this is expansion RFL style. zero input into the infrastructure required to sustain a top level club. nothing going into schools development or helping promote the amateur game in these areas.

where do they think the players will come from?

its a classic inverted pyramid scenario, top heavy with no foundations. thought the people running the game were intelligent business people

surely you're not that naive?

les Cats or HKR?

OK, I worded that badly.



Yes, Perpignan is a heartland. The point I was trying to make was that there were plenty of posters on here banging on about how <enter Northern slum town here> was more deserving of a place in Super League than Perpignan.



As a visiting supporter, I've noticed a hell of a lot more enthusiasm for Super League than I have in plenty of towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire that we "couldn't possible leave out because of history / tradition / blah blah blah".

Both!

Most of that anger was because a club was displaced rather than the league expanded to be fair



Although your northern ' slum ' analogy isn't very nice is it , it was these northern ' slums ' that invented the sport you claim to love and support

The fact that most of them were and are slums seems to have passed you by.



They game was set up by people who lived in mill, coal and engineering towns. Most of the players lived in those towns in slums and not on the big house on the hill.





however Bramley Rhino is wrong in that it is not the fact they are slum towns that hold the game back but the parochial attitude of those who live in them.



If people really cared in these towns they would go and watch their local teams. even in SL the attendances at all bar Leeds, wigan and Hull are poor compared to the populations.



I would argue that most of them are not as real Rugby towns as leicester and Limerick

The fact that you cannot pick where you are born seems to have passed you by



It was the bloke in the big house on the hill that set up the club and paid the players



It is not the Parochial attitude that has held anything back , for the vast majority of the 115 years the sport has done quite well , what has changed is society in general , to watch sport you no longer have to put your big coat on and spend the best part of the day outdoors , you just click the button



As for the rest of your points I wont disagree

I dont agree with this, Leeds has a population over 1 million, Hull over 700k and Wigan well over 300k. St.Helens is around 170k, but gets at least 70% of the the attendances of those 3. By population i believe Cas is the best suported team in the league.

but yes many of the ' smaller ' clubs do much better % wise than some of the bigger ones

Doesn't change the fact that Perpignan is clearly a rugby town ( league as well as union ) and is definitely 'heartland' for RL. Anyone who's been to the bar opposite the ground will see instant French RL history - pity the Wire game is at the union stadium this year.

london is RL heartlands too