Big Picture

It's good for the whole game in a few ways. First as burnleywelsh pointed out it creates additional opportunities for players to play the game professionally, as other players come in and take up the spaces they vacated at their former clubs. More current players will stay in the game as a consequence. Second and more important though, it's the key to stopping the decline in the player pool and then growing the pool back up again. That will result from more boys and young men (both over here and back in the UK) being inspired to take up the game in the first place and then stick with it because it shows them that the game is a bigger deal than they'd have thought it was otherwise. Third, as it raises the game's profile it will start to break down the stereotypes about it being small time, regional and having limited appeal, a necessary step to get more and better media coverage and more money from broadcasters and sponsors.

Not only for that reason, P & R has never been part of North American sports, not even back in the days when all the pro teams were in the east.

Precisely, the hopefuls looking to work their way up to first grade from the reserves.

Maybe you meant to put quoi? Espoir is French for hope, so the Espoirs are the hopefuls i.e. reserves.

I checked on that and discovered that Aviva Premiership teams dress 23 players for a match, the 15 starters and 8 subs. If we pro-rate their 7 million £ cap by 17/23, that makes it equivalent to 5.17 million £ for an RL-size roster of players, or almost 2-1/2 times the current SL salary cap.

At that level neither the Wolfpack nor anyone else will be attracting any top RU talent. The Aviva Premiership salary cap is 7 million £, the Top14 cap is about equal to Catalans' entire budget, and although the Pro14 doesn't have a cap a few years ago it was reportedly paying players 85% of what players in the Aviva Premiership were getting so we can notionally put their cap at 6 million £. English RL is very much the poor cousin of RU in relative terms.

So I guess the Kansas City Chiefs, Toronto Raptors, etc. aren't "proper clubs" in your book then?

Brazil is also a much bigger country than Argentina, and Brazilian broadcasters pay a lot in rights fees to put soccer on TV so Brazil is probably the better of the two from a commercial point of view.

I'd say Australia and PNG, that's about it at this point.

Of course it's not realistic within the current English RL structure, far more money would be required money than the maximum which could possibly be generated within that structure.

Precisely. And to realize Brian Noble's goal of being able to compete with RU and the NRL for players like back in the day (as he stated in the Destination Super League documentary) 10-12 good candidates are needed, not just decent candidates.

If the foot dragging about Toronto going up, denying them their share of the TV rights money and making them pay visiting teams' expenses isn't small time, just what would you call it then?

The superior form of rugby definitely needs a league capable of following the same path as MLS and the other major North American pro leagues to profit for investors.

MLR is dirt cheap too, their franchise fee is well below the value of most minor league baseball franchises so it's definitely in the minor league category.

Just imagine how controversial that would be in the small time world of English RL.