This week’s League Express Mailbag – London Broncos, IMG and Who Runs the Game?

Rob Butler, a boy from Rochester, Kent visits his local Rugby League club the Medway Dragons at the age of 7 and so likes the game that his parents take him to training twice a week in nearby Gillingham.

In his teens, he joins the London Broncos Academy, which sponsors his junior club with support and expenses. Graduating from there, he plays for the Broncos in Super League and goes on to represent the England Knights.

For this fairy story, read similar fairy stories involving Mike McMeeken from the West London Sharks, Dan Sarginson from Hemel Stags, Louis McCarthy Scarsbrook and Tony Clubb from Greenwich Admirals, Alex Walker from Brentwood Eels, Kai Pearce Paul from Croydon Hurricanes and now the Leyland brothers, Bill and Oliver, from Invicta Juniors –  all graduating via the London Broncos Academy.

Now put a flag in the map of London where each of these junior clubs lie and you will see that the catchment area of the London Broncos and its legacy in junior Rugby League these last twenty years has nothing to do with the London Borough of Merton.

In the history of the game of Rugby League, never have new seeds been planted in this way. This is not the turning over of established rugby clubs to a new code, as with the Northern Union in 1895, with Albert Baskerville in New Zealand in 1908, JJ Giltinan in Australia in 1909 and Jean Galia in France in 1934.

No, this is the creation of a new culture of Rugby League where there was nothing before.

In a media interview five years ago David Hughes outlined the ongoing mission to create a playing base in London to produce a sustainable supply of players for the Broncos and avoid the inflated costs of players from the north and overseas with the overlay of travel, relocation and accommodation expenses. That is long term planning and commitment and recent events have indicated this might have been within reach.

Now look at how the genius of IMG (or is it the RFL?) has valued this contribution to the game in terms of grading points – absolutely zero and way behind social media activity.

The logic of preparing a long-term template for the running of Rugby League clubs in the future is understood, and we did not need IMG for that. But why has this process been shoe-horned into a narrow time frame to produce this terrible self-harm for the game?

The flimsy apologist line appears to be that all the clubs signed up to the IMG partnership. But I do not believe any signed up to such a juvenile and concocted grading system.

We know that IMG has no allegiance to Rugby League and probably no knowledge of its history. But we could have expected more from the RFL than simply standing by and watching this treachery unfold.

Who at the RFL has signed off on this ridiculously fabricated score for London?

If the RFL is not up to it, then you might have expected more from the member clubs, some of whom have cherry-picked the fruits of London, and who are now set to cannibalise what is left.

Since Ian Lenagan sold up at London and invested in Wigan some 16 years ago, Hughes has carried this mission on his own shoulders, continuing to work into his seventies to bring in the finance required to support Rugby League in London.

It is incredible how Hughes has retained his composure these last 12 months, possibly thinking the game would come to its senses in time and with his apparent offer to personally fund the Broncos’ place in Super League. He just needed to be given some hope. Did anybody from the RFL speak to him? Or would this have required something called leadership?

Now Hughes has gone and it’s all gone. And can you blame this man, who grew up in Swinton and waxed lyrically to me about the greats of the game who had graced Station Road in its international days and who went to the City of London as young man to make his fortune and then invested in it so enthusiastically into London Rugby League.

As I finish this letter, a bland reactive statement has come in from IMG stressing that London needs significant investment over a long period.

Well IMG and RFL, you have just pulled the rug from under that long term investment – £25 million over 20 years – and you have almost certainly killed off any future interest.

I don’t know if David Hughes will have anything to do with Rugby League now, but if by chance this letter is in the Mailbag and he reads it, then I would like to thank him personally for his enthusiasm and generosity and contribution to Rugby League in London at all its levels

Farewell and have a long and happy retirement David!

No man could have done more.

With hindsight, I wonder whether IMG and the RFL wish they had included in their rating system a ‘Vision’ card for one club per season not reaching the others’ standards but with a transformational potential that may outweigh all other weightings (obviously this can’t apply to every season!).

With foresight, I wonder whether they should skew their promotion of the Las Vegas event early next year towards selling the London franchise to any US  interested parties.

Take as a good example how US input has transformed Wrexham FC and probably other UK sporting entities (I know that a marketing firm in London has been approached on ideas about how to sell the Las Vegas game).

Things may look gloomy at the moment but it is not all bad in the Championship for the Broncos.

First, there is no golden point, and the games flow much better because there is no video-referee.

It was bad enough with tries being passed to the video-referee but this season the game was stopped to check late and high tackles.

Next season there will be more delays when the Captain’s Challenge is introduced. How long will matches last?

The one drawback is that no games are televised. Can the RFL find one broadcaster to televise matches, even if it is only one a week.

Finally I would like to wish David Hughes all the best for the future he has done London and Rugby League proud.

Give that man a cigar!

It seems to me there are three main elements  – the RFL, Sky Sports and IMG and between them they are making a poor job of it.

The latest farce was the final round of Super League fixtures. The games involving Wigan and Hull KR should have been played at the same time, as should the games with Leigh, Catalans and St Helens or all the last round of games should be at the same time [my preference], which would be fairer to all concerned .

IMG now appear to be bemoaning the loss of London Broncos to Super League when they are the architects of this.

Decisions to benefit the sport need to accept where we stand in the structure of sports in this country and that we will not be able to bring about the financial benefits of the NRL. This does not mean, however, that we should stand still but it is glaringly obvious that the three elements mentioned above in their current format are incapable of providing that leadership.

Other sports, for example darts and snooker with smaller fanbases than Rugby League, are proving successful.

So a complete overhaul is required and that means no IMG and a review of all sponsorships and television revenues.

However, a lot of people thought that with a snap of their fingers, IMG could transform the game overnight. With the wave of a magic wand, we could all go to the ball. It was a fairy tale indeed.

Fans would suddenly be mobilised to flock to our newly, highly polished version of Super League without any effort from the clubs. IMG were going to ship us loads of fans by the coach and train load. They would be new fans impressed by the super smooth finished article.

Because this has not happened overnight, according to some so-called sagacious luminaries of the game, it has been miserable failure.

I know they have the game’s best interests at heart, but they are wrong to want to lower the bar back down to where we already were. You know what they say, ‘If you don’t go forward, you’ll be swept backwards’. There is also a saying ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’. Well, the image of Super League does need fixing.

IMG have set the benchmark to a level where they can market the game to a much broader church, not just to the village community centre.

When Super League was first launched, certain off-field criteria were supposedly laid down. To some clubs this meant let’s give it a lick of paint and that will do. But it didn’t and won’t do.

We really do need an overhaul a game that has so many backward-looking factions entrenched in the past.

To be fair, there are many more striving to take the game forward at all levels into the modern era. But it’s the perceived persona of the flagship Super League that is important to broaden the appeal of the game.

It has to become an event whereby people will jump into a car as a family and drive for an hour to watch a match they have never witnessed live before, between two teams of whom they have no natural attachment, while wanting to go back again and to talk about it and then to bring their friends and neighbours. That would give us new blood, which the game needs.

Or is it better that we all walk down to a large local corner pub every other week for a few beers and then march down to the ground for some more of the usual.

Don’t get me wrong, I have always loved this game and have travelled extensively to watch all levels of the sport. And as much as the above scenario appeals to me, it’s not the way to spread its appeal, which we must all aspire to in order to reach an audience it has not yet touched.

I hope that IMG get it right and that the doubting Thomas’s are wrong and the clubs who buy in the most receive their just dividends.

As somebody who indulges in the occasional grumble about the state of the game, I would like to thank Leigh, Salford, Warrington and St Helens for restoring an old fogey’s faith in the sport with those two edge-of-seat play-off ties over the weekend.

One sees Warrington travelling 100 miles on the M62 Friday night at peak time.

The other sees Leigh travelling six miles on Saturday daytime.

I wonder which way round the fixtures should have been.

Thinking about the fans shouldn’t have made them too difficult to arrange logically.