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Why is that? Don't quite a few amateur clubs have their own junior set ups, etc? Surely it would be good for a local pro-club to build a strong relationship with their local amateur set ups, especially if they haven't got their own elite academy to pick juniors from.

Flights out Saturday afternoon! Looking forward to this, hoping London can win, but they rarely do when I go in person

Can't say the name means anything to me - I just looked them up and I have heard their most popular song before, none of the rest. Still feels pretty small time for the GF, as someone else mentioned before, Scouting for girls have already played at Leigh this year and are much bigger

After the SLGF I imagine, with players with teams that are finished for the year told already.

Catalans (I hope)

I think this is where the impact of ref's are different in SL compared to the NRL. The captains challenge has allowed teams to challenge a decision of a referee, if they lose - it's gone, but if they win, they retain it. IMO, it has lead to less blame being placed on officials, and some more on captains for choosing when to, or not to use their challenge. You often hear "oh, and they've already used their challenge, so they can't do anything about that" rather than constantly talking about the referee getting it wrong. Referees are humans, and they will get things wrong during a match, it is expected - No one should expect them to be absolutely perfect.

If you did those things, then they wouldn't say no. That is just paranoia, but I am not going to get into an IMG thread, there are enough of those already.

By following the IMG plan and actually growing your club - Rather than buying a team for 1 season to get into SL. SL isn't closed, no matter how many times people say it will be.

Has a heartland club been hindered to grow?

All of your posts almost point to the IMG plan being the better plan. If you don't want new clubs to have to bring in over the hill NRL players in order to try and compete, then give new clubs in SL exemption from relegation for at least a year, to try and enable them to grow a team that isn't full of over the hill players. How do you expect a new club to compete other than with journeymen Aussies?

It's not explicitly about "helping" Catalans - But not hindering them.

Are they a great example of expansion, or are they a fluke? You've called them both, and I am not sure if they can be characterised as both. If you are a fluke, you can't be a great example of something

As much as I agree with your post - I can't wish for the following, as I am booking plane tickets in the next hour to Toulouse to go cheer London on

I don't understand what that would even mean about concentrating on both international and national sport without talking about expansion v heartlands - Unless I have misread @Damien's original post.

100% I believe that. They were made to jump through so many hoops it was stupid. Other sports manage airtravel with those sort of distances all the time. They certainly seemed to be well run, you can't argue with the amount of people going to watch them every week

About concentrating on the heartlands and expansion areas - RL isn't concentrating on expansion areas, and it never has done, other than hoping the clubs do it themselves that are in those areas

Except - most people don't like how Catalans were made, and think they should have been relegated year 1. They were a club that SL welcomed in, and put in place things so they could grow. Toronto were the opposite, and were never welcomed into RL like Catalans were, but they still had 9k attending championship and L1 games.

You said: So what else does that mean? What new expansion clubs are you talking about in order for us to do both?

Well, IMO I would say the 2 teams that have shown the most potential and shown in actual terms for growing the sport, and bringing more money in is Catalans and Toronto.

You have literally said "we don't have enough money for expansion clubs" and creating a tier system of "us and them" while saying "don't put me in the I hate expansion column" For someone that doesn't hate expansion, you are talking only down upon it. I am sorry that London beat Featherstone in the SF - Is that what you want to hear?

From what you've said here - To actually save money, we need to cut the number of heartland clubs. They've wasted quite a lot of money, considerably more than expansion teams.

Right .. So why are you bringing expansion clubs into it? You've named 4/5 expansion clubs in SL's history, one of which didn't get any money from RL, and only paid money out.

When have we ever tried to be a big national sport ? We are talking about Rugby League right?

But your only example of funds going somewhere they shouldn't have is PSG - Which I guess you can't be wrong as they aren't around anymore. Where have other funds gone that they shouldn't have gone?

So your answer to getting a truly international sport is to... not be a national sport first?