fevnut's musings 2025/#14: London and the terrible failure of attempts at expansion

      

When we get a headache, a heavy cold or something similar, it is so joyful when it goes away. While the problem is ongoing it seems to virtually take over as the norm.

It was a bit like that leaving Post Office Road last Sunday after the match. A win! It was far from a perfect performance but it was hugely better than anything we had experienced in the previous month.

What a difference it made to have proper half-backs and Caleb Aekins playing at fullback and using his talents in his proper position. His control of our defence was exemplary, his fielding of high kicks likewise and the fact that he was able to decide when to chime into the line or support the ball carrier led to his hat trick.

 

We have to be patient. It will inevitably take time for Ben Reynolds and Ryan Hampshire to settle into playing together but that was a very promising beginning.

 

 

But Fev still need to keep looking out for a third halfback because it would be unreasonable to imagine that Reynolds and Hampshire will be fit for every match and, the last thing we need, is to have to put Caleb or Danny back in the halves again.

Looking forward to Oldham on Sunday but it will be a very stern test for us. Oldham have had some blips but generally they have been playing very well and have a lot of quality strike players. Let’s hope detailed work has been done this week on how to cope with Nene Macdonald who Oldham now have on loan from Salford.

 

Expansion

We were planning to write about the subject of expansion clubs in a few week’s time, but the demise of Cornwall convinced us to bring it forward.

Let’s start by stating categorically that we are not against expansion. We have a great sport and we would love to see it being played in many more locations at both professional and amateur levels.

At amateur level expansion has been a success with well established clubs and leagues in places that had no rugby league presence not so long ago (Wests Warriors, Anglian Vipers and Bedford Tigers are good examples). However, the story within the professional game has been lamentable, and always has been, but the proportion of newly created professional clubs that we have lost in the summer era is much worse than it has been since the end of the First World War.

Before we go any further we need to make clear that there are some muddy waters caused by clubs changing names or moving locations, or in some cases both.

In 1895 they were all new rugby league clubs and inevitably quite a lot were not able to withstand the rigours of being professional sports clubs. Of the clubs that contested that first season in 1895/96, five no longer exist. There are also seven clubs that joined between 1896 and 1899 that only lasted for a few years.

As we move into the early twentieth century there are 15 clubs who came into the Northern Rugby League between 1901 and 1910 who failed to make it to the end of World War 1 and seven of those only lasted one year!

After World War 1 it settled down quite well and in the next 20 years there were only 6 clubs which went out of existence, half of them only lasting one season.

Between the end of World War 2 and the beginning of the ‘Summer Era’ in 1996 (a period of 50 years) professional rugby league lost just 6 clubs and three of those were the result of ‘restructuring’ at the end of 1992-93 that saw them sacked from the professional game.

This is the full list of the clubs who departed from professional rugby league between 1895 and 1995 in order of the first season in which they competed.

On to the Summer Era which has seen decisions to bring in a total of 19 new clubs, two of whom (Ottawa Aces and Bristol Bears) were accepted into League One but never actually managed to play at all! Of the other 17, only 4 are still playing professional rugby league.

These are the ones who we have lost since 1996.

During the summer era we have also seen the demise of three longer established clubs.

Bramley 1896-1999

Wigan Highfield/London Highfield/Liverpool City/Huyton/Runcorn Highfield/Highfield/Prescot Panthers 1922-1997

Carlisle/Carlisle Border Raiders 1981-1997

Three new clubs (Gloucestershire All Golds, Hemel Stags and Oxford) came in together in 2013 and they have all gone. 

The four remaining clubs are Catalans Dragons (in their 20th season), Coventry Bears/Midlands Hurricanes (in their 11th season), newcomers Goole Vikings and Toulouse Olympique who joined in 2009 but went back to the French Elite competition from 2012 to 2015 before re-joining in 2016.

We are totally opposed to those who want to get rid of Catalans and Toulouse. Of course, they bring very few fans to English stadiums but that is hardly surprising when their fans would have to pay for air fares and hotels every other week. The situation in England whereby many fans travel to away fixtures is very rare in world sport. Taking American football as an example you won’t get many Seattle Seahawks fans travelling to a match against Tampa Bay Buccaneers (the distance between them by road is over 3,000 miles) or Buffalo Bills to Los Angeles Rams (over 2,500 miles). In Australia there are plans to incorporate a team from Perth into the NRL competition. A trip from North Queensland Cowboys to Perth would also cover over 3,000 miles each way. English RL clubs need to work much harder at attracting local supporters and to regard away supporters as a nice bonus.

There have been a few times we have managed to make the trip to watch a game at either Perpignan or Toulouse, and it is a wonderful experience to do that. There are thousands of English fans who feel the same way.

The problem with Catalans and Toulouse is not the lack of their fans coming to England but rather the issue of broadcasting deals for them and that really does need to be sorted out.

So, why has expansion been such a failure?

We believe there have been two prime reasons. One is bringing in clubs without a sufficient supporter base, a reliable source of income and a pool of local talent to draw upon. The latter is backed up by the number of times new League One clubs have been beaten in the Challenge Cup by amateur clubs. The second, and most importantly, is the devastating stripping away of central funding for second and third tier teams.

No more new teams should be brought into the RFL structure until there has been a full investigation into how to select and support new clubs in a way that makes it much more likely that they can survive and build. We hope that this will be included as part of the strategic review. A succession of new clubs that fail does rugby league no good whatsoever.

And Finally

We came across this a few days ago and thought it might bring a smile to the faces of all fans whose team is going through a hard time.  It will probably resonate well with the feelings of Fev fans in March while when we lost 4 games on the trot.

After their father dies, a man’s family gathers for the reading of his will. In it, the father states that since he has been a life-long fan of the Cleveland Browns, it is his last request that the team be the Pall bearers for his funeral and to carry his casket to his final resting place. And he gives his reason for this. He wants the team to let him down one last time to see him off.

 

The flags above represent all the nations that, under current rugby league rules, members of the 2025 Fev squad have played for, or are eligible to play for.