Big Picture

What is an "M Com"??

Very well said there. What RL needs to overcome it's problems and the other obstacles to its growth in the UK and elsewhere is precisely what you described there re Toronto, in 10 or 12 cities in a spread of 5 or 6 countries all at once via a brand new league set up on that basis.

Remembering how he screwed up Catalans' previous TV contract with BeIN Sport, was he ever?

Ditto the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, ...

Decades of experience with the North American franchise model in at least five sports has proven that is the right way to run top level pro sports. It's the one model which makes investment in top level major league pro sports franchises consistently profitable for their owners, very profitable in fact.

There isn't a league set up here because as far as we know no one has come up with a plan for such a league and then found backers for it. "Rugby" of any kind being almost an unknown sport over here and RL even less well known, realistically that wouldn't be feasible without it having a transatlantic element so it would stand out from the established leagues.

No they wouldn't, North American leagues don't operate in that small time way. Teams in Europe would either join as full members with the same rights as current members, or not at all. If they joined they would pay a hefty fee for their franchise and benefit from an expansion draft to help them stock their roster.

So you mean to say that the other guy who was so impressed with the NRL didn't even understand it's a different game from RU????

That's very unlikely for the simple reason that the vast majority of Brazilians only speak Portuguese, because it's the only language they ever need in life.

Having seen more than a few gaffs made by Google translate online I wouldn't want to trust a device.

You've oversimplified matters there. Apart from the west part of the island of Montréal, the eastern townships and few other places here and there Québec is entirely French-speaking. Les Promeades Gatineau is a big shopping mall just a short drive across the Ottawa River not even 10 km from Parliament Hill where you'll barely hear a word of English spoken. I well remember how surprised I was by that even though I shouldn't have been having lived in the Moncton area before moving to Ottawa almost 30 years ago now. To say that "everywhere else is English" is wrong. I can still recall to this day when it dawned on me a month or two after moving to the Moncton area that a conversation in an adjacent office cubicle which I could hear was in French rather than English. Among the Francophone colleagues with whom I worked in Ottawa was a Franco-Ontarian from a town a bit east of Ottawa whose English had a noticeable French accent; from him I learned to appreciate the amazing beers from Unibroue like la Fin du Monde and la Maudite, man they pack a punch. Years earlier in southern Ontario I worked with another Franco-Ontarian from Oshawa (just east of Toronto) whose husband was a Franco-Ontarian from Sudbury in northern Ontario and when they met he didn't speak a word of English so they communicated in French at first. So albeit below the radar of most anglophones in Canada, French is definitely more prevalent than is commonly thought. That said, whether a Francophone coach and some Francophone players can get Canadian Francophones in the Ottawa-Gatineau region interested in a team playing in an English league against a bunch of teams from England remains to be seen.

What makes you assume that the only potential new Sky TV subscribers who'd tune in if London is in SL are the Broncos' existing fans?

It isn't really though, one can always paste/type it into Google Translate and listen to it pronounced natively. What I heard was basically what I thought when I read the name.

It's not just a British phenomenon either. I had the same thought myself last year hearing anglophone news commentators mangling Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet's name during the federal election here last year. Their jobs involve covering a good few francophone politicians yet they're too lazy and unprofessional to learn how to pronounce their names!

That's why a second on-field official on the offensive side of play is needed. Make that the official (maybe call him an umpire to differentiate his role) the only judge of forward passes and knock-forwards.