Robert Elstone was among those who was against Toronto Wolfpack being allowed back into Super League at Friday’s board meeting.
League Express understands the Super League supremo said he was against the club being allowed back into the competition based on the evidence that had been provided by the club in their initial application.
In the end, the majority of clubs made the decision to give the Canadian club an additional four weeks to refine their application and ease fears that currently persist among Super League clubs.
Only three clubs are understood to have given Toronto a definitive ‘no’ on Friday based on what they had seen from the club’s application.
Instead, many clubs, though sceptical about their current application, are willing to be won over and have given Carlo LiVolsi an opportunity to present his and the club’s case to the club next month.
Elstone has long been understood to be against their return while RFL counterpart Ralph Rimmer supports the Wolfpack’s return.
Elstone said work will now be done on the commercial viability of Super League in Canada though it is unclear what that entails and who will take on the work.
“We need to think about the scope of that work, and there is some challenge in doing that. It’s easy to look at the size of Toronto, the wealth of Toronto, the tourist information of the city, the size of the broadcast markets, but we’ve got to make sure that’s relevant to the job in hand,” he said.
“The accessibility of Toronto Wolfpack to those markets is a lot different to how big those markets are. We will look at similar sports businesses and how they’ve capitalised on opportunities.”
