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I've held my tongue for a while on this forum. It's been uneasy watching on for a long while, pretty much since Truro FC came on the scene. It was clear as day that all focus and attention went in one direction as that was the shiny new club with a shiny new stadium the Council and Truro FC were paying for. Cornwall at Penryn had no assets, a weakened ability to drive its income, given the individuals and the contacts that come with it went to Truro FC. The dwindling attendances with the lack of any real (marketing) resource or way of driving a crowd with a shoestring team. The investment team cherry picked critical elements of Cornwall RLFC and then moved them to Truro FC as part of the acquisition and sale. On one hand entrepreneurial. On the other, chopped the knees off Cornwall RLFC which at the time was making good progress in the commercial world. There were a number of key failings. One of the biggest being the lack of any community or game being developed alongside the club. The club was paper-thin in terms of its depth in the community and as soon as Perez moved focus onto something else, the gaping chasm opened up with no resilience The Council were desperate for Truro FC to "come home" to the city and as such, an opportunity arose. At one stage I was optimistic that Cornwall RLFC could ground share and be a dual enterprise. It would've put the RU Pirates well and truly on the back foot down here. All of that was cast aside for what ever reason the investment team had. For everyone who is casting the "it would never work" notion. I categorically rebuff those statements. It could have worked. Cornwall started with a good solid foundation, with energy, an off the field team doing some good things, and with a decent following. They could've made the club more sustainable for the long-run with investment into the community game/building a broader base. But equally, when you switch focus to Truro FC, sell the business and keep hold of your sales staff, contacts and a limited corporate order book for sport sponsorship in the Duchy. The buyer of the RL club is always on a hiding to nothing. In my opinion that is the biggest issue that killed Cornwall.

The presence of Cornwall doesn’t stop anyone “financially consolidating” anywhere else. The game needs to stop looking for outsiders to blame.

Given he setup a professional rugby league club on another continent, with little/no background in the game, secured entry into the English leagues, winning successive promotions in front of record breaking crowds, it’s difficult to consider him anything but a visionary

It’s certainly the fault of whoever has overseen the slashing of central funding and the removal of any pretence of a sustainable, national development strategy. The sport will only wake up when it loses a heartland club though. They’re the only ones that count.

They only had to fork out once a season to go to Cornwall yet Cornwall had to pay up every other week to travel north, totally unsustainable for any club with such limited funds / income. still a sad day for the sport though.

I know, just imagine the pathetic sound effects Degsy could have bought with the few grand chucked Cornwalls way, or Saints could have paid some over the hill NRL player, or could have advanced Salford a few more quid to throw away.

Well done you. Take a badge.

It's all PR - you can pretty much get whatever tickets you would like for any game, but it has created a buzz and fans actually flapping about not receiving their code etc. It's created a sense of urgency, whereas it's probably fair to say that for an RL event you can normally just wait until the final month before bothering. Hopefully this strategy will allow them to know where they now need to focus their marketing budget, and how much (although I'd expect no real surprises!).

In the loyalty period - managed to get 2 x Headingley North Stand In the pre-register period today I got 2 x Everton in the south west corner and 3 in the Club Wembley ring. A good amount spent and it should be worth every penny. I don't believe that the grumps on social media and BBC HYS pages complaining about prices fairly represent RL fans. It's evident that many RL and sports fans in general will pay good money for top class RL in this country. My first international game was vs Australia in the '92 world cup final at Wembley, It means a lot to be able to go to this series with my dad if he can make it to October/November.

And combine that with an almost impossible task of getting out of their division it is a marvel that the leaders of such clubs don't get totally disheartened and call it a day. The light at the end of the tunnel is becoming a pinprick.

Blimey! I'd just posted on the League 1 thread about whether North Wales Crusaders could expect a win this Sunday. A real shame; I'd been to all our games in Cornwall and met some lovely people down there, and I appreciate the hard work that had gone into trying to promote and run the club in Cornwall.

Over 60k tickets sold apparently

Greece Rugby League continues to grow:

Also I see the top tier has opened up at Wembley!

Lifelong soccer fan these days, apparently. This was on the cards once the ownership transfer happened. Credit to folk for trying but not a surprise. Still, another one for the “look, we’ve tried expansion” crowd.

I'm not sure anyones ridiculed you?? I don't agree with a lot of posts on here but surely a bit of debate is what it's all about? If we all thought the same it would be boring. Your opinion is as relevant as anyone else's but there are going to be people that disagree. Personally I welcome posts from older supporters as they often bring things up I wasn't aware of and it's great to hear the history of the club from someone who's been there and seen it. On the Australian signings I do have a very different view to you though and don't really understand why you're going in on Clint? I actually think the recruitment has been pretty good under him and all the overseas lads he's brought in have been excellent both on and off the field and really made a difference. If you think differently that's absolutely fine. From what ive seen and read about this new lad, he looks a cracking prospect and we've done well to get him. If that means we have to pay for flights, accommodation etc then so be it. I don't think Clints going to put the clubs finances at risk to bring him here. I agree it's frustrating when players do the dirty on the club but it's the nature of the beast and happens to all clubs. I also don't think it's the overseas lads that have been the problem for us in recent years, I think they've been superb.

Keighley's statement just now on this subject is so predictable from them. Mentioning Northampton as a demised RL club where there never was one is quite typical nonsense (the Demons being amateur only).

Mascord was right about Toulouse having to pay for travel, and then later right about Catalans having to pay for travel. He has good sources in the French clubs. The issue with Catalans is not whether individual clubs take advantage of any commercial opportunities they bring. They don't need to bring any. They add value to the league because they are a consistently competitive club, well-resourced with a strong youth system. We don't have enough of those. Nobody at another club ever asks "what commercial opportunities do I specifically get as a result of Huddersfield being in the league". When we have 12, or even 10, strong English clubs we can have a chat about Catalans versus one of them. But we don't. Why set them some higher bar they have to get over? I'd frame it a different way: If any club is so fragile that it can't afford to meet the requirements of travelling to France once or twice per season, then you should step out of Super League and into the Championship which is clearly a better level for it.

£844 lighter. Headingley x 8, Everton x 8 and London x 4 Bring it on.

One off Nige’s to do list.

That's that then. An entire rugby league club from start to finish in 56 pages...

When you assume you make an ass out of u and me ... Winning always helps, indeed that is why it has the greatest single value in the grading scale. Nobody would ever deny that. But in counter to your suggestion that this is all about winning, I'd also point to how HKR, Leigh and Wigan have all over the past 3 to 4 years had rebrands and consciously invested in improving their matchday experience beyond the on field. For example, Leigh now have live entertainment at every game, HKR with the Craven Streat end, and Wigan have Robin Park doing lots for them. The whole point of this system is that its not just one thing or the other that a club needs to be good at, its everything. Shockingly the clubs doing well across the board are the ones seeing results, those that aren't are not...

No. you are right. Lets wait for SKY to slice the pie even thinner and reduce the game further into its heartlands where the demographic ages and reduces in numbers even further.....Sigh. Short-termism will be the death of the sport in the northern hemisphere.

It doesn’t matter and we should stop pretending it’s the most important issue facing the game.

Isn't that just for the away fans?

We need to be very careful going down the route of slating certain clubs. It would be very easy to make a case for a UK only league with all central funding being routed to UKRL that wouldn't see a reduction in value. It's by no means a route I'd go down, but let's not make out Catalans bring huge financial value to SL. But an SL place is worth probably €7m a year to the Dragons.

Catalans have been in the league for over twenty years. If clubs can't afford to travel there, then they should opt out of the Super League competition. I strongly doubt they would, or that if they did they'd be a club we'd miss very much. We can always define the terms of entry of new clubs. The MLS has greatly increased it's franchise buy-in as that league has developed. That's normal. But to move the goalposts for a current club, when that club has done all we could ever have asked of it since it joined, and more so, is frankly nauseating. It's gangster behaviour, from clubs who really shouldn't be given the strength of gangsters and instead need to be called out and made to make their own hard choices rather than be mollycoddled.

Credit to the organisers for all the pre-sale stuff and creating a buzz around this. Such a small thing on the face of it but it has really helped to push people towards buying and generating sales.

I think this is where Headingley does make some sense. There's a good chance that by the time tickets go on general sale, and even by this afternoon, one of the three venues has gone. That's great both from a message of "this is an event people are fighting to see" but also from a message of "if you want to see it, this is where you need to go". A sold out Headingley helps sell Wembley.

New owners are coming into the sport, and investing in more than just the first team when they do, because the new ranking system gives them multi-season security of tenure (and a framework that describes what good looks like, beyond "spend an extra £1m on players to beat your neighbours") To be honest I'd argue that anybody who thinks that rugby league has just somehow magically attracted more inward investment than at any other time in its history, and indeed at a time when the outside world is going to hell in a handcart economically so there's less money around, is being wilfully obtuse. Of course it doesn't work without the investment, that's always been true. You need both. But the purpose behind security of tenure is to make investment more attractive, by providing the time to succeed.

He’s not there any more, and he left because they got no support from the game. Not even allowed to enter the 1985 cup.

Given Salford's position, you may not have to wait long.

I would agree with you, but I am hopeful Midlands Hurricanes might be showing some early signs of bucking that trend! Let's hope so!

Another sad day for RL and another nail in the coffin of the sport.. Feel for the fans and players affected by all of this...

Professional rugby league outside the heartland will only work with full-time teams that are competitive. Otherwise, as we've seen countless times, isolated outposts can't develop quality in sufficient numbers to stop the losses racking up, interest inevitably wanes, and the writing is on the wall. We don't need semi pro clubs all over the place, a widespread community game and one sustainable SL club in London will do more for UK RL than half a dozen strugglers in L1.

Why don't these small-minded fools go off and form their Ultimate Rugby comp with Leigh, Bradford, Keighley and Batley (and St Helens too apparently, as McManus slowly loses his marbles), with Nigel Wood as CEO and Raph Rimmer doing all the admin, and in doing so let the rest of us get on with trying to build a viable future for rugby league in the northern hemisphere?

It's the only way Forward pal 1 championship league and get rid of the Micky Mouse cup games.

https://www.rugby-league.com/article/63637/rugby-league-ashes-tickets-sales-surge-past-60,000-in-a-day Those ticket sales are incredibly impressive

Again, literally nothing to stop any club doing that right now.

The RFL never learn from previous failures. IMO if another club goes the same way then surely the time is right to combine the Championship and League 1 next season.

NRL want to buy SL but also want total control with no 2nd body being able to stop their decision making for the game! so no SL vs RFL type impasse situations It’s ALL or NOTHING! If they’re successful they will pump every resource they can into the game which will be significant and will offer the Northern Hemisphere game a superb platform to take the game forward and break free of it’s historical confines. The downside will be mergers or clubs cut loose of the top division, that will be their choice! eg. NRL: “Cas, Wakefield & Fev will you agree to merge” CT/WT/FR: “NO”. NRL: “Then we choose Wakefield Trinity as the top division representative”. WT: “THANK YOU” CT/FR: “THATS NOT FAIR” NRL: “TOUGH!!!!” Repeat wherever regionally or City appropriate Its a hard line but it’s their very long term view of what’s best for the game short term anguish & pain for long term growth & prosperity Its a pivotal moment in the game like Carny said

What a complete waste of time that has been, brought nothing to the game at all and caused clubs to pay out extra money for accomodation and travel to their place, what happens now ?

A 20k sell out at Headingley before they go on general sale is far better for the sport than a 25/30k attendance at ER in my opinion

15k in pretty much 97 minutes would be astonishing. Remember that Southern fans were mostly locked out of the pre-pre-sale.

Good find. Which is why we should all be keen to check the evidence base for this latest review, because I think Derek Beaumont and 'the bloke from Batley' might have a different opinion.

Trying to create a club from nothing in a random location and then keep it going was always going to be difficult. When that random location is one with deep rooted economic issues, no real affinity for the game, no city/town with a significant population and no history of being able to maintain a half decent sports team then it just seems like madness.

It could also be argued that the three most improved clubs over the last few years on and off the field are KR,Leigh and Wakefield. Is it pure coincidence that all three dropped down and rebuilt/refocused in the championship then got promoted via promotion and relegation. There are certainly merits of Img, like the the much needed kick up the bottom to improve facilities and promotion of clubs.

I would imagine for most parents with little ones Sunday afternoons will be the obvious preference, myself included. But the Sigala event and talk of Friday Night Lights suggests to me a clear attempt to engage with the older kids, groups of teenagers. Probably the most difficult nut to crack given the lack of presence over 25 years. Might need to get that fairground on the car park, Pointless Influencers vs Roughyeds match or serve beer to all the local teens that will get them in 100%. On a serious note, not going to be easy!

Yeah, it's apparent that Super League is the biggest problem in England. The RFL is marginally better. The whole sport over there is frozen in time though at about the 1930s.