The future's bright the future's plastic : Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:25 pm  

Plastic pitches mean you can train, and have junior teams all playing at the main 1st team pitch. Think this has been a great plus to the Broncos training and general 'all in it together' atmosphere at the club. Football is now slowly coming to the same conclusion and the benefit of it from national league sides may be extended to league 1 and league 2 for the 2018/19 season. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42425377 If they do become widespread around London this could give the Broncos a lot more choice in future. The only viable financial model we have ever had was Fulham. i.e. Going in with a football side who give us a 'free home' in return for their season ticket holders getting a bargain of all year round sport of 20 odd football games and 15 odd RL games. The Broncos would get the pure RL ticket receipts and any TV/RFL money to run the teams. We would also get a lot of local coverage and recogniton, and a stream of possible new fans, all without any direct maketing. So possibles: Bromley or Sutton, if they get promoted and improve their grounds. Leyton Orient, in the National league and considering plastic now. Barnet, probably being relegated Charlton , Gillingham, AFC Wimbledon Quins may also be going plastic too: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/harlequins-to-rebuild-twickenham-stoop-with-25-000-capacity-wgbpgqb3c Would love a deal with them too! A further thought is that if Trailfinders ever have any top flight ambitions,and they are 2nd in the championship at the moment, then they will probably be looking at the same possibilities.

Plastic pitches mean you can train, and have junior teams all playing at the main 1st team pitch. Think this has been a great plus to the Broncos training and general 'all in it together' atmosphere at the club. Football is now slowly coming to the same conclusion and the benefit of it from national league sides may be extended to league 1 and league 2 for the 2018/19 season. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42425377 If they do become widespread around London this could give the Broncos a lot more choice in future. The only viable financial model we have ever had was Fulham. i.e. Going in with a football side who give us a 'free home' in return for their season ticket holders getting a bargain of all year round sport of 20 odd football games and 15 odd RL games. The Broncos would get the pure RL ticket receipts and any TV/RFL money to run the teams. We would also get a lot of local coverage and recogniton, and a stream of possible new fans, all without any direct maketing. So possibles: Bromley or Sutton, if they get promoted and improve their grounds. Leyton Orient, in the National league and considering plastic now. Barnet, probably being relegated Charlton , Gillingham, AFC Wimbledon Quins may also be going plastic too: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/harlequins-to-rebuild-twickenham-stoop-with-25-000-capacity-wgbpgqb3c Would love a deal with them too! A further thought is that if Trailfinders ever have any top flight ambitions,and they are 2nd in the championship at the moment, then they will probably be looking at the same possibilities.

Re: The future's bright the future's plastic : Mon Jan 08, 2018 9:09 pm  

TaRL PaRL wrote:

If they do become widespread around London this could give the Broncos a lot more choice in future. The only viable financial model we have ever had was Fulham. i.e. Going in with a football side who give us a 'free home' in return for their season ticket holders getting a bargain of all year round sport of 20 odd football games and 15 odd RL games. The Broncos would get the pure RL ticket receipts and any TV/RFL money to run the teams. We would also get a lot of local coverage and recogniton, and a stream of possible new fans, all without any direct maketing.

Quite possibly the most commercially naive thing I have ever read on any forum EVER!

Firstly, no club will ever give us access to a stadium rent free but for free tickets to their own fans... Can you imagine the conversation between London Irish and Brentford being a negotiation on free rent in return for free tickets and a few barrels of Guinness

Secondly, the Fulham days are long gone...there are hundreds of TV channels and a host of other things for people to do....we offered free tickets to Brentford fas and QRU fans and they weren't bothered.....just because we like the game doesn't mean others have to and we aren't welcoming any draw-card names at present.

Lastly, on the point of Trailfinders. If they were promoted, there's not a gnats chance that Ealing Council or the surrounding neighbours will allow any development of that stadium beyond maybe 1,000 extra seats similar to the seating at the end of the ground. I seem to recall that Trailfinders have already said once that they would not accept promotion if won. Hughes claimed when we moved in that he would help with development if it were needed, but given the furor over an Ariel installation there a few years back, I don't see any planning permission being granted without a long and protracted battle with the neighbours

Still...thanks for the free stadium in return for tickets comment......that's made me smile!

Re: The future's bright the future's plastic : Tue Jan 09, 2018 4:36 pm  

Feel I have finally arrived on this forum being abused by Gutterfax! Glad I made you smile.

Probably not going to get me anywhere but let me explain Manuel.

Stadia are very expensive and can only be used for 2-4 hours a week because the grass gives up. The introduction of plastic pitches will increase the available supply of stadia facilites by at least a factor of 5, you can play matches on them Thursday and Friday night, and twice on Saturday and Sunday. You can also train on them during the day and have the odd mid-week match. The demand for stadia for professional sport in the area of the stadia will not increase 5 fold. This will mean the price will drop as it already has. This is a commercial principle called supply and demand.

One worked example for you. Rosslyn Park have a plastic pitch in the same area of London as Quins, but a bit more central. They charge £250 now for pitch hire of their 3,000 capacity stadia. Quins used to charge £25,000 per game to RL for a 12,000 seater grass stadia. If they build the new 25,000 seater plastic pitch stadia I doubt they could get more 10 times Rosslyn Park per pop : £2,500 a game, say £37,500 a RL season. They would get many more hires though. The present capacity is about 14,000 so they will need 11,000 more bums on seats at an average season ticket price of £500, that would raise £5,500,000. If running all year round rugby could help them achieve 1% of that, it would be worth £55,000 about 50% more than they could get renting the ground to Broncos. Perhaps they should pay us for teaming up with them!

Re: The future's bright the future's plastic : Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:28 pm  

TaRL PaRL wrote:

Feel I have finally arrived on this forum being abused by Gutterfax! Glad I made you smile.

That's not abuse Petal...it's reality.
Barnet was a plastic pitch and we gave him everything including 100k from the RFL yet he couldn't wait to see the back of us.....you're dreaming if you think that any club would welcome a nomadic entity with a few hundred aging hard core fans free of charge in return for tickets to a sport that's not even popular in some of its heartland areas and is watched by fewer that 1,000 people a week in the capital.
Thanks for the back of the beer mat statistics and supposition by the way......flip it over and come back with some figures on stewarding, Public Liability insurance, Police costs, staffing on match day, office access, gymnasium access and all the other things we get at the wedding venue currently.....and which we used to get included at the Stoop before the relationship went south.

Re: The future's bright the future's plastic : Thu Jan 11, 2018 9:13 am  

Call Me God wrote:

Barnet was a plastic pitch

No it was a very nice grass surface !

Re: The future's bright the future's plastic : Thu Jan 11, 2018 10:56 am  

That Barnet pitch is Tony Kleanthous pride and joy. Access was very limited during our spell there.

Re: The future's bright the future's plastic : Thu Jan 11, 2018 4:39 pm  

Barnet was a really nice grass surface. The plastic pitches were the training/5 a side pitches

Re: The future's bright the future's plastic : Thu Jan 11, 2018 8:16 pm  

If it had been plastic and the terms could have been more acceptable, I think we could have sealed a reasonable medium term future there, but .....

Re: The future's bright the future's plastic : Thu Jan 11, 2018 8:27 pm  

PC Plum wrote:

If it had been plastic and the terms could have been more acceptable, I think we could have sealed a reasonable medium term future there, but .....

My bad....I only went there the once for the last hurrah v Bradford. As for terms.......he only took us in because he got a back-hander and once he saw the lack of numbers he was never going to be welcoming....it was also a pig of a ground to get to for most home supporters.

Back on topic. London Irish have the green light to share at Brentford's new ground from 2019 and to my mind, that could and should have been us.