to do. To his credit, the youth system at London is paying dividends with the Likes of LMS picking up SL rings, but in real terms, Hughes and London haven't done any harm to the game and certainly offer more in terms of growth than many of the 2nd and 3rd tier West Yorkshire sides do. In terms of Keighly. they had their chance to get promoted in 1996 and blew it....last year of full comp they were thankful for West Wales stopping them being the worst side in the three tiers. They don't bring anything to the table in terms of growth and development of the game and have a track record of being very VERY badly run. But you'd have them in rather than Toulouse
Back to the original topic. League 1 in 2022 is currently an unknown entity. Until te RFL announce the exact level of funding and the nextt format of the tiers of the game, the likes of Coventry and Skolars will hold back on any major spending or signings. If the Game does got to 2 x 10 with a third division split into regional sections, then these clubs along with the unlucky bottom 6 of the Championship will need to make their own way. If there is funding available, I'd argue it would be better spent in Wales, London and Coventry than Keighly, but that's just my opinion. The Broncos going part time has seen a great number of their own developed players being signed in the North and this shows the benefit of a strong presence in the Capital, but if you're of the opinion that Bradford bring more to the table, then let's see them earn it without any hand outs (or more handouts) from the RFL.
Statistics: Posted by orangeman — Wed Oct 27, 2021 8:11 pm — Replies 7 — Views 398