bbfaz

Wow, there genuinely is a place called Muff in Donegal.

Well then all expansion is a waste of time and it's all a moot point. We should give up.

I've given up on real-life Rugby League so I might as well try the virtual.

IMO, we need more heartland teams. If you're in semi pro RL desert and you can make a go of it, we need you to try. More Gooles, less Cornwalls. I know that's the opposite of what everybody says but there are seemingly two paths in expansion teams; hire a bunch of local players and lose, or bus in a bunch of northerners and be competitive. Therefore, cut out the middleman and bus a bunch of northerners to somewhere closer by. This also means trying to expand to places around the periphery of the heartlands. More RL in Merseyside, Cheshire, Derbyshire etc.

I've been considering buying this but games are so buggy at release now that I wait a few months until they do a soft relaunch once everything is working.

Jesus, good on Dan Roberts. He was our little engine that could.

Personally I hope it's the latter. What a hoax?

Since the 2008 recession, Rugby League has been fighting over an ever-shrinking pie. The only way to reverse this is to bring more money into the game through TV and sponsorships. Otherwise, we need to increase matchday revenues, which would be based around a massive economic recovery across the north of England which just isn't coming. So, if the NRL can bring in TV money and sponsorships without the pro clubs giving up what remains of the family silver, then bully for them. However, any more cutting of the existing pie isn't good enough. Even if you reduce the number of mouths you feed, there's still not enough to go around.

I do sometimes say that I'm not from here.

Jeff Goldblum. Could've sworn he died of a heart attack in 2018.

While I think London is important, I don't think it should come at the expense of everything else. I also think London Broncos are a busted flush and have been since the end of the Harlequins RL era.

The NRL are also going to have a no-###### attitude to it. No "give us a franchise or else it'll never happen" stuff.

It's a national final, Eddie. You need to have rules.

It must be lovely in cloud-cuckoo land.

It's the same answers from the same people. Have you tried to ever run a club? Do you have any expertise whatsoever?

It has been tried and it has failed. It hasn't been tried enough recently because the game is skint.

Given UFC spent £6m 15 years ago on a massive UK-wide marketing splash, £450,000 is comparatively nothing. However, IMG are supposed to be best-in-field. They need to know how to stretch a penny or else they're not much use to the game. Until the communities in which Rugby League is played see some sort of economic recovery - because most didn't recover from the Credit Crunch - the game won't grow because the people who pay its bills are skint.

Knowing these Southern teams a little, I think that Bedford have more of an idea of what it will take to develop a long-term player base. Their Director of Rugby has tried many times to develop junior teams and associations with other clubs. Anglian seem to have a good base behind them but they're brand new and not even really excelling at their level. Reading their pitches, Goole's looks the best but is reliant on the stadium.

I'm giving up on this thread, which seems to have devolved into a sadistic thought-experiment. Good on Matt Dwyer for running this project from his back porch in Manly. Nice work if you can get it.

Yes, they are. Nowadays especially.

Do you have any idea how business works? Lawsuits are part of the game. The former President of the United States basically said he measures his success by lawsuits, eventhough his business practices are extremely unethical.

Well, MLR also has an established club, high school and even college system to draft from and they keep coming up empty.

Do you have minutes of said meeting? Also, C&Ping from another website without atrribution is rude.

It's an argument that has been done to death. The model for better or worse is basketball in Canada. Even with very good professional players, they were hopeless internationally. NBA expansion into Canada was a failure initially, as it was a minority sport at best. The Grizzlies moved to Memphis. Toronto got hold of Vince Carter and having a good, marketable young star helped. Winning helped. However, what really changed and has led Canada to winning a bronze at the Basketball World Cup and qualifying for the Olympics for the first time in 24 years is widespread, grassroots development, especially in Ontario. All the best Canadians come out of Ontario with very few exceptions. The ones who are good in Quebec often get shuffled over to a private school in Ontario. However, without local players, it's just footsteps in the sand. MLR shows just how hard finding domestic players is.

In the wider world, who is a yaysayer? Who is out there advocating for the IMG system, beyond the usual talking heads.