Sir Kevin Sinfield wrote:
It's nothing to do with football clubs, just that those cities don't have professional rugby league clubs. Most of the clubs we've got have been around from pretty much the beginning of RL's history. Forming a brand new professional club, while not impossible, is a tough thing to get right, even in a city and requires a lot of financial input. See Melbourne Storm, New Zealand Warriors and Catalan Dragons as successful examples.
The root of it is connected to the presence of successful soccer clubs. Back in the formative years of the football codes (rugby and soccer) many towns would have clubs in both codes and when rugby split some had clubs playing all three. Rising popularity of one code in particular within a town led to clubs in that code dominating and clubs from other codes shrinking, going out of business or in some cases changing codes. Preston North End, Bradford City and Bradford Park Avenue for example all were rugby clubs that switched to soccer as it became more popular and rugby became less sustainable due to falling interest. This led to towns and cities where rugby had been played at the top level ending up with no clubs as they either switched codes or gave up altogether. Had it not been for the presence of a group of people who still did want to play and watch rugby (due to decades of rugby tradition in the city) we would have had no clubs in Bradford after 1906.
The reason that many of our clubs have been around for most of RL's history is that they were the ones that survived that period due to being the most successful and popular clubs in their area. Those which have football clubs in the same town/city now didn't necessarily have them there then (at least not in the form of the present clubs). Wigan had been going for over 60 years when Wigan Athletic formed and over 100 when Latics entered the football league and had outlasted previous soccer clubs. Leeds and Hunslet had both been established for many years and had been successful before Leeds Utd appeared. Likewise Hull FC and Hull KR were both well established before Hull City came into being. Others like St Helens, Warrington, Wakefield and Widnes never had soccer clubs to compete with and success maintained interest so the clubs persist.
As I mentioned in my earlier post we did have clubs in places like Radcliffe, Walkden and Stockport which fell by the wayside as nearby soccer clubs had success and people took up watching and playing that code instead. Rugby towns became soccer towns and that became the most watched and played form of football. As the years went on attempts to establish new clubs succeeded where soccer did not have major clubs like Castleford and Whitehaven, or where less successful soccer clubs existed and the new RL clubs had near immediate success like Workington. In those places enough profile could be gained and the clubs were able to survive. Attempts made in places with successful and famous soccer clubs already like Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle saw the new clubs fail to make any headway as the towns were dominated by soccer clubs both pro and amateur and the various attempts failed. Soccer by comparison managed to establish and sustain clubs in new territory due to the national profile of that sport making it easier for soccer clubs to make headway and build a fan base.
It is not impossible for new clubs to be formed and to persist in such areas as the likes of Bury Broncos, Manchester Rangers and Mancunians RL show but particularly given the size and profile of the soccer clubs in the cities like Manchester and Liverpool the likelihood is that carving a small niche and existing as community clubs or low level semi pro clubs is probably as much as we can aim for in the medium term at least. Doncaster for example have been doing that since they came along in the 1950s. Whilst a sufficient amount of money is a requirement to start clubs and to keep them going, without garnering enough interest within the town/city to attract and keep a regular fan base the money will not be enough. Attaining enough visibility and profile to allow the club to at least register as a presence in the cultural psyche of its home town/city is key to giving it a chance to keep going at League 1 level at least. From that stage the amount of money (and some luck) will determine how much further it can go.
