Quote BD="BD""..attendances should not yet be used to measure the success of the game in London."
That is such a ridiculous statement to make. Yes, youth development and such can be a sign of improvement, but if people aren't bothering to turn up and actually watch the stuff then it is obvious that RL isn't striking the right chord in London. Thus it is lacking in "success".
... unless I'm looking at this totally wrong.'"
You are looking at it completely wrong. Sure Quins crowds are a measure of success, but they certainly aren't the only measure and nowhere near the key measure.
Viewing figures for RL in London are higher than most other areas of the country, I'm happy to be corrected, but I believe Super League on Sky gets more people watching it from the south than in the north. This, coupled with the number of amateur teams around London, the number of Londoners coming through to play Super League and international level shows the game is spreading to areas that aren't the heartlands.
As for attendances at Quins. For me to get to a Quins match, it would take around an hour and a half from my house in South London. To put this into perspective, when I lived in Birmingham it would take me an hour and a half to get to a Cas home game. Indeed, I could get to a Cas home game in under four hours now, so even though Quins is geographically a small distance from me, time wise it's the equivalent of a 100mile journey in the north of England.
Now, how many Cas fans go to away games? Significantly fewer than go to home games. This is due to proximity of the home ground to their home. If travelling for less than an hour is enough to put 90% of the Cas fans off watching their team in Hull, you can start to understand why the whole of London isn't moving en masse to every single Quins game.
The realistic target area for Quins home fans in Richmond. That is a population of around 200,000 people, making it around the same size as Huddersfield. Having a team in London is great for the game, but just because they're [iin[/i London, don't believe the Stoop is around the corner from Oxford Street and easily accessible to Londoners, because it's not, and as such, people won't make as much effort to get there and instead focus on local amateur games and watching SL on TV - and those are the real measures of the sport's popularity in London