nadera78

Basically if it's south of the river there's a central-ish bit like Southwark, The Borough, maybe as far as Brixton that is South London. Everything else is either south east or south west London. If it's north of the river, then you've got central, west, north west, north, north east and east.

Ok then, so how does he explain the two unused licenses? They were specifically for use by heartlands clubs.

People seem to be wilfully ignoring the fact that 12 licenses were available (9 heartlands) and only 10 issued (7 heartlands) - the other applicants must have been nowhere near the required standard.

Interesting that they could have awarded 12 licenses, but decided only 10 applicants were of sufficient standard. Doesn't leave a lot of room for the clubs left out to complain about the decision. Also notable that they've emphasised the desire not to have clubs stripping the community game of youngsters who stand no chance of ever making it to a professional level simply to pad out their academies.

Agree with this. Also, from memory at least one of the players listed as Canterbury (Sincere Harraway) was a Coaster who had moved over to play a higher level of regular rugby.

All three bidders seem to have flaws. Firehawks branding is pretty weak, but they have some knowledgable people involved. Redcliffe has the finances but is likely to alienate fans of other Brisbane clubs, feels out on a limb geographically, and the decision to play games centrally is odd given their base. Jets comes across as an unlikely, and somewhat desperate, merger of two bids that were going nowhere. None of them really stand out.

RL Park is hosting a temporary stadium until the new one opens in 2025, then it will be dismantled. That's why it would be great to see RL regain the land and use it as a training base. But the only place in the city to play home fixtures is the new 25,000 seat stadium being built. Also, calling the team Christchurch defeats the purpose of having a team that can draw upon the resources of the entire South Island.

A South Island team is a great idea. Based in Christchurch, they can play the majority of games out of the new stadium opening in 2025. As a nice little bonus they can reclaim RL Park for use as a training base (maybe even a leagues club on site too). Play a game or two each year in Dunedin, one in Invercargill, outside chance Nelson, plus pre-season camps out on the West Coast. Done properly it would draw people in from across the whole island. People don't realise how much latent support there is for rugby league in New Zealand - there's a small hardcore who are intimately involved in the game, and then a much wider group who like RL but have minimal outlets to express that interest. Not in the least bit surprised to see Andrew Chalmers calling a friendly journalist and getting himself in the papers with some silly claims, but that's all it is. There's no way on earth the NRL would allow that charlatan to be involved, nor would any serious investor take him seriously.

They are a new team playing in the California RL, nothing to do with NARL.

Interesting point. The consensus from fans on here a while back was that the mid-to-late 90s was a good era for RL - fast, open, attacking RL, without the smothering defences. Perhaps an unintended consequence of imposing strict liability on tacklers is that we might find ourselves heading back in that direction?

He's a very good player, Kear. Has lost a little pace over the years but reads the game well and has forged a good career for himself. Was excellent for London. The Crusaders' short existence in South Wales produced a little crop of players who went on to do well. Wales should very much be a focus for our game, there are some pretty easy wins there in terms of developing SL players.

Surely the sensible thing to do is use lower profile competitions, like the NSW/Qld Cup or Championship/L1, to trial rule changes and gather data on their impact on the game, players, fans, etc. Instead we make it up on the hoof and unleash them on one of the showpiece events of the calendar. I fear we're doing the same with the RLWC, where the IRL had to effectively negotiate the rules for the event a couple of weeks back.

From the outside it has appeared for a long time that Parish is out of his depth. That's not the issue, it's more that everyone seems to be assuming that because Johns/SBW were great players they'll automatically be great coaches (or even just better than Parish) when there's no evidence for that at all. As to your claim re: respect, well, we only have rumours from Johns' friends in the media for that.

Right, and three men who have never coached a team anywhere in the world are going to jump in and do a great job?

As I said above, Johns is using the same playbook Walters used to get the Broncos job: get friends to publicly badmouth the incumbent, make it uncomfortable for him and his bosses, get questions asked of one or two players, and then slip into the job. Unpleasant.

Matty Johns using the exact same tactics that saw Anthony Seibold forced out of Brisbane and the coaching job given to the inept Kevin Walters. None the trio involved have ever coached, beyond a few skills sessions with individual players, and as much as I think Parrish is a poor coach there's no evidence whatsoever that any of them would do a better job. The public reaction is just the usual 'good player = good coach' nonsense.

There was a time when the club just didn't have a local player pool to access, because schools and junior development was in its infancy. SL offered a dispensation re the overseas quota, but then we finished second in 1997 and everyone started complaining about the make up of our team and we were forced to reduce it pretty quickly. So we had no option but to sign northerners and, as I said before we had to pay over the odds to get some fairly mediocre players. Frankly, them turning tail and fleeing was far from a one off. It was a regular occurrence.

! SL and the championship clubs are full of players London have produced. It's a very cosy relationship - the Broncos / David Hughes find the youngsters, introduce them to the sport, develop them into fully-fledged RL players (often representative players), and then watch on as they get signed by northern clubs.

I've spent the past 18 months 11,000 miles from home. I flew back into London in January just in time to be at my mother-in-law's deathbed and attend her funeral. While I was in London I didn't get to see my own parents, who were shielding, until the day I was leaving. My wife had a few days mourning with her sisters. And I know there are people who've had it much much worse. I really don't intend this to sound like a competition, I hope it doesn't come across that way, but I honestly don't have a great deal of time for sportsmen complaining at this point.

Northerners really are a bunch of wusses. We've seen it for years at London Broncos; forced to pay way over the odds to get them to move only to then see them whinge and moan incessantly before returning to mummy a few months later. Williams has the chance to play a leading role in the best rugby (either code) competition in the world, as part of a very short career, and he wants to turn his back on it? Ridiculous.

Championship TV rights have consistently been worth £0 - going right the way back to the days of the Northern Ford Premiership asking to exit the Sky TV contract. And please don't try to tell me Sky paid X amount for them in the current deal, the sum announced (or rather, leaked) by Nigel Wood was the clubs' distribution not the game's income. Anything above £0 is a bonus so, as others have said, for that sort of money you'd have to start considering the future development of OurLeague instead.

I mean, that was literally what I said in the first post...

Go back and look at Samoa's performances across a period of time, they consistently underperform.

On paper Samoa look very impressive, but they have a poor coach and a track record that suggests they're more interested in hanging out with their mates than taking the games seriously. We'll have to wait and see if any of that has changed, perhaps seeing what has happened to Tonga will encourage them to raise their aspirations a bit.