RL is struggling a little in the heartlands of England at the moment. A lot however is down to the state of the British economy which is badly struggling, aprticularly outside of London. If Super League crowds can come in close to an average record in 2012 then that will be a very good result. The current situation in the north is very different to 5 or 6 years ago when it was far more awash with cash during a credit fuelled boom.
It's true Manchester is not a RL city, which has always baffled me as it is directly surrounded by heartland towns such as Wigan, St Helens, Salford, Warrington and Widnes. Hopefully the relocation of Milenium Magic to Manchester from this year will help the city become a little more RL centic. Leeds however, is a city where RL is king. RL is very much equally as popular as in Sydney, and you regularly see people wearing all sorts of jerseys around the streets including NRL teams and jerseys of the surrounding RL towns such as Castleford, Halifax, Wakefield, Bradford, Huddersfield etc.
One of the big problems in England is a lack of coverage in the media. Despite RL regularly getting attendances and TV ratings the equal or better than Rugby Union, the media coverage is rediculously biased in favour of Union. This is probably due to the media being mostly controlled by the middle to upper class, whose game of choice has always been Union. Even in RL heartlands such as Yorkshire (the county Leeds sits in), there is no shortage of middle class towns where Union is the game of choice. Similarly Union dominates the better schools as well, no matter where you are in the country.
The RFL for all it's criticism, isn't doing a bad job on a few fronts. They have dramatically increased the number of schools playing the game. This is shown in the huge rates of growth for schools taking part in the Champions Schools knockout tournament. A lot of these schools are from non traditional areas.
Further to that, backed by around £30 million in Sport England funding, the RFL has agressively expanded the game in the midlands (think Birmingham and surrounds), London and surrounding areas and into the South West (Bristol and surrounds). In all these areas a number of new clubs have sprung up in recent years meaning there are now decent senior leagues in most corners of the country and some ever growing pockets of junior development. Combining this with the large increase in schools playing the game and some strong deveopment in Universities over recent years, means there will be quite a few non northern raised English RL players emerging at the top level over the next decade. We've already seen a few such as the Griffin brothers, Tony Clubb, Louis MS and Bryan Carney. But I have no doubt this is just the tip of the iceberg. Krasniqi and Dixon at London Broncos are two to watch for 2012!
The next step in the RFL's plan is 4 new expansion clubs joining national league 2 (the third and bottom level of the professional game) from 2013. Northampton (a staunch Union town in the southern part of the midlands) has already been announced as joining, with 3 new clubs to be annouced in the coming months. Those rumoured to be in the mix include Coventry, Bristol, Medway and Hemel. It will be very interesting to see how this experiment goes, as you will be adding 4 teams with little support (especially away from home) to a league used to having plenty of Lancashire and Yorkshire local derbies. Crowds and income for the established teams will take a hit, with travel costs rising. Hopefully the new and old teams will thrive, but I expect some major hiccups. The best case will be two to three of these teams thrive, with one climing the ladder to Super League, but I'm not holding out massive hopes. At least these expansion teams are backed by fairly robust local amatuer scenes unlike RFL expansion in the past, which has very much been top down.
