Hello

Nightmare. The last thing we need is noobs, too many of them and we're in danger of increasing the popularity of the sport. Thank god they're getting relegated and being replaced by..........

Toulouse heads will be very low and they will put in one of their worst performances. They know that they've blown many opportunities where they've lead in the second half and that survival is suddenly beyond them. They will have to wait till next season to get there mojo back.

Ok sorry probably my memory being poor and mixing you with someone else.

Can you show me one positive post that you have made about a non-heartlands club ever? I challenge you

Well, the odd bitter "neutral" poster was clearly worried once again that Toulouse were going to win and quite possibly stay up, but were happy in the end to see that Super League Europe is destined again to become that little bit further less "super" next season with "Europe" reduced to a postage stamp sub area of northern England plus Catalan. However, I think that the less one-eyed amongst us see that Toulouse really should have stayed up with something to spare with the number of games that they have been ahead in, and with the sheer bad luck of losing two key players as a consequence of covid at the dawn of the season. Looking forward though, I fully expect them to come straight back up and stay up next time. They've made a much better fist of it than some of the feeble recent efforts of promoted teams and will come back stronger and cement their place in the league with a steadily increasing fanbase in a large city. Good effort Toulouse, but not quite enough this time. See you back in super League in 2024.

Regarding "neutral" views on games not involving teams supported by posters concerned. I think that we all know damn well that there are certain posters on here who when viewing a match involving a team from an expansion area will always favour the team from the traditional heartland. But of course, they are forward thinking and all, they just don't understand those strange so called neutral supporters who support expansion of the game and long term survival of the game.

In 1999 Bradford managed to get a home crowd of 24,020 for a league fixture (I'm sure that most on here are aware that the figure was in this region). There is a large population in the Bradford area in terms of traditional RL teams. Times change in terms of popularity of sports, but few northern hemisphere clubs indeed can boast such attendance figures at any point in their history, and, speaking as someone who is not an actual supporter of Bradford, their loss from the top table seems a kick in the gonads for the general health of the game.

I totally agree with you, times are indeed hard, not just in traditional working class communities though. I think, though, that the game has generally been doing a poor job of promoting itself for a long time, not specific to Fax. I wouldn't pretend to have any amazing solutions of my own, but it would definitely help to expand from what the public view as the traditional areas because the limited scope of those areas makes it seem small time. That's not a dig at the tradional areas at all, they are vital, it's just an observation that in comparison to many other sports waves don't seem to being made much in terms of progress, the opposite in fact.

Having heard poor reports of attendance (again), the important question seems to be, "how do we get people to care/turn up to league games". Call me negative if you want.

Hi Jon. A misunderstanding I think. He's trying to say that he thinks that Dewsbury are going down.

There were one or two deferrals of payment because of admin issues that were ultimately paid anyway in due course. If there was any true problem then the players wouldn't have signed on the line to play there. Covid obviously killed most of Toronto's income streams, resulting in the admitedly ultimate non-payment of players in their final season, but without covid they would have had a whole series of home games to come with all attendant revenue. The fact that pre-covid they actually asked to be able to extend the salary cap to be able to pay even more to their players kills dead in the water this non-payment of bills bs argument that the expansion-haters love to use. Some people just seem to be firmly against the presentation of opportunity for fresh areas to expand the sport, I can't realate to that mentality at all to be honest. In the modern world of sport it's surely expand or contract (die).

"Outlandish claims" of Toronto who had crowds considerably bigger than most SL teams whilst in the championship. And as for Toronto being based on lies, there was this thing called a global pandemic, that occured during the season in which they had to pull the plug - you might have heard about it.

Yep, born in England brought up in Aber through childhood though lived away a few times, fluent Welsh speaker. If RL wants to fight back and expand then it's sometimes hard to see any joined-up thinking, that's for damn sure.

Nail on head, thanks, although if they were going to stick Wales games in mid-week then at least one game in Cheshire would seem very obvious to me. That reduced distance from the border would make it a lot more feasible for many, especially mid-week, including the not insignificant contingent from the Wrexham/Colwyn Bay area.

Thank you Sports Prophet. You have spotted my point, which I thought was more obvious than it seems to have been to some posters. I'm looking into other games.

Thanks for the useful and constructive input.

Still can't make it GUBRATS, thanks for the input though.

Obviously, I was just saying like.............. it might have been an idea to think of the bigger picture.

Ok fair enough, I checked the journey times from where I am (Aberystwyth) and I just can't make any of the games when I get back from work. Frustrating........And I can't book time off as a teacher, set holidays.

Thanks for the reply. I think that Leigh and St Helens are that extra hour or so further that pushes it into the impossible for the likes of ourselves. Also, one match is in Doncaster.

I live in west Wales (not near the West Wales team) and have been following League for some time amongst other sports. I spoke with my 23 year old son recently about league, he is a very proud Welshman. His first love is the Welsh football team, second love Liverpool (inherited from myself) and third he enjoys watching the Welsh union team. When I was talking to him about Rugby League he admitted that he thought that he would probably enjoy it more than Union. Last week I thought, bu**er it, I'll look into getting us tickets for a world cup game. However......... the Wales games are all in grounds that are totally impossible for us to reach after work. WTF? Why didn't anyone think to maybe have them in Warrington which is just about reachable for us and many others who live in Wales, if they were not going to allow Wales to play pool matches within Wales? Another massive self-foot-shoot from RL in my humble opinion. As the title says, crying over spilt milk cos nothing's going to change for the World Cup now obviously.

Hi. Why is that the general feeling? I would have thought with their crowds and investment, and looking at how they won the Championship easily last time they would be good favourites to go back up. Are there factors I don't know about, or is it human nature pessimism?

Another close defeat for TO, almost as if the sporting gods want to hold RL expansion back and indeed see the sport continue to retract

It feels a shame that Cornwall are getting such good attendances at this level and yet are total whipping boys. Perez seems to have gone from one extreme to the other in terms of investing in the actual squad. If there isn't more investment soon in said squad then I fear it will just become another appeared and then disappeared story in the attempts to expand and ultimately survive as a sport that has credibility as a professional sport.

Fair points