Tommygilf

Leeds dropped theirs recently. A lot of clubs used/still use them as an alternative community outreach method.

That's additional to the TV money though, no?

Indeed, with Toronto its a shame they couldn't play their loop fixtures in Canada as it would have been an ideal way to host exhibition matches in other Canadian cities.

He'll be on later

I'm currently in the final week of my MA dissertation, I'm writing a lot

Half term lockdown inbound H, and in any case its not Boris saying anything!

I get that to an extent Harry, though I feel the position of the sport here and the historical baggage it carries (including that of our own making) means that growth here in areas like Newcastle, Wales, the South West, London and and the Midlands are much more difficult. The way I see it is that increased domestic interest, both heartland and not, may have to paradoxically come from outside.

It wouldn't be the first time these pages have offered more insight than the game's leadership! Covid is obviously another huge elephant in the room now. Without wanting to take it too political I just read an article on the BBC that suggested there's a growing acceptance to "live with covid" in the same way we do with the flu from academics and professionals. My point is that attitudes seem to be growing in importance and the longer it goes on the less panicked people tend to be.

Promote Fev, Sheffield, York and Donny for the lancastrians and Huddersfield, easy

Fair enough. I suppose the one major benefit of Toronto is that it has encouraged a genuine thought process about the whole game

By that measure then, Toronto's community engagement is better than Wakefield's, Salford's, Huddersfield's, Castleford's and Hull KR's because they engage a higher average number of people every matchday. Of course I know thats rubbish but you can see this becomes a pointless willy measuring exercise where figures can be manipulated to suit very quickly.

I'm not being funny Dave but it seems like we're happy with 125 year old clubs to have declining junior and senior amateur games in their areas, occasional school visits and allowing one of the amateur clubs women's teams to wear their kits and deeming its acceptable but then expecting a 4 year old club (hit by a pandemic in year 4) to do the same? I added the point about the womens game as essentially some clubs did just that, there was a bit of furore that St Helens were going to take credit for what was a Thatto Heath enterprise for example. Community foundations are charities which yes have a rugby league edge, but thats just amongst other things. The off field goals should logically be different between Leeds Rhinos, Wakefield Trinity and Toronto. I have no problem with that.

Totally agree. Franchise fees for all regardless of Toronto or North America frankly.

I'm going to call it now Harry, community foundations are nothing to do with developing players or the sport. They're community welfare schemes based on multi sports, dance, even charity work - that's obviously a good thing, but as I've pointed out in a latter post, that doesn't make them automatically very good community welfare schemes and certainly not player development programmes. If all these clubs were so good at reaching into schools we'd have a bigger presence in schools.

Quite, though TV money and league operations across the pond are vastly different.