Toby Chopra

It always seemed a bit of an odd choice to add a team last year just to fit a predetermined structure, when the chances of this happening were so high. But given most teams probably make a loss overall on their games with Cornwall, I guess L1 can run with 11 next year without any major financial impact on teams.

I also think there's been next to no publicity down here unless you're already following rugby league media - my friends didn't know it was happening until I told them. So I reckon a fair bit of that is the northern fans. We've barely scratched the surface of the London audience yet.

From what I can see most Hurricanes players are from the heartland, certainly the top 5 on the squad list are, including a bunch of ex-Bradford academy players. Which is great, but kinda proves the point, it shows that access to the heartland player pool is key if you want to succeed in the semi pro ranks. Birmingham is not that far from the heartland compared to Cornwall or even London, so I'd be interested in where they live, and what other work they do, if any. But great they're doing well, and I hope they can go up.

Yep

It's tempting to criticise Perez's big talking hucksterism, but without it Toronto and Cornwall would never have even got to game one, so on one level I'm grateful for the ride.

Got six for Wembley. Loads left in every block.

Professional rugby league outside the heartland will only work with full-time teams that are competitive. Otherwise, as we've seen countless times, isolated outposts can't develop quality in sufficient numbers to stop the losses racking up, interest inevitably wanes, and the writing is on the wall. We don't need semi pro clubs all over the place, a widespread community game and one sustainable SL club in London will do more for UK RL than half a dozen strugglers in L1.

I haven't had a code yet either, just the 'get ready' email yesterday.

If it's a genuine full on financially-backed takeover then a rebranding is no bad thing. It's a fresh start and Broncos is a pretty tired brand now.

Yes, it seems they were, or something close to it at least, given Catalans don't have a vote etc. And that's not a great decision in my view. But there's a reality we have to live with about where the critical assets and revenue generation within British rugby league lie. That power is real. So that's why I'd prefer the transparency of there being autonomy among all the groups. If the SL chairman wants to junk their only recently agreed organisational model then let them do it on their own accord and be accountable for it, rather than having to upend the entire UK govering body to do it, dragging in everyone else, each with their own conflicting agendas. For instance under that model Superleague would be fully responsible for resolving the Salford situation, not hiding behind the not-fit-for-purpose RFL. With power comes responsibility. There's no perfect solution but the current governance model has been shown to be critically flawed because it's still the model that was essentially designed a century ago. Time for a model that reflects the sport how it really is today.

It stops the Championship and L1 clubs being used to provide voting power for malcontents in SL to upturn the applecart when they get a decision they don't like. If a Superleague club can get 75% support of other SL clubs for a major decision, so be it, but that's a much higher hurdle to clear if you want to change long term plans Some get upset with separating the clubs out like this, but it's not the 1980s any more, it's just the reality of where the key assets of the sport lie.

Optimistically, the Everton game has really caught the imagination and Headingley should be easy to sell out because of the size. This should mean that most of the promotional effort over the summer can be focused on Wembley, hopefully leading to a 60k plus crowd there.

I'd sever the professional club game from the RFL which should be responsible for the community game. The professional tiers should each have autonomy to run their own competitions, with a ARLC type body to run the England team and represent the sport at official levels. The issue of course is that only one of these parts generates any money - Superleague. And in theory some of that needs to be spent outside of SL for the long term betterment of the whole game. But the ability of a small number of clubs to actively damage the process of growing that value with a short term knee-jerk spasm means for me they've lost any right to a formal role in administering that process.

I'd agree that my criticisms should extend to the SL clubs too. Even though many are bigger financial businesses with critical assets for UK rugby league, short term thinking can pervade there also. But as recent events show, if you can win over the Championship/L1 clubs with the offer of a short term bung (which I don't blame them for accepting) then you only need a few SL clubs to get the power grab over the line. The whole system is not fit for purpose and creates the conditions for it's own demise.

I didn't get a code even though I went to three England games at the world cup and have attended every challenge cup final for more than a decade. I also went to the London international in 2016, but perhaps I ticked a "don't contact me" box for that one, it was a long time ago! The fact is, as you identify, southern based fans are much less likely to have been sent a code due to the absence of non-WC London internationals since 2016. Did the RFL realise this? Who knows. Does it matter? Well, I haven't been overly worried as I'm sure there will be plenty of Wembley tickets available tomorrow in the general sale, so no harm done. My only hope is that even though many southern fans didn't get advance access, they'll still get contacted to buy in general or that's 10k-ish potential Wembley buyers we're not reaching out to.

I'm not having a go at the clubs themselves - I wish clubs like Dewsbury and Swinton all the best in keeping going at the level they're at. I'm having a go at the structure that gives them significant influence over the development of rugby league as a whole in the northern hemisphere. The interests of a club with a thousand fans that's (rightly) only focussed on keeping the lights on week by week will inevitably conflict with how to develop the game long term, and lead to poor, short termist decision making. Decisions that, in the longer run,will only make it harder for clubs like those above to survive. There's no other major sport in the UK where the short term interest of a few small clubs can override long term decision making for the sport as a whole. This has to change.

They can have a vote on the running of their own competition, but they do not get to determine the future of the entire sport in the Northern hemisphere, especially when some of them can barely run their own businessess without endlessly asking for handouts. The arrogance of Woods' review to assume it has the remit to determine this is shocking.

They're just clubs. They shouldn't be deciding the fate of rugby league across the northern hemisphere. This goes back to the age old problem of a small private members club controlled by 30-odd members doubling as the national governing body of an entire sport. And to your point, no, I don't think the semi-pro heartland clubs are going to be the saviours of the expansionist agenda. My guess is this coup has succeeded because those clubs - many of which are barely solvent - have been offered a few short term crumbs from short term savings from ditching IMG and the French funding, regardless of what the long term impacts of those decisions are.

Well that's a depressing read. Why are the clubs even being asked things like “What is the role of France and Wales in northern hemisphere RL?” Should the likes of Dewsbury and Swinton should be determining the answer to questions Iike that?

Can't see why it would. Sky like it, and the NRL have copied it. It needs a reboot though.

I hope, and perhaps it's hope over experience, that the reason Tony Sutton's name has hardly been mentioned during the coup is that as the org's executive leader, he's actually busy trying to keep the current crisis from getting any worse. And the coup leaders recognise this.

I'm not sure what you mean Martyn by IMG promoting RL through its SM channels. IMG is a media services company, its doesn't have consumer facing SM, just B2B ones. Its Twitter account has fewer followers than Hull KR's. It does, however, provide professional support for clients who want to improve their own direct to consumer comms and that's one of the things we're paying them for. I'm sure our leaders can do better jobs in their dealmaking, but we/they need to be clear what we want first. That said, B2B comms can have some value for RL within the sports business world, and here's IMG trumpeting Wigan's success last year to the business world as something they're proud to be connected to.

If it happens, it'll be Bradford, in the same way it was Leigh in 2020 when Toronto popped.

Agreed. I think this, plus the announcement of the Ashes series, puts paid to the idea that some sort of civil war-inducing radical move is coming. Perhaps we all got a bit carried away...

Presumably they're going to open it at some point though - it would be a big problem if they didn't, one way or another. I suppose there's marketing value of having Wembley as a venue even with 50-something in. It signals big time sport. But let's get the middle upper opposite the cameras open too - I love the front few rows of that area. I'm confident it will sell, I'm currently running at 5 yeses for tickets from people, it's gonna go off big!