Not withstanding the majority of rupe's guff, I can confirm a merry band of applauders/handshakers still very much exist.

The world has changed. Union is now a professional monster with the top 1,000 rugby players in France, the next 1,000 in England, followed by next 500 in Australian Rugby League, and the next 500 in Northern clubs in SuperLeague (ignoring NZ, S Africa, Argentina and....) . Even when we were in SuperLeague it did not make any sense for us to have any world rugby players in the top 3,000.



I don't think the owner or management (or the colour of the shirt) has had much say in this. I do think Rugby League is the best spectator sport in the world and I will be applauding the team if they play above their potential win or lose. I wasn't clapping when the team looked disinterested as they did much of 2 years ago.



Fully understand why the decline would keep people away, but shouting at the captain of the boat to change the way the tide is going won't help.

Yawn!



Can't all the "Soopah Leegers" just accept that London were pushed into the top flight 10 years too early and move on!!

Rude, you still going to games

Each to their own, but the first 3 seasons at the Stoop delivered decent crowd figures back to back, we had a landlord who had a workable relationship with Ian Lenegan and we felt like a club.....which leads nicely to





As accurate a post as you will find on this or any forum. We were London......nobody north of Watford Liked us and we didn't care, because the fans and the players got together after a game to chew the fat. Whether that was sharing 6 VB's with Rusty in Stripes bar or my Mrs getting a hug (many hugs in fact) from HP in the smaller bar at the stoop, we belonged and we accepted some hammerings.



Our name didn't matter, nor what colours we wore. We were together and there is only one person who I believe can be held to account for the demise of the club. Unfortunately, without him, there's probably be no club either.



Either way, Rupe1 wasn't right other than the outcome. His reasoning was always flawed and he never offered viable solutions.



I repeat, moving to Twickenham and being Harlequins Rugby League didn't bring this club to its current low.

I must have been really drunk, 'cos I thought we lost to Brisbane. Still, I'm sure you're right. After all, you've said so yourself

Canberra. Brisbane beat us. Twice.

All that clapping......I had to check I wasn't leaving the field

I always felt that was a massive missed opportunity, and a good example of how the people running the game only ever paid lip service to the "we need a club in London" argument.



It was obvious that our first home game would draw a lot of curious RU fans, and what we really needed was a good competitive game to really advertise the sport. And so they gave us... St Helens, who were beating anything put in front of them at the time. Lo and behold, one thrashing later and most of those RU fans never came back. Stuff the RFL or SL giving us money, a simple thing like letting us pick our opposition for that first game could have worked wonders.



I remember thinking at full time that all the possibilities had just been destroyed in 80 minutes. Later of course we got... well we all know what happened.

Dead right Perry. We HAD to be competitive that day and weren't. I've no idea whose decision it was that we should play Saints but surely Lenegan must have had the chance to say no.

The result that day wasn't great, but as usual, there was no plan B to get any interested Union fans back. Our first 2 wins at the Stoop were against French opposition and in hindsight (great stuff) they're the games we should have targeted your average jingoistic Union fans to.