Can’t live with them, can’t live without them…
The relationship between London’s two professional Rugby League clubs has always been interesting.
On some levels, the Broncos and the Skolars complement each other – for example, when players flit between the two – but on others, they are competitors.
There are those who see a significant presence in the capital as crucial for the future of Rugby League. Yet others wonder whether one club, never mind two, can survive, never mind prosper.
In theory, London’s potential, in terms of players, spectators, and commercial opportunities, is huge, and capable of comfortably sustaining more than two clubs.
But untapping it has proved very difficult – and the theories as to why could form an academic thesis rather than a League Express column.
It’s coming up to 42 years since Fulham, the forerunners of the Broncos, played their first match.
An unexpected 24-5 win over Wigan, who were making a fleeting appearance in the Second Division after the only relegation in their history, was seen by 9,552.
Fulham’s average attendance that season was 6,096, the highest in the section (Wigan’s was 4,693), and bettered by only three clubs in the top flight, the two from Hull and Bradford Northern.
But last season, the Broncos’ best gate after spectators were allowed back inside grounds as Covid restrictions were eased was 555, and undoubtedly swelled to that figure by the number of travelling Featherstone Rovers fans.
Even when the European game’s biggest stars were on show, in the Super League campaign of 2019, the average crowd for a club desperately in need of income to help support the running of a top-category Academy as well as first team, was only 2,014.
Is that down to a lack of support and backing from the powers-that-be for a club from well outside the heartlands trying to establish themselves, lack of marketing by the Broncos, or does London simply lack any significant interest in Rugby League?
London Skolars arrived on the professional scene in 2003, since when they have ended up in the top half of the third tier only twice, making the play-offs in 2013, and squeezing into the Super 8s three years later.
In the last three completed seasons they have finished three, four and two places off the bottom of the table respectively.
Then they lost their much-respected coach Jermaine Coleman, and subsequently a string of their more experienced players, such as Paulos Latu, Iliess Macani, Jacob Thomas, the Greenhalgh brothers Judd and Mike, Dalton Grant, Lameck Juma and Adam Vrahnos, to the Broncos.
The Skolars don’t start their League 1 campaign under new team chief Joe Mbu, a former second rower at both London clubs, until the end of March, and they remain a work in progress.
Their small but loyal band of supporters (the average for the eight home games which weren’t behind closed doors was 300) will hardly have been encouraged by a 28-6 Challenge Cup third-round defeat at home to amateur team Hunslet Club Parkside.
Meanwhile the Broncos, having abandoned full-time status at the end of last season, when they parted company with highly-rated coach Danny Ward en route to finishing seventh out of 14 clubs, have lost all four of their opening Championship games, at home to Widnes Vikings and Whitehaven and away to Halifax Panthers and Featherstone Rovers.
It’s still early in the season, but the longer the Broncos go without a win, the harder it will be to make progress towards hitting the long-term target average attendance of 5,000 at the club’s new base at the Cherry Red Records Stadium in Wimbledon.
Continual movement around the capital – it’s the tenth different venue used regularly since that first Fulham game at Craven Cottage – has often been cited as one of the reasons the Broncos have struggled to establish a brand and strong hardcore support base.
It’s clear that lack of success on the pitch will make it that much harder to put down roots in the borough of Merton.
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