nadera78

taken from the englandrl website. Chris Bridge (Warrington), Tom Briscoe (Hull FC), Kyle Eastmond (St Helens), James Graham (St Helens), Ryan Hall (Leeds), Sean O`Loughlin (Wigan), Danny McGuire (Leeds), Adrian Morley (Warrington), Jamie Peacock (Leeds), James Roby (St Helens), Nick Scruton (Bradford), Michael Shenton (Castleford), Kevin Sinfield (Leeds), Sam Tomkins (Wigan), Ben Westwood (Warrington), Shaun Lunt (Huddersfield), Kevin Brown (Huddersfield), Richard Myler (Warrington), Ryan Atkins (Warrington), Jodie Broughton (Salford), Leroy Cudjoe (Huddersfield), Peter Fox (Hull KR), Lee Smith (Leeds), Gareth Carvell (Warrington), Ben Harrison (Warrington), Jamie Langley (Bradford), Tony Clubb (Harlequins RL), Ben Jones-Bishop (Harlequins RL), Andy Lynch (Bradford), Joe Westerman (Castleford), Kirk Yeaman (Hull), Louie McCarthy Scarsbrook (Harlequins), Eorl Crabtree (Huddersfield), Scott Moore (St Helens), Paul Sykes (Bradford), Jon Wilkin (St Helens), Willie Manu (Hull FC). Good to see some youngsters in there, but god only knows how Manu and any of the Bradford players got invited.

He's not f***ing English!

Why? There are two RL clubs in West London - Hammersmith (based in Hammersmith/Acton but don't really count in ths context as they're purely there for some Aussies to play a few games of footy) and West London Sharks (based in Osterley). Twickenham is in South West London - or Middlesex for the old timers. The juniors-only clubs in that area (like Feltham, Richmond etc) are all in SWLondon too. Then you're moving east into South London proper to hit the Storm and all their offspring clubs, going further into SELondon for Greenwich and Footscray and then way out into Kent for Medway Dragons. Elmbridge are outside of London in the other direction. The other clubs in London are Skolars in the north or Hainault, Brentwood, Phantoms in the east / essex. Then you've got Hemel and St Albans out in Herts.

Quins are based in south London. The only amateur club in west london is the Sharks, and I think I'm right in saying that their juniors have split from the open age section to form their own club. Excluding Hammersmith Hills Hoists (almost exclusively Aussies) everything else is in south london. There's nothing in the west. Or north-west, north or central. Partly that's down to facilities, a couple of years ago a few friends and I were trying to get something going in west/central-west london and it was impossible to find anywhere even half decent to play. The fact that Quins do little or nothing for the clubs in north-east london / essex is worrying.

Tooting and Mitcham FC is an interesting idea. The current capacity is 3,500. There are 600 seats on one touchline, with an impressive fitness club behind it. This stand covers about half the length of the pitch so could theoretically be doubled in capacity. There are covered terraces behind the goals, and behind these are an open area of parkland and a 3G pitch. The touchline opposite the small stand is currently open parkland although the club released plans to build another 600 seat stand with function suites, etc on this area. I don't think anything has actually happened about building this though. There is enough space there to extend the stadium, but I don't think the capacity could ever exceed 10,000 so it would always be below SL standards. There are decent transport links locally though and it is a nice little stadium. IIRC the football club (and the stadium) are actually owned by the fitness club for some reason or other. A couple of other local options would be Sutton United and Carshalton Athletic, both of whom have space to extend their grounds considerably and would be areas more conducive to RL teams. What's becoming increasingly clear in London is that development seems to be going on in two areas; south London and north-east London. There is very little in west, north-west, north or central areas of the city. I think we're moving towards two hubs and the pro club would be better off grabbing one of these and focusing on it.

Milton Keynes might have made sense 10 years ago - for all the reasons listed previously - but it now has its own (stolen!) soccer team for the population to gather round. I doubt there will be much spectator or business support left over for a relocating RL team with no money to spend on marketing and promotions. If you want some more baseless rumours, Hemel Hempstead council is planning to build a 6,000 capacity stadium with room for expansion to 12,000.

It's no good blaming the RFL on this one. If they went in and laid out a plan for the development of the game in West Cumbria, culminating with a club playing in SL, there would be uproar amongst the diehards (from Town, Haven and across the M62). They'd be complaining about forced mergers and whatever else, and instead of asking the opinions of 160,000 people living in the area everyone would be paying attention to a couple of hundred refuseniks with loud voices. If anything is going to change then it has to come from the locals, it really does. Only then could the RFL even consider getting involved.

If this is true then why have a clear majority of players (over 1,000 took part in a survey conducted by an independent research specialst) voted in favour of switching to summer?