Toronto

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Re: Toronto

Post by Derbyshiretiger » 08 Oct 2019, 08:56

derbystiger wrote: 07 Oct 2019, 19:06 No ones gonna convince me it’s a good thing. Admitting a team 8000 miles away is madness, an absolute joke. I’m all for expanding the game but the RFL’s job should be to expand it in our own country. As for football and rugby union travelling, yes they do - in separate competitions, they have a domestic league aswell. Let Canada/North America have their own league and then play a ‘champions league’ style separately and I’d have no issue. Bringing them into our league is a joke. Who’s gonna give me odds on this being the start of RFL merger talks and wanting ‘Calder’ again??!
Bang on. I said it from the start. Let them set up there own league then play a mini world tournament every year or 2 . Whatever. RFL a joke. Been a cas fan 45 year but I'm very quickly starting to lose interest at the way it's being run. Laughing stock.

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Re: Toronto

Post by jackknife » 08 Oct 2019, 08:59

derbystiger wrote: 07 Oct 2019, 19:06 No ones gonna convince me it’s a good thing. Admitting a team 8000 miles away is madness, an absolute joke. I’m all for expanding the game but the RFL’s job should be to expand it in our own country. As for football and rugby union travelling, yes they do - in separate competitions, they have a domestic league aswell. Let Canada/North America have their own league and then play a ‘champions league’ style separately and I’d have no issue. Bringing them into our league is a joke. Who’s gonna give me odds on this being the start of RFL merger talks and wanting ‘Calder’ again??!
Says 3500 miles away Google but i agree
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Re: Toronto

Post by Tamworth Tiger » 08 Oct 2019, 09:31

There must be a Castleford in Aus
I Googled the other day Sydney to Cas and Sydney Toronto and the mileage was only 600 miles different!

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Re: Toronto

Post by braytontiger » 08 Oct 2019, 09:51

All those that believe a world expansion is a good thing I’d say you are like turkey’s voting for Christmas.

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Re: Toronto

Post by mart0042 » 08 Oct 2019, 10:01

I think we need to try a few things and see what Elstone can do. He's the man charged with getting us the sky deal and taking the game at the elite level forward.

14 teams and no loop fixtures, an increased sky deal and with North American deal like espn.

Our crowd is probably limited at 12k even if we are the best in the sport, but we know that. Even though it's over a quarter of the Cas population and amazing, it wouldn't be enough if we want the sort to grow big. The thing is that's higher than so many others could be.

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Re: Toronto

Post by tigerfeat » 08 Oct 2019, 10:08

think ive said before no doubt in my mind you will end up with a super league of big city clubs and on any given Sunday you will see London playing Barcelona in front of 1500 speccies and on same afternoon Bradford will be playing cas in another comp in front of 15000
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Re: Toronto

Post by mart0042 » 08 Oct 2019, 10:14

tigerfeat wrote: 08 Oct 2019, 10:08 think ive said before no doubt in my mind you will end up with a super league of big city clubs and on any given Sunday you will see London playing Barcelona in front of 1500 speccies and on same afternoon Bradford will be playing cas in another comp in front of 15000
Maybe, but I'd still be watching Cas.

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Re: Toronto

Post by Scoopage » 08 Oct 2019, 10:16

Will they have to run a A team like rest of superleague?if so who is going to fund the travel for that?

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Re: Toronto

Post by mart0042 » 08 Oct 2019, 11:26

Scoopage wrote: 08 Oct 2019, 10:16 Will they have to run a A team like rest of superleague?if so who is going to fund the travel for that?
No, like catalans, they won't.

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Re: Toronto

Post by Tamworth Tiger » 08 Oct 2019, 12:13

tigerfeat wrote: 08 Oct 2019, 10:08 think ive said before no doubt in my mind you will end up with a super league of big city clubs and on any given Sunday you will see London playing Barcelona in front of 1500 speccies and on same afternoon Bradford will be playing cas in another comp in front of 15000
Genuinely can’t see it happening. The RFL have now failed at the top level in Paris, Cardiff, Nottingham, London, Kent, Wrexham, Gateshead, Sheffield , Bradford etc. etc.
Come up with a viable London team and I might just start to believe that they could bring another City team in as well.
Not sure what the definition of a city is in their eyes though, McDermott seems to think that the City of Salford is a ‘small northern town’

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Re: Toronto

Post by HuddsTigers » 08 Oct 2019, 12:55

To defend the RFL slightly, it wasn't them that failed with Crusaders - it was the owners pulling the plug financially after just a few years. They were getting decent crowds before then and even brought a good following to Cas. Required heavy investment, as do all start-up clubs in a new area and time.

Which is why the Toronto adventure is slightly different. Clearly they're happy to fund the investment (something like £14m has been invested already) to build this up.

Bradford failed down to their owners. There's no way a club with 10,000+ fans should be getting into financial trouble or be unsustainable.

Gateshead/Newcastle is clearly a strong area to pursue and Newcastle Thunder have good owners in Newcastle Falcons to be able to have natural growth. The historical Gateshead side, it could be argued, bailed out Hull FC, which set it back a good few years.

Sheffield is a footballing city, same with London. The only way these teams will see any kind of growth potential is through huge investment and success.

The only way that can be done is by giving them a leg up, which as we've seen from this thread, some rugby league fans are against any expansion and/or differentiation of the rules to support these sides. The RFL also doesn't have the resources to underwrite the costs.

Not too sure on the dynamics of what the NRL did for Melbourne Storm but my understanding is that they had a higher salary cap and possibly even got funded by the other NRL clubs.

Could you imagine 11 other Super League clubs taking a stake in say Newcastle Thunder and allowing them a higher salary cap? No, me either.
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Re: Toronto

Post by HuddsTigers » 08 Oct 2019, 13:31

Flat Capper wrote: 07 Oct 2019, 13:53
HuddsTigers wrote: 07 Oct 2019, 12:53...People are fearful because it's the small clubs that are being threatened and rightly so. They've had it cush for too long. This is why Cas need to be forward-thinking, outward-looking and sort out their promotion and attraction to fans and deliver on the field. If we don't want to be replaced then we have to lead, not expect it to be given to us.
Whilst I don't disagree with your principals in theory, the scale of the problem is a simple as this:-

Toronto - population 6 million+
Castleford - population 45k(ish)

However successful we may be, the fact remains that we will never attract more than 12-15k at best and that does not compete with the potential for 3 or 4 times that. From that, the powers that be have to decide what they want for the game and if it's a world product, Cas Tigers will become the equivalent of a non-league football team no matter how the club promotes itself.

Alternatively, the RFL could see the game as a more successful brand than it currently is but embracing its heritage whilst expanding to places like Coventry. Offering the right level of support for development clubs over here, targeting the Midlands and the South-West. Looking to establish clubs with a potential 20k fan base that doesn't take it beyond the potential level of the heart lands.
True but given that I'm sure Toronto has many different areas to it outside of the metropolitan centre, we shouldn't just view Cas as Castleford either but widen out our population and target audience beyond there. We have no club eastwards or northwards within 30 miles (Hull/York nearest ones). To the South, Doncaster is the nearest one.

We're also the premier team in Wakefield so we should be doing all we can to cover all of these areas to attract fans. Castleford will always be our identity but our fans don't just exist in Cas. The question is how can we attract people to our identity at all? An attractive team should be playing 10k and IF the new stadium happens, that has to be the catalyst for ambition.
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Re: Toronto

Post by HuddsTigers » 08 Oct 2019, 13:33

St Albans tiger wrote: 07 Oct 2019, 14:01 What is this nonsense about Toronto getting 10,000 plus for the game against Fev - the official capacity of the ground is only 9,600 and we all could see that the ends of the terrace were empty.

Don't get me wrong it was a good turnout - but you can do that at Cas if you give free tickets and subsidized beer
The official crowd was 9.7k but they have come out and said they think that there was more there than that. The official capacity of the ground only accounts for the seated areas, and doesn't account for the areas behind the posts, which have a huge number of fans too.

Irrespective of the actual amount, the crowd of 9.5/10k is more than most clubs in Super League. Inside 3 years. They were also all paying fans - no freebies were given out.
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Re: Toronto

Post by Flat Capper » 08 Oct 2019, 13:59

HuddsTigers wrote: 08 Oct 2019, 13:31
Flat Capper wrote: 07 Oct 2019, 13:53
HuddsTigers wrote: 07 Oct 2019, 12:53...People are fearful because it's the small clubs that are being threatened and rightly so. They've had it cush for too long. This is why Cas need to be forward-thinking, outward-looking and sort out their promotion and attraction to fans and deliver on the field. If we don't want to be replaced then we have to lead, not expect it to be given to us.
Whilst I don't disagree with your principals in theory, the scale of the problem is a simple as this:-

Toronto - population 6 million+
Castleford - population 45k(ish)

However successful we may be, the fact remains that we will never attract more than 12-15k at best and that does not compete with the potential for 3 or 4 times that. From that, the powers that be have to decide what they want for the game and if it's a world product, Cas Tigers will become the equivalent of a non-league football team no matter how the club promotes itself.

Alternatively, the RFL could see the game as a more successful brand than it currently is but embracing its heritage whilst expanding to places like Coventry. Offering the right level of support for development clubs over here, targeting the Midlands and the South-West. Looking to establish clubs with a potential 20k fan base that doesn't take it beyond the potential level of the heart lands.
True but given that I'm sure Toronto has many different areas to it outside of the metropolitan centre, we shouldn't just view Cas as Castleford either but widen out our population and target audience beyond there. We have no club eastwards or northwards within 30 miles (Hull/York nearest ones). To the South, Doncaster is the nearest one.

We're also the premier team in Wakefield so we should be doing all we can to cover all of these areas to attract fans. Castleford will always be our identity but our fans don't just exist in Cas. The question is how can we attract people to our identity at all? An attractive team should be playing 10k and IF the new stadium happens, that has to be the catalyst for ambition.
I'm not suggesting for one moment that clubs like Cas should sit back and rest on their laurels. What i m suggesting is that with the right level of support from the RFL, these clubs could flourish. The practicalities for any sport travelling all around the world to play a standard league system is, to be quite frank, laughable.

Let’s build a strong base and build up from there rather than spreading our jam a little too thinly on the toast.
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Re: Toronto

Post by Danny Boy » 08 Oct 2019, 16:59

I found McDermott's outburst on Saturday, about northern English towns, offensive! I can guarantee, if he moves to an English club in the next couple of years, he will change his tune, as did his old Leeds colleague, Peacock, who advocated reducing the number of teams in the league to 10, until he moved to Hull KR.

I was hoping that the RFL would use Toronto's promotion as an opportunity to increase Superleague to 14 teams, especially with Toronto possibly helping increase the TV revenue and announcing they wouldn't take the Sky money. This would also stop the stupid loop fixtures, plus we could have retained London (a real growth area) and maybe also promote Toulouse, at least then we will keep the current number of British clubs in the league.

The ultimate aim should of course, be a North American League, also a French Superleague, maybe if the French RL were compensated for what the French government did to them during and after WW2, they would have the finances French RU appear have at their disposal.
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Re: Toronto

Post by cogito ergo sum » 08 Oct 2019, 18:22

McDermott was referring to the potential for negotiating a bigger tv deal, and he speaks a grain of truth. TV want more viewers, which could be attracted by international city clubs, hence a better tv deal. As I’ve said many times on here, Sky are not interested in the regular fans with travel or work issues, only armchair fans. But suppose BT, Sky, Amazon, etc were competing for a deal...

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Re: Toronto

Post by Squaddie86 » 08 Oct 2019, 18:49

Tamworth Tiger wrote: 08 Oct 2019, 09:31 There must be a Castleford in Aus
I Googled the other day Sydney to Cas and Sydney Toronto and the mileage was only 600 miles different!
Edit - never mind, I read what you'd googled wrong... but Toronto to Cas is 5,536 km (3440 miles) whereas Sydney to Cas is 16,922 km(10,515 miles).



In general here are the main points I see against Toronto and this is why I disagree with them:

Problem: They won't bring many away fans
Response: If clubs rely on away fans to survive they don't deserve to survive, and it's not like Huddersfield or Salford bring many away fans.

Problem: It's a British/European league
Response: Well now it's a European and North American League. Get over it.

Problem: The existence of Toronto, Catalans, and possibly Ottawa, New York, etc in future is threatening clubs with long histories like Featherstone.
Response: Those clubs have had a long time to become economically strong members of Rugby Leagues top division.

Problem: Toronto give away free tickets to get their numbers up
Response: So What? they're growing the game, a child given a free ticket today is a season ticket holder in 10 years. It's called investment and it's smart.

Problem: The RFL shouldn't be spending money on Toronto, they should spend it on the heartlands.
Response: The RFL hasn't spent a penny on Toronto, in fact Toronto paid the RFL to enter the league. In contrast; The RFL spent money buying Bradfords stadium to stop them going bust, and they still went bust.

Problem: The travel distances are too far, teams can't afford it and no way can Toronto maintain it.
Response: Right now Air Transat are sponsoring Toronto and paying flight costs for away teams to visit. The distance covered is not actually unusual in sports - for example Super Rugby has teams in Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, every North American sport sees west coast teams playing east coast teams (distances about the same as Toronto to Yorkshire). That said I do think that the lack of money in Rugby League does mean this might not be viable long term.


That's my opinion anyway.

I don't know if this Toronto experiment will be successful in the long run, I don't know if it's economically viable. What I do know is that Rugby League in the UK is currently a minority sport, who's biggest team can't even half-fill a 25,000 seat stadium most weeks. So as a sport we're not exactly gambling everything by letting a wealthy investor raise a team in Toronto and try to grow the game in a potentially very lucrative market.

I'd like there to be a professional North American league eventually, but right now the quickest way to grow the game there seems to be investing in teams joining an extant league. Maybe if Ottawa and New York are successful we can eventually look to creating a "North American division". I don't know.

But people being negative about it and whinging about Toronto being in the league, it all seems very parochial to me.

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Re: Toronto

Post by Tamworth Tiger » 08 Oct 2019, 20:13

HuddsTigers wrote: 08 Oct 2019, 12:55 To defend the RFL slightly, it wasn't them that failed with Crusaders - it was the owners pulling the plug financially after just a few years. They were getting decent crowds before then and even brought a good following to Cas. Required heavy investment, as do all start-up clubs in a new area and time.

Which is why the Toronto adventure is slightly different. Clearly they're happy to fund the investment (something like £14m has been invested already) to build this up.

Bradford failed down to their owners. There's no way a club with 10,000+ fans should be getting into financial trouble or be unsustainable.

Gateshead/Newcastle is clearly a strong area to pursue and Newcastle Thunder have good owners in Newcastle Falcons to be able to have natural growth. The historical Gateshead side, it could be argued, bailed out Hull FC, which set it back a good few years.

Sheffield is a footballing city, same with London. The only way these teams will see any kind of growth potential is through huge investment and success.

The only way that can be done is by giving them a leg up, which as we've seen from this thread, some rugby league fans are against any expansion and/or differentiation of the rules to support these sides. The RFL also doesn't have the resources to underwrite the costs.

Not too sure on the dynamics of what the NRL did for Melbourne Storm but my understanding is that they had a higher salary cap and possibly even got funded by the other NRL clubs.

Could you imagine 11 other Super League clubs taking a stake in say Newcastle Thunder and allowing them a higher salary cap? No, me either.
The bottom line is that all those expansion attempts and a number of others failed with the only real success being in the Rugby League heartlands in the South of France
In terms of the NRL, whatever they did in Melbourne, my understanding is that they did nothing to develop the game in Perth because of the travelling distances involved .
I’m not fundamentally against expansion, I just have no faith in it working due to our abysmal track record

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Re: Toronto

Post by casjunction » 09 Oct 2019, 18:50

Toronto in Super League!
As many l want Rugby League to expand and also thrive in the so called heartlands of the M62 corridor and have little faith in those who administer our sport.
The Toronto experiment probably provided Rimmer and Co with some lucrative all expenses fact finding missions.
Will it fill stadia in the UK l doubt it.
Will it add to the carbon footprint?

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Re: Toronto

Post by St Albans tiger » 09 Oct 2019, 19:10

Will be Rimmers legacy so that he can further is career before looking for a job in the FA or RFU with all the experience he has gained. Won't be the first and won't be the last

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