Eddie

There’s the negative right there. I think @nadera78 was talking about building on the many positives in Serbia though?

Do you have any info about numbers of clubs and players and open and younger age levels? Agreed there does seem to be a thriving, if small RL scene in Serbia which is great.

They should be kicked out of the league, any away trip not spent at least 50% of the time on the M62 isn’t rugby league.

Leigh might not make the final, but if as seems likely they do can you get a taxi / Uber from the nearest station? Atherton station is apparently only 4.2 miles away and Newton Le Willows 5.3.

Before I respond to that, was it a tongue in cheek comment?

Corporate customers can be loyal fans though can’t they? Just fans who can afford things like £800 to fly to France for the day?

Well I’m only going on what my pal told me, he’s an ex player and fan so not involved on the board or anything, but he seems to know what’s going on there. He could be wrong though in fairness.

North Walsham Union club (who are in the fourth or fifth tier are flying to Guernsey for a league game this season, I was talking to a mate yesterday (which is how I found out) and they are well up for it. They’re also paying their own costs. If amateur clubs in that league can do it, and relish it, I can’t understand how professional RL clubs think it’s unacceptable for them to pay for their own flight to Toulouse in the European Super League. RL while a fabulous sport is so frustratingly parochial, it’s no wonder blue chip sponsors aren’t interested when the game enjoys wallowing in it’s own impoverished image.

Indeed, Belle Vue is getting a new stand.

Don’t HG part own the stadium?

That’s a terrible arrangement isn’t it, for HG I mean

Surely if Salford wanted to bring an extra 500 fans at £25 (?) a head plus a few pints and pies it would be worth opening an extra section. While I appreciate the logistics, having a 25,000 stadium with 6,500 people in and refusing to open 500 more sounds tin pot.

Yes, they’re talking about minimising their losses, an needless swipe at having to pay to go to France. They shouldn’t have qualified for the play offs if they didn’t want to risk paying to travel to a match in them.

Tbh it does read like that.

Fair enough

No fair enough Leeds aren’t specifically moaning here, but as you know some clubs do moan about the cost of going to France, to the extent that they make Toulouse pay for them to go. Also our teams only go twice a year too unless they get drawn away in the play offs, and they don’t pay for one of those trips. And the south of France is far more accessible than the far flung places that the likes of Glentoran and Bangor City have to go to, in their much smaller budgets.

No fair enough, they aren’t moaning.

Manchester isn’t sold out, I’ve just been on Skyscanner.

Manchester to Girona, leave Friday morning, back Saturday morning - £173. With bags that’s £6k for 30 people. Add a coach either side £600, hotel and food for 30 people say £5000. That’s £12k in total.

Have you checked the Friday price? It’s amazing that part time Welsh and Northern Irish football teams fly all over Europe playing European club matches without moaning about the cost, they go to far more inaccessible places too.

Fair enough, but they don’t have to charter a flight. As Oliver pointed out above there are return flights to Girona from Leeds for less than two hundred quid.

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve, what time are you posting the stats?

Possibly, but possibly not? Regardless paying more than double seems like a lot.

Tbf it probably doesn’t. During the pandemic when Catalans were chattering their own flight at their own expense so they could fulfill their fixtures in England they said it was €50k a time.

£800, is it a gold plated private jet?