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From despair TO where: Rugby League 2018

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    And another, this one hits the bar and goes over - Saints by one!

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      Wire try, Lineham again.

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        13-18. Saints have four minutes.

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          Ah, fuckity fuck. Can't believe Saints didn't win that.

          Commiserations Walt.

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            Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
            Are the clubs arranging discounted air fares to Toronto for matches? Cheapest air fare I'm aware of from Manchester to Toronto is with an Icelandic budget airline and that's still the thick end of £400 return...
            Canadian Affair and Air Transat (Wolfpack's sponsor) offer a city break package for RL fans (match ticket, return flights and hotel) for around £660 from Gatwick. Also from Manchester, but that is considerably more expensive.

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              Hoping Cas can beat Wigan so that we can ensure a new name on the SL trophy.

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                Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                Ah, fuckity fuck. Can't believe Saints didn't win that.

                Commiserations Walt.
                Cheers Kev but to be honest I've not been as engaged with Super League this year, mainly cos I got rid of Sky Sports this time last year (just before they surprisingly added NRL) and I've not got down to see Saints live this year although me and daughter kept saying we'll have to go sometime.

                Agree with MOF, Cas are the people's choice from here.

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                  Certainly happy for Cas to beat Wigan, but Warrington winning for the first time in 63 years would be quite a story too - and would make Ms Etienne very happy.

                  Anyone but Wigan really.

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                    Yes, I'd be happy for either Wire or Cas. Wire played very, very well last night to be fair. Extremely well-disciplined when under pressure (except for a late tackle that cost a penalty) and clinical when attacking. Saints - as excellent as they have been this year - didn't get over when they had a key period of domination before the hour mark.

                    Highlights:
                    https://twitter.com/SuperLeague/status/1048136712948518912
                    Last edited by Kevin S; 05-10-2018, 09:06.

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                      Bad news for England today - Sam Burgess is out of the Baskerville Shield series as he needs surgery:
                      https://www.skysports.com/rugby-leag...-due-to-injury

                      So we're going to be without Sam B, James Roby, Gareth Widdop, Ryan Hall and probably some others too. Going to be an interesting team.
                      Last edited by Kevin S; 05-10-2018, 09:06.

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                        Big Sam could probably do with some time off to get his head together after the recent scandal at Souths.

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                          Originally posted by Etienne View Post
                          Certainly happy for Cas to beat Wigan, but Warrington winning for the first time in 63 years would be quite a story too - and would make Ms Etienne very happy.

                          Anyone but Wigan really.
                          Certainly wouldn't object to t'Wire, I know a very loyal and long suffering fan, but think Cas deserve it to cap their rise in recent years.

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                            Hmm, SF2 not looking quite so close.

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                              Tension in the MPG too. London just 2-0 ahead.

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                                Make that 2-2.

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                                  Well, that won't go down as a classic. London Broncos are back, with two goals to one...

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                                    It may not have been the most enjoyable game but that was utterly enthralling. Terrific defence from London and a well deserved victory though SL 2019 may be a hugely difficult proposition to avoid bottom spot

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                                      Will the Broncos continue to play at Ealing RFC's ground in the top tier, do we know?

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                                        From what was said on Rugby League Back Chat the intention is to remain there and to try and enhance the ground with a temporary stand, though a return to The Stoop wasn't ruled out either

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                                          There had been discussions that if Toronto Wolfpack were in Super League, they would want to take a match to cities such as Copenhagen. Any thoughts on that?

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                                            Originally posted by Bob8 View Post
                                            There had been discussions that if Toronto Wolfpack were in Super League, they would want to take a match to cities such as Copenhagen. Any thoughts on that?
                                            Welcome back Bob8, while since we've seen you in these parts.

                                            As usual with these things my preference is that they do it as part of a sustained effort to establish/enhance RL in new areas. I know you've been involved with things in Scandinavia in the past (and maybe still are?) and there seems to have been a bit of progress in Norway recently, but how much knock on effect would there be from staging a game in Copenhagen?

                                            RL often does this, like the games in Milwaukee, Long Beach and latterly Denver that all achieved nothing in the longer term. Barcelona was going to be the next frontier for a while and got forgotten about. We got a good crowd in Bristol in the 2013 World Cup and have never been back. Coventry was going to be a regular base for internationals (with a nearby pro club already established), but we've gone back to the M62.

                                            On the other hand if a third party is underwriting it, then it all adds to making the sport more interesting, and it's good for the players and fans to go somewhere different other than the same few grounds they tend to play at.

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                                              I thought this long interview with the Wolfpack's owner was interesting (original behind the Athletic's paywall)

                                              The​ Toronto Wolfpack​ held​ their destiny​ in​ their​ hands. Looking​ up​ from a 2-2​ standing​​ in the Rugby League Qualifiers, they won three in a row, including an upset of powerhouse Leeds. They were on the edge of a Super League promotion. A winner-gets-promoted affair — The Million Pound Game — against the London Broncos on home turf was exactly where they wanted to be.

                                              “I think for most of the fans, including myself, it was like watching a train wreck,” team co-owner David Argyle told The Athletic in an exclusive interview.

                                              That crash came slowly, at a pace that would normally seem to favor the Wolfpack. A 2-0 deficit at halftime left room for optimism, but shortly after the Wolfpack tied the game, London pulled back ahead 4-2. That would wind up the final, by far the lowest-scoring affair in team history and hardly the style of game — or the outcome — the Wolfpack were expecting.

                                              “You knew it was coming but it was in slow motion,” he said. “The two top-scoring teams in Championship not being able to get a try down, both sides. I think our boys were obviously very disappointed but they left it all out on the field. No one on that pitch from both sides should have any regrets, other than from our side the score, everything else was fantastic. The effort and the endeavor was excellent.”

                                              Argyle, an Australian magnate in the mining, agriculture, and energy industries, is the head of a consortium of Canadian and Australian investors responsible for bringing Rugby League to Toronto. The ownership group has opted to stay mostly private, preferring the focus to fall on the players, fans, and sponsors of the Wolfpack in their first two seasons. Argyle, however, isn’t watching from the shadows. With a career that sees him in his adopted home of Toronto fewer than 200 days a year, Argyle can be found at rugby matches around the world, and often in adjacent pubs afterward; it’s his life-long fandom of rugby and more recent affection for Toronto that led him to spearhead Rugby League’s first trans-Atlantic experiment.

                                              The dream of promotion to Super League fell short in 2018 despite topping the Championship table and securing a monumental win at Leeds in The Qualifiers; the defeat at the hands London, on home turf no less, was unexpected (Toronto were 10.5-point favorites). An expansion team starting out in League 1 in 2017, the Wolfpack began a five-year plan to establish Toronto as a centre of rugby excellence and the Wolfpack as a threat in the top division. An expedited ascent temporarily shifted those goalposts; with a few days to decompress afterward, the Wolfpack feel strongly they remain firmly on the right trajectory.

                                              “It’s not as if everything has fallen over,” Argyle said. “I think we were shifting from third gear to fourth gear and just missed the gear. That’s sport, that’s what makes it fun and exciting. The strength of the club is not when you win. The strength of the club is how you respond when you don’t quite get there, and figuring it out.”

                                              Through two years, Argyle feels everything remains on course. The Wolfpack operated at a loss in their first season, with an estimated operating budget of $3.4 million. The jump to Championship saw expenses rise even higher in their second year, and while that meant a larger budget — the Wolfpack still produce their own broadcasts and are responsible for flying visiting European teams to Toronto — revenues also continued to climb.

                                              Did the team lose money again this year?

                                              “Absolutely,” Argyle said with a laugh. “That’s part of the five-year plan.”

                                              The team operated at a loss again this year, but they say that gap is shrinking. Most of their costs are relatively stable despite optics that might suggest otherwise — Rugby League operates with a salary cap, but the Wolfpack have remained aggressive in fortifying what was already a strong roster, signing Australian National Rugby League standout Ricky Leutele.

                                              Leutele, who has been with the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks since 2010 and has played internationally for Samoa, is joining on what’s believed to be a multi-year contract. His signing represents a major opening salvo for the 2019 season. The addition of a star centre like Leutele — one of five marquee signings, including four players from Super League, that the team is expected to announce later this week — should open up plenty for the Wolfpack’s wing attack as the team looks to get faster, beefier, and even better for their third season and second attempt at earning a promotion to Super League.

                                              The roster-building still has to fall within the league’s quotas and salary cap, and so despite the aggressive, the focus will now fall largely on driving greater revenue. That starts with ticket sales, and the Wolfpack are trending in the right direction. Their overall average attendance was up only slightly from an estimated 7,000 to 7,200, but season ticket purchases rose and the team picked up momentum late, averaging 8,100 fans during The Qualifiers and setting a franchise record with 9,266 fans at Lamport Stadium for the Million Pound Game. This coming season, the Wolfpack will have a more fan-friendly schedule, playing home games in smaller blocks rather than over two or three consecutive months like they had to this past year due to renovations to Lamport.

                                              The Wolfpack also expect even more visiting fans to travel this coming season, the final year of their partnership with Air Transat. They’re estimating 7,000 fans for the year and it speaks to how the Wolfpack have been selling the city of Toronto. Argyle has done his part too, sometimes footing the bill for visiting fans at his Japanese restaurant, KATANA on Bay.

                                              “If someone comes all this way, I guess the minimum we can do is buy them a beer or two,” he said, recounting a rowdy visit from fans of Swinton.

                                              The hope is that the pitch is landing, as ownership is hoping to facilitate further growth with a hand from the city, including some aesthetic upgrades inside and outside of Lamport Stadium. They hope to potentially licensing the parking lot in Liberty Village before games, creating a tailgate atmosphere with local food trucks and other vendors. They’re also aiming to host a Tier I international rugby match, perhaps at BMO Field, to help further grow the sport in the city and the province.

                                              That growth has been a primary focus of Argyle, who repeats often that one of the three goals of the franchise is to get rugby balls in the hands of children, both here and around the world. Rugby Ontario cracked 10,000 players in 2017 and had its highest junior enrollment rate in years for 2018. In addition the Balmy Beach Rugby Club were frequent visitors and halftime performers at Wolfpack games.

                                              “I think it’s aspirational for the kids to get so close and so involved. I think that does influence the juniors when they can say, ‘Look, this is what it takes, this is what it looks like, what it feels like,'” Argyle said. “We have had some great support from Rugby Ontario, we’ve had some great support from the provincial rugby clubs. It’s a two-way street — we can help those clubs raise awareness for the game and they can also help us on the flip side.”
                                              The Wolfpack feel they’ve done well making their brand accessible to local fans — games are broadcast on CBC Sports Streaming and Sportsnet World — and are focused on expanding that internationally. Their games are already available in 115 million homes around the world and, with several other international broadcast deals being negotiated, the hope is the Wolfpack become a sort of “world’s team” in Rugby League, an outside outfit that fans without a home team or in search of a second team will adopt. The idea is to “grow the size of the pie” for all of Rugby League and convert new fans rather than trying to chip away at existing fanbases, and an aggressive growth strategy is as much about how greater brand awareness can help their partners as it is about their own internal goals.

                                              Argyle circles back to how they can help their sponsors reach new markets often, driving home the accessibility of the team and their branding fit with a number of partners. He’s excited about the logo and the expanded branding the Wolfpack can do, too, noting that a line of street-wear is coming. There are partnerships in place for everything from maple syrup and hair care to diamonds and socks.

                                              And even though Argyle believes in all three pillars of the Wolfpack mission, it’s the third, the Wolfpack as a platform for businesses opportunities in Ontario and the U.K., that seems to excite him most.

                                              Positive though all of these indicators are, a promotion to Super League would have helped. It would have come with games being broadcast on Sky Sports, greater competition and more big-name opponents, and more appearances in Rugby League’s marquee annual events. Championship figures to have an exciting 2019 season with a new procedure for Super League promotion, but this marks at least a small delay compared to where they thought they’d be headed a few weeks back. In that sense, the product on the field is still the most important driver of the Wolfpack’s long-term outlook. The loss to London hurts from a fan perspective, too, though nobody with the Wolfpack is particularly worried about this stemming their momentum.

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                                                Last bit

                                                “Obviously, immediately after the match, everyone was disappointed,” Argyle said. “But just because you have disappointment doesn’t mean you don’t have steel and backbone. We have had a good run over the last two years, there’s no question about that, and we think we can continue to build on what is now a really solid foundation, both on the club side and on the fanbase side.”

                                                The signing of a player like Leutele is a strong affirmation the Wolfpack remain focused on Super League promotion. That was originally a part of a five-year plan ownership set out at the launch. The team has been a major success story on most fronts, and as they look to solidify themselves in the greater rugby community and as a viable fixture of the Toronto sports scene, another successful and entertaining season on the pitch is paramount.

                                                “Our ambition is still there, and so we’ve got some really big surprises coming along that will add to the quality of the squad,” Argyle said. “Subject to quotas, we’ll add some more beef to an already sort of strong squad. I think we’ll have a lot more depth and some more spark, which will be great. It’ll be a very dynamic playing style for next year. It’ll be big, aggressive, attacking rugby.”

                                                The familiar smell of beer and unfamiliar scent of disappointment had hardly dissipated from the north beer garden by the time they struck to quickly turn the page to 2019. If the strength of the club is, as Argyle says, how they respond to coming up short, it seems the Million Pound Game will soon only be a footnote.

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                                                  Originally posted by Walt Flanagans Dog View Post
                                                  Welcome back Bob8, while since we've seen you in these parts.

                                                  As usual with these things my preference is that they do it as part of a sustained effort to establish/enhance RL in new areas. I know you've been involved with things in Scandinavia in the past (and maybe still are?) and there seems to have been a bit of progress in Norway recently, but how much knock on effect would there be from staging a game in Copenhagen?

                                                  RL often does this, like the games in Milwaukee, Long Beach and latterly Denver that all achieved nothing in the longer term. Barcelona was going to be the next frontier for a while and got forgotten about. We got a good crowd in Bristol in the 2013 World Cup and have never been back. Coventry was going to be a regular base for internationals (with a nearby pro club already established), but we've gone back to the M62.

                                                  On the other hand if a third party is underwriting it, then it all adds to making the sport more interesting, and it's good for the players and fans to go somewhere different other than the same few grounds they tend to play at.
                                                  I was involved in Danish rugby league until about 2014 then moved away. We were booming back then, a bit less so now. In 2013, making the game a festival, with entertainment, craft beer, artisan food stalls etc was a controversial revelation. Now, it is common place and there is no point pulling the same trick twice.

                                                  The one-off games are stupid. There should always be a plan for profitability (as oddly, Danish rugby league was in 2014) as a sign of viability. There are plans, but lots can go wrong.

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                                                    Nice to see England get a two point win over New Zealand, but plenty of daft errors from both sides. It is hard to imagine this kiwi side just beat Australia.

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