Trojan

If there's no crowd potential for a champion club at Swinton, what chance is there for a champion club just down the road at Salford?

Regardless of where they players came from, the support that funded the drive to success came from Hull

They were a successful club in the past, so were Wakey, so were Swinton, Dewsbury were Champions in 1973 - the past. It's 9 years since Bradford even looked like winning anything. They've been in receivership twice and are in the bottom two of Sujperleague - they have been languishing. If they'd been a horse they'd be in Tesco's freezer section by now. That's not being selective it's what's happening now, today.

The great Hull FC side of the eighties got their boost from an unbeaten season in the old 2nd division, as did Wigan around the same time. A perpetually struggling club like Bradford have been recently does nothing to boost support or for the confidence of players. They need to get into a winning frame of mind. A spell in the championship should do this. If it doesn't then what's lost? As for your examples, Workington should never have been in SL from the start, Oldham were sharing a ground, Halifax effectively voluntarily withdrew, and the opportunity to return hasn't been there since 2007. As I said in my "another one bites the dust" thread, people pick out the statistics that suit their argument and rubbish any other evidence.

Can't speak for Cas, but Wakey promised all sorts to get themselves accepted in SL in 1998. As Stalin said "promises like pie crusts, are made to be broken."

I have what are known as "eclectic tastes" everything from J S Bach to Jonhny Rotten is grist to my mill!

Debbie loves Joey - Helen Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp9zefnOoDY

In Wakey 50 years ago they were dominating the League and Cup, so they hadn't much to moan about. The second live game of RL I ever went to was a cup-tie at Belle Vue with 28000 others.

You spout on here like an expert. But you've done nothing. How dare you criticise someone who's done more for the game than probably anyone who posts on here. If you think Sky give a toss about RL in this country apart from as a filler for soccer, you're living in cloud cuckoo land. You only have to look at their advertising to see which sports they really support, soccer, cricket, Union. They treat us very shabbily IMO. When the World Cup was on their sports news studiously ignored it. They don't do that with other sports. TBH if there ever is another offer from another broadcaster, the RFL should snatch their hands off.

Aren't petty rivalries what the game is about? How about Leeds v Bradford? Isn't that fairly petty? Wigan v Saints, again petty. Or can we substitute the word petty with the word derby? Say some dictator figure came in and demanded mergers between the Wakefield Met sides, the Hull sides, the North Cheshire sides, who would then fill the gaps left? Surely not clubs from outside the "heartlands?" How many times have we tried this, and how much money have we thrown at it, and how often has it failed? What potential club owner in his right mind would invest in starting a new club from scratch with the current structure of no P&R? His club doomed to play in the lower league until someone decreed they could have a go in SL? Not an attractive business proposition.

In Rugby League???? That's asking a bit much. Surely we should wait until the 2014 season is nearly over - say next August and then decide what's going to happen in 2015.

Did anyone say it wasn't?

Cas is about more than Rangi Chase.

As long as there is no P&R then the likes of Oldham, Swinton, Fev, York, Halifax will never get up there. As long there is no P&R the teams at the bottom end of SL have no incentive to improve what they offer on the pitch. I know what you're saying about Huddersfield, I was there when they last won the RL Championship. Forty years in the doldrums, but thanks to P&R they got into SL and got a backer and certainly on the field they are going places. But not on the terraces, forty years of failure means that the fan base is attenuated and repopulating it will take time. The same could be said for Oldham, and look at the players the Oldham area have produced: the Sulthorpes, Iestyn, Mike Ford, Barrie Mac, Kevin Sinfield, and all these at a time when the pro club has been struggling. We cannot give up on the Championship clubs. If we do it'll be the thin end of the wedge.

I've no doubt the amateur game is thriving in the South, and the crowd at Bristol for the recent World Cup game is encouraging. But it has to be admitted that every attempt to spread the game into a new area, even one as near to the "heartlands" as Liverpool has been a total failure. Support for rugby of either code in these islands is patchy, we live in a patch where rugby caught on, and became a pro sport. But in other patches where rugby was popular the RFU saw to it that the "professionalism" virus didn't spread, and that's why IMO we have a problem. In the areas (other than the RL heartlands) where rugby is a popular sport, Union is so entrenched as to be next to impossible to supplant, and in the other areas the mighty soccer rules. I don't like it, I've never liked it, but we have to confront actuality at some point. When Union went pro in 1995, Eddie Butler wrote in the Observer that in ten years they'd be playing RL but calling it RU. He may have been wrong in his timescale, but long term I think he may have been correct.

Mergers in Welsh Union are almost killing their game. There is very little interest in the merged district sides. Many of their best players are playing elsewhere. Since Cardiff City and Swansea entered the Premierships crowds are down dramatically. That's what mergers did in Oz and that's what they'll do to in Lancashire and Yorkshire. As for sides anywhere else, it doesn't take a genius to work out that for whatever reason there is very little interest in RL outside the so-called "heartlands." Interest stops short at the Wakefield border with South Yorks, at the Wigan and Keighley borders with Lancashire, at the St Helens/Widnes borders with Liverpool, at the Humber, at the Manchester City boundary. No amount of promotion or push seems to be able to spread the game out of the heartlands. The merger programme will probably kill it within the heartlands and then there'll be no more arguments because there'll be no more game.

But it's not a serious suggestion. It's not what I want to happen any more than I wanted Calder to happen. But that's the argument put forward on here by those who favour mergers, it makes just as much sense.

Michael Palin was guest editor of "Today" on Monday. He's a Sheffielder and he floated the idea of a merger between United and Wednesday with some fans of both clubs. He'd have got a better reaction if he'd sworn in church. They don't want it. And neither do the fans of Fev, Cas, Wakey, Hull KR, Hull FC, Bradford, Huddersfield or Halifax. That's what I mean about rational business logic not applying in sport. The whole Rugby League breakaway doesn't make sense any more. There's no reason for Rugby League to exist any more, Union is professional and better financed, so let's have the ultimate merger, one between the codes. I'm sure that'll go down a storm on here!

Competitive professional sport is not, and never has been a market. In business you need to weaken your competitors, in professional sport you are dependent upon them as they are on you. That's why many businessmen when they come to running sports clubs fail. They see it as a business like any other and it isn't. You only have to look at the mess Ken Bates has made of Leeds U to see that. There are too many uncertainties, mishaps,and upsets in sport that do not occur in ordinary businesses. As for the market for Super League, it may be very strong in Wigan and Warrington, but in many other places in the UK they've never heard of it. Murdoch may provide the cash for Super League, but that's all he provides. Compared to the exposure he gives soccer, Union, cricket, boxing and F1 we get nothing. From the point of view of expanding the game Murdoch has been a disaster. His sports news programmes on Sky gave no coverage at all to the recent RL World Cup as far as I could see. Until recently his sycophants described the Challenge Cup as a "distraction." I don't know how it could be done, but the sooner we divorce our game from his malign influence, the better we'll get on.

They effectively did this, outbidding Cas for Michael Dobson, and thus exceeding the salary cap, Cas were relegated.

I know I was at the game and I believe Widnes scored last.

The team talk with David (?) Hulme was on RL Raw and it was Fev v Widnes

I have Oldham v Fev from Feb. 1988, at the lost lamented Watersheddings. It has something you never see today, a heel against the head. Also some superb breaks from Hugh Wadell. I used to have Fev v 'Fax from 1991, Regal Trophy. One of the best games ever on Scrumdown.

I bought a bottle of "Paddy" in Auchan in Coquelles, you don't see it very often in England. it's quite nice. I went to New York recently and planned to buy an obscure American Bourbon but it slipped my mind,