BackrowSaint wrote:
Obviously there's a couple thousand cockneys go to the games. But I have friends from London who live here and friends from here who live in London and they all say people don't even know Rugby League exists. They know of 'rugby' which is union but don't have a clue there's a second code. Some of my friends from London who lve up here are from a Union background and knew of SL and vaguely of London Broncos but only because they played Union. There is little to no coverage of the Broncos in the capital and the general public wouldn't have a clue who they were. Their average attendances are absolutely diabolical and it must be a money pit as you cant keep a club financially stable of 2,500 gate receipts. Somebody somewhere is losing a lot of money.
If that is the case and Fact please explain why such a big percentage of the tickets sold for the last international match at Wembley were sold to London postal addresses? You can never make a judgement
on what friends think alone.
The problem we have currently in London with the Broncos is that this season we have spent to our allowed salary limit on players, but fortunately the coach and some of the players have not really come up with the goods. The re-launch this season because of the on the field performances has not been successful. I supported the return to The Stoop but as with everyone else we have proved to be wrong, our Landlords have not supported us in the way I anticipated, t was also quite clear the use of the Harlequins name damaged us as a club, while at the same time we pay a very high rental for the use of the ground just for Super League and Challenge Cup match days. My only resolution for the current problem is to re-locate and I would like it to be to East of the Capital were great strides are being made with support of major sponsorship and the London Mayor's office, we need own own stadium were we can build in the local community, something I think will never happen with the Twickenham area, it may be we will have to ground share with a football club, I must point out this is not the feeling of some vocal supporters who seem to see The Stoop and Twickenham as heaven? why, when there is such bad transport connections, that is something we need to have, you have to remember many of our supporters travel a longer distance than any Northern club supporters do to 50% of their away matches.
It is important and at the same time that the fast development of the game in London at youth and amateur level now outshines many of the heartlands of the North and not by small numbers, we have to capture on this.
We have a Chairman who has backed the club financially a lot more personally than nearly every Super
League Club chairman that is his commitment to the game of Super League.
If we drop London now from Super League it will be disappointing and will close the door forever! and at a time when in recent games we have been playing more London born players than many Northern clubs do with their home town players.
Still think it will be a major mistake to lower the number of teams in Super League if anything it should have been 16 teams!
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