London (Merged Threads)

[paul hicks]

29 minutes ago, Londonbornirishbred said:

London will score well on strategic location as well as playing out of a nice shiny stadium, but they will fall down on the commercial side of things as well their placement over the last 3 seasons. As others have said, it would take some pretty creative accounting and assessment for IMG to promote London over say Toulouse or Fev.

There's also the not so small matter of London being prevented from playing in the height of summer (11 weeks this year, 12 the year before) and having to take games to Ebbsfleet, which actually has fewer seats than Ealing Trailfinders that we are informed Hughes was told would prevent us from being promoted if we stayed there, yet here we find London back in SL and looking like having to take games in June and July "on the road".

It's a shame that the game finds itself at this crossroads, especially after a season where we saw crowds go up by close to 900 a game and SKY agree to another 3 years (albeit at slightly less money), but I think what will probably happen is IMG will recommend and expansion to 14 sides, with Wakefield and Toulouse joining the 12 we currently have. This will take bravery on the part of not only the RFL & IMG, but also from the 12 SL chairmen who will essentially be agreeing to £250k less in funding. IMG will need to show that they can get SKY back to the table and willing to pay more, or find ways of recouping that money to those 12 clubs. Maybe they  think they can leverage other commercial channels or possibly broker a European TV deal that includes France?

As for those clubs who miss out? I'd say that they'll survive, but not all of them. The likes of Featherstone and Bradford have potential, as do Widnes and Fax, but they'll need to be creative. As we've seen in Union, no club is too big to go down or be relegated because of cheating the cap and these clubs just below need to be ready to step if and when it happens in League

there have been a number of cases of clubs been prevented from playing home games for 6 or 7 weeks due to pitches been worked on over the summer. indeed, i think it happens quite often at wigan

[Damien]

Early bird 2024 season ticket offer. Some pretty great offers considering the price of stuff in London, only £199 for adults and £35 for u18s:

 

 

[dealwithit]

On 12/10/2023 at 18:46, Toby Chopra said:

The detailed scoring criteria have been published and most of them are things that are either in the public domain or we can make a very accurate stab at. We can work it out with 90% accuracy, and unless London do a Leigh in SL and Wakey crash and burn in the Championship it's almost impossible for them to stay up.

https://www.rugby-league.com/uploads/docs/Grading Handbook (Final Version).pdf

I’ve had a read and done some calculations. The part missing (or I’m blind) is the thresholds for Category A, B and C. Is this know? 
 

scratch that. This article says 7.5 for B and 15 for A

https://www.skysports.com/amp/rugby-league/news/12204/12860710/rugby-league-grading-criteria-radical-new-proposals-voted-in-by-majority-of-clubs

 

That means London will probably be category B. If they aren’t relegated in 2024, hard to see them being punted for a category A team. There will be other B teams in SL.

Edited October 19, 2023 by dealwithit

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

16 hours ago, Rovers13 said:

Why isn’t there? Make part time players full time? What folk don’t seem to get is if a player is part time then goes full time he massively improves his ability, whether that is fitness or his playing skills, but the biggest factor for me wouldn’t be a player pool more of who would want to do that from a part time point of view. As their is some very talented players in champ but  most are happy to be part time. 

I've said this before until I am blue in the face 

The Championship has massive amounts of players who could move fulltime and be  the same quality as our current SL

The player pool thing to get to SL level is a red herring 

Now if you are saying there is not a big enough pool to get SL itself to a higher quality then I agree

[The Phantom Horseman]

2 hours ago, dealwithit said:

 

That means London will probably be category B. If they aren’t relegated in 2024, hard to see them being punted for a category A team. There will be other B teams in SL.

What do you mean "if they aren't relegated in 2024"? Their place in SL in 2025, like everyone else, will depend on whether they have one of the top 12 IMG scores. 

[The Blues Ox]

Can someone point me to the part in the grading system where London will do well because they play in a shiny new stadium or Bradford do badly because they play at Odsal? For anyone who wants a nosey its section 4 in the handbook posted above and there is very little there that actually is relevant to the state of the stadium. If anything London will lose out on utilisation(the bigger the stadium and smaller the average attendance the lower the score*) and primacy of tenure. The actualy part on Facilities is set so low that most of the teams who see themselves as contenders will hit max points for this.

 

*as a side note it should now be starting to become clear why Bradford have been artificially increasing attendances and also would not bee too fussed if part of that huge area of terracing got closed off......

[Damien]

2 minutes ago, The Blues Ox said:

Can someone point me to the part in the grading system where London will do well because they play in a shiny new stadium or Bradford do badly because they play at Odsal? For anyone who wants a nosey its section 4 in the handbook posted above and there is very little there that actually is relevant to the state of the stadium. If anything London will lose out on utilisation(the bigger the stadium and smaller the average attendance the lower the score*) and primacy of tenure. The actualy part on Facilities is set so low that most of the teams who see themselves as contenders will hit max points for this.

 

*as a side note it should now be starting to become clear why Bradford have been artificially increasing attendances and also would not bee too fussed if part of that huge area of terracing got closed off......

I think it's clear from the comments Castleford made around their redevelopment that the actual criteria is far more in depth and nuanced than the overview that has been released publicly.

[Archie Gordon]

10 hours ago, paul hicks said:

there have been a number of cases of clubs been prevented from playing home games for 6 or 7 weeks due to pitches been worked on over the summer. indeed, i think it happens quite often at wigan

But not 11/12 weeks.

However, I think Hughes now has to pay for improved floodlights at PL and may (ought to) use that as a bargaining tool to reduce the gap to ~6 weeks. London should use that gap to take a big game to a big(ger) stadium.

[Toby Chopra]

9 hours ago, Damien said:

Early bird 2024 season ticket offer. Some pretty great offers considering the price of stuff in London, only £199 for adults and £35 for u18s:

 

 

On the face of it it's a great offer, but I'd like to know exactly how many games will be at Wimbledon first. I'm not interested in going to Ebbsfleet.

[glossop saint]

5 minutes ago, The Blues Ox said:

Can someone point me to the part in the grading system where London will do well because they play in a shiny new stadium or Bradford do badly because they play at Odsal? For anyone who wants a nosey its section 4 in the handbook posted above and there is very little there that actually is relevant to the state of the stadium. If anything London will lose out on utilisation(the bigger the stadium and smaller the average attendance the lower the score*) and primacy of tenure. The actualy part on Facilities is set so low that most of the teams who see themselves as contenders will hit max points for this.

 

*as a side note it should now be starting to become clear why Bradford have been artificially increasing attendances and also would not bee too fussed if part of that huge area of terracing got closed off......

It is surprising how many regular posters on here haven't seemingly read the document. You are quite right that just having a shiny stadium or being in a city won't give you that many points. Or even home grown players.

[Barley Mow]

2 hours ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

I've said this before until I am blue in the face 

The Championship has massive amounts of players who could move fulltime and be  the same quality as our current SL

The player pool thing to get to SL level is a red herring 

Now if you are saying there is not a big enough pool to get SL itself to a higher quality then I agree

I agree. The problem is that our full-time clubs don't have the funds to convince these players to go full-time and give up there existing combination of part-time RL and outside work.

Where does the money come from to make it worth their while?

[paul hicks]

1 hour ago, Archie Gordon said:

But not 11/12 weeks.

However, I think Hughes now has to pay for improved floodlights at PL and may (ought to) use that as a bargaining tool to reduce the gap to ~6 weeks. London should use that gap to take a big game to a big(ger) stadium.

i don't really see a problem with a club playing games in blocks of say five games at home then a gap and then another four or five.  in some ways it builds an expectation of oh its Sunday lets go to the rugby which a game every two or 3 weeks do not.

it was actually a thin g toronto did at times with success if you look at the atts they got

[Rovers13]

3 minutes ago, paul hicks said:

i don't really see a problem with a club playing games in blocks of say five games at home then a gap and then another four or five.  in some ways it builds an expectation of oh its Sunday lets go to the rugby which a game every two or 3 weeks do not.

it was actually a thin g toronto did at times with success if you look at the atts they got

Can’t live like that though fans drop off a little, some people can’t afford to go to 5 games at home on trot the away fixture gap gives some a break. Non season ticket holders im talking about. But could also include the season ticket holders if they take families with food drink bills etc. 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Rovers13

[dealwithit]

5 hours ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

What do you mean "if they aren't relegated in 2024"? Their place in SL in 2025, like everyone else, will depend on whether they have one of the top 12 IMG scores. 

No that’s not how it’s working. They’re not ranking every single club in order. They’re giving A, B and C grades. If you’re grade A you’ll be in SL. If you’re grade B and you finish bottom of SL you could be relegated if the championship winner is graded B too. 

[Toby Chopra]

59 minutes ago, dealwithit said:

No that’s not how it’s working. They’re not ranking every single club in order. They’re giving A, B and C grades. If you’re grade A you’ll be in SL. If you’re grade B and you finish bottom of SL you could be relegated if the championship winner is graded B too. 

That's what people originally assumed, but it was clarified it is being done on overall grading score. A's plus the top scoring B's will make up Superleague, regardless of where they finish. That's why some of the Championship clubs voted against. 

[The Phantom Horseman]

1 hour ago, dealwithit said:

No that’s not how it’s working. They’re not ranking every single club in order. They’re giving A, B and C grades. If you’re grade A you’ll be in SL. If you’re grade B and you finish bottom of SL you could be relegated if the championship winner is graded B too. 

Not sure what you're saying here. We all know that a Grade A guarantees you a SL place, but it seems broadly accepted there won't be more than 5 or 6 "A" clubs initially. 

Your last sentence doesn't reflect anything that's in the handbook. It could easily be, for example, the team that finishes, say, 10th in SL that gets replaced by the team that finishes 3rd in the Championship. It's all going to be down to their overall IMG score.

[Rovers13]

This intrigues me massively tbh, IMG as made no bones about how important London are to the growth of the game, but Under their system their relegated no matter what london do, so do IMG stick with their system that they’ve told the RL world is the saviour of the sport or do they keep London in no matter what, but whichever they decide will have consequences prob more so if they go against everything they stand for with Their grading system. 

[17 stone giant]

I might be tempted to adopt London as my team, if I didn't really dislike the Broncos name.

It has nothing to do with London and only got the name because Brisbane Broncos bought London Crusaders and renamed them.

Surely there are better names than that.

Even London Foxes I would prefer, since there's apparently 10000 plus foxes in London.

 

[Rovers13]

3 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:

I might be tempted to adopt London as my team, if I didn't really dislike the Broncos name.

It has nothing to do with London and only got the name because Brisbane Broncos bought London Crusaders and renamed them.

Surely there are better names than that.

Even London Foxes I would prefer, since there's apparently 10000 plus foxes in London.

 

On that remit why not be called london people

Edited October 19, 2023 by Rovers13

[17 stone giant]

1 minute ago, Rovers13 said:

On that remit why not london people

That wouldn't be my preference, but I appreciate your contribution.

Dragons are apparently the symbol of the City of London. London Dragons? I know Catalans are Dragons, but you can have more than one. Plenty of United's and City's about in football.

Anything than (Brisbane) Broncos!

[Rovers13]

3 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:

That wouldn't be my preference, but I appreciate your contribution.

Dragons are apparently the symbol of the City of London. London Dragons? I know Catalans are Dragons, but you can have more than one. Plenty of United's and City's about in football.

Anything than (Brisbane) Broncos!

London lions for me get me in marketing lol or lizards just because swinton have lions lol 

Edited October 19, 2023 by Rovers13

[Toby Chopra]

15 minutes ago, Rovers13 said:

This intrigues me massively tbh, IMG as made no bones about how important London are to the growth of the game, but Under their system their relegated no matter what london do, so do IMG stick with their system that they’ve told the RL world is the saviour of the sport or do they keep London in no matter what, but whichever they decide will have consequences prob more so if they go against everything they stand for with Their grading system. 

I think you're overstating a bit how important IMG think London are. Yes they said it's a strategic market, but what sport in their right mind would say they're not interested in London. They also said London had to be competitive in SL and to have learned from the mistakes of the past, and that it was a long term project.

If London 2024 is anything like the last few seasons they had in Superleague - poor team, low crowds, shambolic administration, all hanging on the owner not walking away - then I don't think IMG will be doing anything out of the ordinary to protect that.

They want a London club that's built to last.

[Rovers13]

Just now, Toby Chopra said:

I think you're overstating a bit how important IMG think London are. Yes they said it's a strategic market, but what sport in their right mind would say they're not interested in London. They also said London had to be competitive in SL and to have learned from the mistakes of the past, and that it was a long term project.

If London 2024 is anything like the last few seasons they had in Superleague - poor team, low crowds, shambolic administration, all hanging on the owner not walking away - then I don't think IMG will be doing anything out of the ordinary to protect that.

They want a London club that's built to last.

I totally agree mate I just thought it was an intriguing topic. 

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, 17 stone giant said:

I might be tempted to adopt London as my team, if I didn't really dislike the Broncos name.

It has nothing to do with London and only got the name because Brisbane Broncos bought London Crusaders and renamed them.

Surely there are better names than that.

Even London Foxes I would prefer, since there's apparently 10000 plus foxes in London.

 

I don't think it matters. Should have stuck with Fulham. They kept the name until 91 and it was a brand which could have built on despite the football club withdrawing. Most clubs in London are named after a local area or have no geographic name. Harlequins and Saracens for example.

[40yearsatlondon]

41 minutes ago, NW10LDN said:

I don't think it matters. Should have stuck with Fulham. They kept the name until 91 and it was a brand which could have built on despite the football club withdrawing. Most clubs in London are named after a local area or have no geographic name. Harlequins and Saracens for example.

who cares...as long as there is league in london!!