When it comes to Rugby, everyone knows my feelings. It is clear that I hate the egg but that is the Union game, as I have always liked Rugby League, strange init. This week I came across an interesting story involving the Rugby League and Canada and I was somewhat excited about the news. I love strange quirks in sport.
From the 2017 season, there will be a Canadian Rugby League team Toronto Wolfpack playing in the Kingstone Press Championship where at present London Broncos, Bradford Bulls play, and will be one promotion from the Super League. As well as playing in the UK the team will be the first professional rugby league team to be based in Canada. Now they are searching the world for players and are having trials in the Caribbean.
The world is getting smaller has the travel time gets shorter who knows maybe a team from Australia next now there are talks of direct flights with the UK. A group of 10 businessmen are bringing the Wolfpack to England including Canadians and Australians, who own the club and must have deep pockets.
So how will it work - The club plans to play in blocks of four home matches, four away matches with the away fixtures televised in Canada. They will cover all expenses of visiting teams throughout the season. That will not be cheap and not unique has you would think. There is a precedent set in football. Guernsey, of the Channel Islands play in the Ryman Division One South and have a similar but different system where they play on a home and away basis but also have to pay the cost of the visiting team.
We have many foreign owners and money in football in particular within the English league so when will someone knock on the door of the FA with the same idea as the Toronto Wolfpack. It could happen, lots of foreign club owners now pay to bring the bigger clubs to their stadiums for friendlies. What if they buy a poorly supported team like Accrington Stanley and move the club to America or somewhere in the Far East and offer to pay all expenses for visiting teams.
The FA would probably be against it, so would the fans but say someone knocks the door of the Premier League. If it was put to the club owners, there could be a different response with most of the owners foreign. They could eye up the possibility of taking teams back to their own countries for a few games a season.
Pie in the sky, maybe but the top end of football is awash with money somewhere around some billionaires’ pool the idea could be bubbling away.
Remember the Kerry Packer cricket circus taking on the cricket establishment and failed because no one really cared for the sport but football is in a very different place the world cares. We have seen a group talk of a European Super League with the cream of European football invited. Another group were touting a World League once again cherry picking the big supported clubs around the world.
We know franchise football is frowned upon among football fans all you need to do is look at the reaction to MK Dons. Out of the death of the final breath of the old Wimbledon who were homeless after their ground was sold from under the feet of their fans two clubs emerged. The result was Wimbledon relocating to Milton Keynes and becoming MK Dons while some fans formed, AFC Wimbledon, and they have fought their way back from non-league to the football league.
I reckon within 10 years something will happen that will shake the foundation of football and it won’t be England winning the World Cup.
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