Except London is the capital of England and the largest city, so investing in it has a lot more advantages than going into Darwin. Expansion to CC would be more like a SL team in Sheffield - not really an expansion, but a good moove if it works.
Sorry you misunderstood. Crusaders are more like Darwen, Wrexham is about the least logical place to base a SL expansion side, I guess you could say Quins are a less successful version of Melbourne (though with less money behind them), so I think if possible we need to keep them and if that means extending a deadline on the transfer so be it.
The Crusaders are having a rough time right now, but that's not to say SL should never have a team in Wales. They should be better organised, and find more solid people to back them.
Yeah if we have a strong well supported Championship side of majority Welsh players with solid backing applying for SL then of course let them in, noone says don't let a Welsh side in (East Coast Tiger is a troll and invents straw men and is incredibly abusive on our British forums, despite the fact SL does far more than the NRL for expansion). But Crusaders are a shambles from top to bottom. To me a side that has lost its backer, has no ground sorted out (but is expected to move nearly 4 hours from the original location to one 30 minutes from a much better RL club who were left out for them, in a town with no RL whatsoever played and in fact only one amateur team in the whole of North Wales who don't turn up for half their matches and a town with 60,000 population), has only 15 players signed, got half a team deported as illegal immigrants, had a very poor season on the field last year, averaged 3500 (with that certain to drop in Wrexham) and hit financial troubles a few months into their first season in SL and had to be run by an RFL task force after that is a side that people are right to criticise for all those reasons. Yet some ignorant people would still perpetuate the myth that the only reason people criticise them is because they're Welsh, in fact if it were Wakefield or Salford in this trouble people would be far less restrained and would be calling for their expulsion. People criticise clubs in small northern towns yet this is a club in a small northern town smaller than Wakefield or Salford and only slightly bigger than Castleford or Widnes, and a small northern town without any rugby league, yet because it is slightly across an arbitrary border it is seen as okay. Harlequins are closer to Bridgend than Wrexham and Widnes isn't much further and there are no real ties between north and south Wales. Read the Crusaders forum and you'll see people there are 10 times as critical of the club than anyone from elsewhere.
The one good thing about the Crusaders is the juniors and that won't follow them to Wrexham, though will be a good basis for the new Bridgend semi-pro side which is where the future lies IMO. Also the Crusaders were backed by Leighton Samuels who had previously ruined 3 sporting clubs by walking out when he didn't have his own way or instant success and thus people rightly knew it would fail. But knowing something would fail is not remotely the same as wanting it to and anyone who says it is is being dishonest
The reality of it is that RL is in trouble in UK and is becoming obscure compared to Union. The only hope I see for that to change is for more teams from out of the heartland to get involved and lift the standard of management and promotion first of all.
Yes, though Toulouse are the only non-M62 side likely to join SL for the immediate future. The problem is people view it as SL or nothing (due to there being an NRL or nothing feeling in Australia) and it isn't, I would rather they built a basis of more grassroots development and more semi-pro sides than chuck in sides to watch them fold. I live in an area of England with a far larger population than Wales and with lots of big cities and until this year the RFL didn't even appoint a development officer for the whole region. So yes I support expansion very strongly, but it doesn't have to be putting pins on the map in SL as that doesn't work without roots (which Catalans have and Toulouse will have once they sort out their on field performances, there are 10 open age clubs in Wales and 80 in France for comparison)
