@Matt @Hepworth You both make some salient points - not being patronising, I think I am cross but trying not to get worked up about it! I think RL has ultimately fornicated itself by not making a decision properly for the good of the sport in 25 years.
For me- no, it didn’t stick before but it took me more than one attempt to pass my driving test but it was the right thing to do. Too simple an analogy I know; the last “framing the future” was a response to dwindling interest, participation (£) and so on creating a better experience as well as clubs busting themselves trying to get up….. it is worse now. RL response before was to pack away trying to have basic and fundamental standards for kids in the system, speccy’s and finances and a managed framework and so on just ignore unpopular choices and shhhhhhh. As a result the bigger responded anyway understanding it was the right course of action and are still bigger, some have done some stuff at their cost and now suffer. Some nothing - lets be fair - only us in SL in any meaningful way!
Toulouse being more attractive: when you consider the mergers, PSG, Toronto and so on is such small beer. Expansion Express has always been there - right or wrong it isn’t new and shouldn’t be surprising. I am not saying it is right but if M62 was going to cut what SL clubs want to achieve in money, exposure and sponsorship then it would have. It didn’t and doesn’t.
Hepworth, totally with you in a lot of what you say - I said caught between two stools and doing nothing well; are we franchise, are we not, do you get promoted, do you not. scrabbling for meaningless grading points is a farce. Put any club outside SL, but with more points than us today in SL at the start of next season they do worse than us that is fairly solidly proven mostly.
Bleak finances and short-termism is as a result of not being clear on a single plan as a sport of what good looks like.
As a tiny crumb of comfort when I think of the leaders of Cas I have met. Maybe (I am trying to be balanced) had they the comfort of a 5 year franchise, we would have a stadium fit for fairly regular play-off campaigners and CC final and GF participants. What we are creating in the current “on field only” system is dreadful finances for clubs in good stadia or dreadful facilities in others.
I am emotionally spouting, I am not digging anyone out, I just think we constantly snatch nothing from the jaws of something.
