It is very understandable when put like that and I hear rumours that they approached the league for a loan of £200k to fund completing the season without home games and were utterly rebuffed. However, there has clearly been a spectacular failure of communication, as that is a very angry press release from the RFL. "A discussion around the longer term consequences and the future of the Wolfpack in Super League will commence shortly," is a very ominous statement indeed.
The entire thing appears to be unravelling fairly quickly. Players are complaining that they haven't been paid for 3 months and that club provided lease cars and apartments are being reclaimed as they've stopped being paid for. The owner, David Argyle, has said that he is out of available money and the club is up for sale - an alleged group of 6 interested parties has dropped down to an alleged 2 after revelations that they are £2.3m in debt (even with Argyle wiping all debts owed to him by the club) and are scheduled to lose £4m per season. Turns out that, while it's quite impressive getting 9k-11k people to show up to Lamport Stadium, it doesn't get you very far financially if 2/3 of them are on free tickets.
You'd've thought this was an open goal for the Arrows. Take over primary tenancy of Lamport, get hold of the Wolfpack mailing list/offer discounts to anyone with a 2020 Wolfpack ticket or season ticket, hire everybody who was involved in the match-day entertainment and event from Wolfpack (which I understand was a major factor in their crowd retention) and start advertising the shit out of yourselves. They have a real opportunity to double or treble their crowd size on the spot.
Possibly worth waiting till the death has been officially called, mind, just to be polite and avoid upsetting too many people.
It'll have a knock-on to Ottawa and the still-unconfirmed New York bid though. Can't imagine there are many players looking at the Toronto players unpaid, stranded, and visaless, and being excited about joining another cross-Atlantic franchise.
March: A new professional US rugby league tournament is announced, spanning 14 cities, including the resurrection of Toronto Wolfpack plus 6 entirely new startups in the West, starting in 2021: https://au.sports.yahoo.com/north-ameri ... 42677.html
May: The 6 new startups will not be joining the league this season:
