Proposed Rugby League franchises in Boston and Hamilton have expressed interest in joining the RFL as early as next year.
As TotalRL understands it, while New York welcomes recently-departed CEO Nigel Wood visit this week to assess the validity of the New York team’s bid, more cities in North America are keen to join as quickly as possible. The New York team confirmed last October that they were hoping to enter a team next season, to play out of the American city.
Interested other teams include Hamilton – the Canadian city which is hoping to follow in Toronto’s footsteps and become the second team from that country to join the RFL. That bid, TotalRL understands, is being handled by Eric Perez, the man who helped bring the Toronto project to fruition last year.
Boston is understood also to have an interest in joining the RFL in 2019, although few details are known about that particular bid at this time. TotalRL understands that an Australian and a London-born businessman, both with prior experience in the sport, are involved in that bid.
Wood arrvied in New York this week to assess the credibility of New York’s project, which has been in planning for well over a year now. No representative of the franchise was available for comment however, when asked why Wood, who has left the RFL and is preparing to begin work as head of the Rugby League International Federation, is the man travelling to America to conduct that work.
