Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Fri Dec 18, 2020 9:31 pm  

Gallanteer wrote:

Back on topic....

I honestly thought Toulouse or London would have been given the nod but Leigh also make sense, purely based on the squad they've been putting together for next season (even if a lot of them are Rovers' cast offs). Good luck next season and try to make the best of it - apart from against us, obviously.

As long as Charlie the clown doesn't come back on here like he did a few years ago spouting his nonsense.

As for the M62 corridor thing? So what? In Australia, the NRL is actually quite localised in their support as well and it doesn't stray beyond the areas the clubs are already in.

And Union? Its well funded because of the public school boy factor. I have no interest in it and don't watch it so I really don't care about what happens in it.

Ha Ha, You would normally find Mr. Caroli on the Halifax fans forum winding them up, but maybe not next season.
He's a nice chap is Ian....honest !

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Fri Dec 18, 2020 10:55 pm  

The Silent H wrote:

The crowds in Toronto suggest otherwise regarding appetite.

It is what choosing Leigh represents attitude wise, not the club itself.

The crowds in Toronto were artificially inflated, see fiction !
With the exception of the MPG there were always empty sections, lot's of 'milling about' which in the UK means wandering & even one of Toronto's own suits admitted to giving away many tickets.

Report's that gates were left open & passers by beckoned in are numerous, as are reports that many local businesses had many tickets thrown at them. British fans visiting saw this. The beer garden was always busy I'll give you that !

It is interesting that Derek Beaumont was able to furnish the RFL & SLE with confirmed ticket sales for all Leigh games home & away with hard evidence but Toronto & Livolsi could not ! D.B also furnished the RFL & SLE with full financial accounts for Leigh Centurions showing a very small operating profit & his own personal wealth accounts yet Livolsi refused !

Despite all of the above & the many sly underhand actions of TW under the watch of Toronto's/Australia's wealthiest racist, Toronto Wolfpack for me had value, that value was to at least attempt to knock down doors & attract fans & more amateur RL players in Canada & the USA.
I have said it before & will say it again, even if Toronto only averaged 6/7/8 thousand in actual verified body counts they still outperformed many U.K clubs in that regard, the problem arises when many are not paying, it is a flawed & unsustainable model, mass cheap ticket sales at Bradford Bulls & a big wage bill was also their undoing if you need an example of how broken that model is.

Yes, Toronto attracted many fans, yes there was an appetite for R.L & Toronto's fans all appear with the exception of the occasional extreme *as usual* to be a great bunch even if their singing/chanting is a bit feeble. Toronto fans didn't deserve what happened, fans almost never do.

Toronto *again* was a new frontier & Wolfpack was something that could have been very, very good but it was poorly planned & badly executed !

Maybe *hopefully* Toronto & therefore RL Canada can rise again & grow, maybe more organically, though the problem with this is if the time taken to do this is beyond the patience of Canadian RL fans.

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Fri Dec 18, 2020 11:04 pm  

Ste100Centurions wrote:

The crowds in Toronto were artificially inflated, see fiction !
With the exception of the MPG there were always empty sections, lot's of 'milling about' which in the UK means wandering & even one of Toronto's own suits admitted to giving away many tickets.

Report's that gates were left open & passers by beckoned in are numerous, as are reports that many local businesses had many tickets thrown at them. British fans visiting saw this. The beer garden was always busy I'll give you that !

It is interesting that Derek Beaumont was able to furnish the RFL & SLE with confirmed ticket sales for all Leigh games home & away with hard evidence but Toronto & Livolsi could not ! D.B also furnished the RFL & SLE with full financial accounts for Leigh Centurions showing a very small operating profit & his own personal wealth accounts yet Livolsi refused !

Despite all of the above & the many sly underhand actions of TW under the watch of Toronto's/Australia's wealthiest racist, Toronto Wolfpack for me had value, that value was to at least attempt to knock down doors & attract fans & more amateur RL players in Canada & the USA.
I have said it before & will say it again, even if Toronto only averaged 6/7/8 thousand in actual verified body counts they still outperformed many U.K clubs in that regard, the problem arises when many are not paying, it is a flawed & unsustainable model, mass cheap ticket sales at Bradford Bulls & a big wage bill was also their undoing if you need an example of how broken that model is.

Yes, Toronto attracted many fans, yes there was an appetite for R.L & Toronto's fans all appear with the exception of the occasional extreme *as usual* to be a great bunch even if their singing/chanting is a bit feeble. Toronto fans didn't deserve what happened, fans almost never do.

Toronto *again* was a new frontier & Wolfpack was something that could have been very, very good but it was poorly planned & badly executed !

Maybe *hopefully* Toronto & therefore RL Canada can rise again & grow, maybe more organically, though the problem with this is if the time taken to do this is beyond the patience of Canadian RL fans.

Give over. There were more fans at Toronto that Leigh will ever get in SL

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Sat Dec 19, 2020 12:10 am  

Steph Curry wrote:

Give over. There were more fans at Toronto that Leigh will ever get in SL

Define the word "fan", Steph, pretty please. Is it:

a) a paying season ticket holder, replete with merchandise from the club

b) a person that gets to as many games as they can (work/personal circumstances permitting) and gets palpitations towards the end of tight matches as a win for their club means so much to them

c) an idle and only vaguely curious passer by who is press-ganged into the ground

d) an opportunistic social net-worker

e) a sot that doesn't even witness the drama unfold

f) a figure in creative accounting?


If your answer is A or B and you still maintain your stance, we can only assume that you heard this from your mate who is "never wrong" and told you that The Bulls would definitely get the 12th spot. Regarding said "singular" mate, as well as his all white rig-out, does he have a Canadian accent, smoke Marlboro and have the letter K tattooed on three knuckles of each hand?

Whatever your answer to the first question (sorry to bamboozle you with two) you should ask "Drop Dead Fred" to help you to change your signature - surely he won't get that wrong!

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Sat Dec 19, 2020 6:50 am  

Bent&Bongser wrote:

Define the word "fan", Steph, pretty please. Is it:

a) a paying season ticket holder, replete with merchandise from the club

b) a person that gets to as many games as they can (work/personal circumstances permitting) and gets palpitations towards the end of tight matches as a win for their club means so much to them

c) an idle and only vaguely curious passer by who is press-ganged into the ground

d) an opportunistic social net-worker

e) a sot that doesn't even witness the drama unfold

f) a figure in creative accounting?


If your answer is A or B and you still maintain your stance, we can only assume that you heard this from your mate who is "never wrong" and told you that The Bulls would definitely get the 12th spot. Regarding said "singular" mate, as well as his all white rig-out, does he have a Canadian accent, smoke Marlboro and have the letter K tattooed on three knuckles of each hand?

Whatever your answer to the first question (sorry to bamboozle you with two) you should ask "Drop Dead Fred" to help you to change your signature - surely he won't get that wrong!

Defining fan is very ambiguous and your allusion that Toronto fans are lesser due to what you perceive and heard ''reports'' about is very unfair.

Need I remind you of the fairweather Leigh fans. Averaged 6k in super league, was half that in the Championship last year. Thats FACT not ''reports'' and someone saw this etc.

I hope Leigh do well and do stay up but it really is chalk and cheese in regards to what the potential of Toronto was compared to Leigh.

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Sat Dec 19, 2020 6:51 am  

Bent&Bongser wrote:

Define the word "fan", pretty please.

Fan is short for fanatic. To be a fanatic you have to be prepared to pay money to watch games and you have to be interested in the games enough to pay.In TWP's case they had some fans, some people who were fans of Beer festivals, and some people who wandered in because it was largely free to get in.

The club failed to find a single NA player, nor a single cent for televising their matches which they promised and on which they were admitted to the game here, so they forgot all that and started boasting of big crowds.

Calling leigh fans "Fairweather" is nonsense as the 6000 Leigh fans actually all pay to get into the grounds and I say grounds plural as they take a good following to most leigh away games and create a great atmosphere.

Fairweather fans are the sort that turn up when their club is winning easily every week and who disappear when they start losing. Which is the position Toronto Wolfpack were heading for when they lost all their Superleague games. However before they were due to go back to Canada with a losing team their number one fan fled the club......

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:12 am  

Bent&Bongser wrote:

Define the word "fan", :

Toulouse have fans and in the 2019 season in the play off's their big game against Featherstone Rovers drew 1,068 paying fans for the game of the season.....

I would guess they all paid and that there wasn't a beer festival on.

Remarkably in March 2019, 6,103 people came to see the visit of Toronto Wolfpack to Toulouse. Where the extra 5,000 French fans came from I don't know? Maybe it was the glamour of TWP themselves? Maybe Toulouse rented the Stade Ernest Wallon and put on a beer festival and passed thousands of free tickets around the city?

Maybe it was all Hocus pocus in a joint venture to try to promote the idea of a Transatlantic league??

All I know is leigh have a great core of 6,000 paying fans many who go pay at away games, and many who follow their club and the game and don't need leigh to be winning all the time to support their club. This is one big reason why they got the gig........

[Wanderer]

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:20 am  

The Silent H wrote:

Defining fan is very ambiguous and your allusion that Toronto fans are lesser due to what you perceive and heard ''reports'' about is very unfair.

Need I remind you of the fairweather Leigh fans. Averaged 6k in super league, was half that in the Championship last year. Thats FACT not ''reports'' and someone saw this etc.

This is just a general comment (I haven't checked your quoted stats) but surely there would be a dip in average attendances as the majority of visiting Super League clubs would bring more away supporters than the majority of Championship clubs.

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Sat Dec 19, 2020 7:48 am  

Wanderer wrote:

This is just a general comment (I haven't checked your quoted stats) but surely there would be a dip in average attendances as the majority of visiting Super League clubs would bring more away supporters than the majority of Championship clubs.

That's certainly the case.

Looking at the stats an all leigh fans crowd (e.g. the sort you would get against catalans) in Superleague was 5,600.

The following year Leigh.v.Batley was 3,200

Having said that whilst in the Championship Leigh fans away support has provided clubs with their best attendances at times doubling gates, so for me the criticism is one eyed,

Re: Leigh Centurions Named As Superleagues Twelfth Side for : Sat Dec 19, 2020 8:39 am  

Toronto let most people in for free that’s the reason the fans were inflated, and that’s possibly part reason they don’t play rugby now