Hello

Very true, this has to be worked on yeah? Or do we just throw the towel in as a sport. You got any idea of the crowd today Fev?

It would be great for the sport to have decent teams in both Sheffield and London. I would have liked a close game regardless of who won. What was the crowd like (at the beginning) please? Attendances often don´t seem to make it into the attendance thread.

Nothing at all against Doncaster, but come on the Cru! Would be great for the sport to have a Welsh presence back in the second tier. Pob lwc Crusaders!!!

They've never once been semi finalists in the union world cup fyi .. edit, jumped in before seeing above reply sorry

Yes and no I would say. Back in the day London had half decent crowds but this wasn't built on in the way that successful expansion teams manage to do. Similar probably in North Wales where crowds declined over time I believe. So yes, the planning and strategy wasn't great, but at times there was interest that could have been exploited. Toronto different kettle of fish, loads of interest generated there and here but most of the clubs voted for what they perceived was best in the short term, lack of vision in my opinion

I take your point and, yes, for sure there are positives. But in the ten odd years I have been watching SL has lost its Welsh team, it's London team, gained and lost its Canadian team and further down we've lost Hemel, Oxford, Gloucester etc. I would argue that with the significant drop in crowds over that time that Broncos are not doing well, certainly their fans on here say not. Pacific island nations have lot of heritage players and little domestic action as far as I can tell, though I hope that it is increasing and would like to be corrected

Very sad. RL - going strongly against the grain. Other sports around the world expanding into new countries and areas. RL, contracting rapidly and increasingly disappearing from sight.

Sorry eal, please accept my apologies. I didn't mean to quote you in this reply, I was trying to reply to another post that seems to have dissappeared.

If you're referring to my comment then there's nothing xenophobic about me. I live in Spain and am teaching myself Spanish and have friends from Germany, US, Argentina, Italy and other countries that I socialise with. iF you are referring to my comment then I can't understand what is xenophobic about wanting to have countries that have international teams at least having some sort of domestic participation. I don't mind SOME heritage players, of course, it just becomes farcical when there are hardly any players living in the country that they are representing at a world cup. I want us to give support to nations to expand domestically and kudos to the likes of Greece for trying to do so.

I've got a proven track record on these forums of supporting the expansion of RL, please check out my posts, but there's some serious delusion on this thread in comparing RL international heritage teams, of which there are many who have basically little to no domestic game, with the other international sports that I've seen mentioned here who may have SOME but far from all foreign born players. Please don't peddle this nonsense, get a grip and try any find what we can do to actually develop RL beyond having 15 grandchildren playing for their grandparents place of birth. Maybe take a leaf out of the book of the minor European nations who are fighting to arrange internationals amongst themselves with little to no help from the IRL. Peace

To be fair that ignores all of the other matches, selective

With respect, football tinkers also. I feel that much of the issue for RL's lack of popularity is self-inflicted with a lot of resistance and fear of letting anyone new in on the secret

Yeah, just watched about a quarter of an hour of it myself. I was surprised by the standard of play also to be fair.

Fair point. Also, you should never ever " drop all efforts" , you can always at least chat at no cost to a stranger at a bar somewhere about the sport and try and persuade them to watch a game.

So frustrating how the Crusaders have been messed around with grounds. How have crowds held up? Any gossip on what might happen next season with the home games? I live in Aberystwyth in the summer and would like to get to a game some time, but I'm put off by the feeling of chaos and lack of progress to be honest. It would be great for the sport to see the Crusaders get promoted berfore long and have a Welsh team on the up, helping to break up the small footprint of the sport.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed your day and congratulations

It's not Sky who want to keep the sport a minority secret though, is it, they're all about making money obviously. They would gladly rake in the cash if it was allowed to properly expand and not be held back by the resistance of a lot of the fans and clubs who just want to be a big fish in a small pond. TV deals declining all the time, you reap what you sow

Nice one Eddie, that's the spirit. Expansion is not impossible as some here like to say, best of luck to the continuing efforts down there, 150 + is decent - from a small seed a great oak can be grown.

That's a reasonable question, to be fair. I think that Bradford are badly missed, but - all I can I say is my own personal experience which is that when I started watching SL roughly 10 years ago I was drawn in by seeing the Celtic Crusaders in Wales as they were at the time, in Wrexham, and London Broncos who were also at the time in SL, as well as Catalans who are still there, because of the variety that they provided on top of the heartlands clubs. I think that this is normal in inspiring people's interest in any sport. i, like many others. was then further excited by seeing Toronto join the system with the ensuing exposure that that sparked across the general media in the sport in a new country who enthusiastically embrace the game. What's happened since is....................

I THINK that he's a WUM, and a pretty good one at that.

Can't disagree that it is a tricky conundrum, fer sure..... Just feels that other sports have largely done it better. There is no silver bullet...

To be honest I have reservations about using this whole points based system for determing which division/league teams play in. My natural instinct is P and R to give everyone the opportunity and therefore incentive to further themselves. I think that I would rather that IMG would just stick to this simple to understand and fair system, and concentrate their efforts on marketing and trying to find fuding to support the game in existing and new areas to help overall growth. That's what I think that most of us were hoping for from them.

Their lowest rated in terms of importance:- COMMUNITY • Clubs awarded for foundation - participation growth and community engagement • Indicator of club fanbase potential • Incentivises investment in large potential markets • Foundation activity reflects a clubs impact in its community Worth just 12,5 % This is why, for example, the cricket and Union world cups are watched my many many times more people than the RL world cup, not even thinking about football. This is why other sports such as basketball are expanding globally and we are not. Fanbase potential/ Incentivises investment in large potential markets are an afterthought. IMG seens to be same old RL, never growing.

Ok John, point taken. I would say that a lot of threads go off on tangents and please can I point out that I thought that it was ok to post what I did in a Toronto thread. Thank you

Such a shame to see a team in a major city that were breaking record levels of attendance in the Championship before they were VOTED out of existence now unable to participate in meaningful games, and therefore unable now to help provide the desperately needed expansion of the sport with it's knock on benefits to all existing teams, with the increased glamour and media attention that they did and would again have provided looking to a better future. But hey ho, let's look at a few quid lost next year instead of a sport dying in the next 5, 10, 15 years.