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Broncos seeking to buck a troubled history

8th October, 2018
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8th October, 2018
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Not so long ago, senior Rugby Football League officials tried to convince the NRL to buy the London Broncos.

League Central’s former CEO, David Smith, was known to briefly entertain the idea that the Australasian organisation could even take over the British game completely – and do a better job than the existing authorities of running it.

In the end, even investing in one club proved too radical for a chief executive who was given short shrift after taking on Rupert and winning.

London is simultaneously an outpost and a hotbed for the game. It’s an outpost in that London Broncos sneak into four figures at home games but not much further and their cross-town League 1 cousin London Skolars are generally content with a few hundred.

But it’s a hotbed in that the last time the Kiwis played in England at the Olympic Stadium there, the crowd was 44,000. The Wembley attendance of 50,000 was considered almost disastrous for the Challenge Cup final.

Dave Smith

David Smith. (AAP Image/Paul Miller)

The south of England has produced players for the entire game and for the national side to an extent that Victoria can only stand back and applaud.

And when I go to the gym in south London, I see rugby league merch every single time – often lots of it; Catalans shorts, Canterbury Bulldogs singlets, NSW Blues training shirts. There’s much more of it than Premier League gear.

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First, let’s pause and explain why I’m writing about London. Yesterday, Australia time, London Broncos urinated in the Toronto Wolfpack’s beer by beating them in the Million Pound Game and returning to Super League.
London is, like, a thing this week.

So, back to the main narrative. What is the difference between the London that rings rugby league cash registers and the London that would rather repack its sock drawer than bother going to a game?
Expats.

The Australian and New Zealand communities in the capital cling to the game with the same passion that makes them hide the Vegemite in their share houses.

But – this is a generalisation, there are many exceptions – they don’t care for the local game, the local clubs. They like Australasian rugby league and when they play locally, they turn out for mostly-Kiwi Wests Warriors and mostly-Aussie Hammersmith Hills Hoists.

When players from those sides swap to represent on Anzac Day on a strictly national basis, they can draw 5000 people – that’s up to a month of Broncos crowds.

London Broncos play at a modest venue from which they make nothing from the bar or food. Getting back into Super League isn’t even half their battle – it’s a tiny fraction of the task at hand: to bridge that gulf between the people in London who like rugby league and having them demonstrate on a regular basis that they like rugby league.

And that’s where that offer to the NRL was aimed.

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When London Broncos played a WCC warm-up game against Manly a few years back, kick-off was delayed by the lines outside – not a problem the Broncos have had much in their history.

London is the perfect place for the NRL to start leveraging its exiled fans because there are probably more of them here than anywhere else. There’s money to be made here from regular matches – but perhaps not as much as those floating an Origin at Wembley think.

There are kind of three target groups which have very little cross-over: the general public, the rugby league fans and the expats. Reach them all and the game could make a killing here.

But it’s almost as if they refuse to be seen in the same stadium together.

The general public, the ones the NFL has successfully attracted, has never heard of the NRL or State of Origin. Don’t let anyone tell you they have. They are vaguely aware of Wigan and St Helens.

The former Melbourne Storm CEO Mark Evans, a vastly experienced English sports administrator, says the NRL would have to get itself on free-to-air television in Britain for a minimum of five years before attempting a major event here.

The rugby league fans are passionate but small in number. There is probably a bigger rugby league community in Wagga Wagga.

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And the expat community is young and blissfully unaware of the history and institutions of the British game. They’ll go and watch the Kangaroos and Kiwis or a visiting NRL side but are more likely to think of Wigan as a dreary northern town than the former home of Brett Kenny and John Ferguson.

What we need now the Broncos are back in Super League is a pied piper, a clarion call to bring these unhappy bedfellows together. Perhaps we need to put something on for all three of them at home games.

And let’s not forget the reported-but-unconfirmed Toronto Wolfpack investment in Skolars next year, which could turn New River Stadium into a clone of Lamport, with craft beer and live music.

It’s a weird idea: the Wolfpack lost at home to the Broncos in a serious body blow to their ambitions – but could now be creating an entity in their backyard that will either rival them or benefit them enormously.

Perhaps rugby league’s biggest benefactor in North America will become its saviour in London.

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