Captain Survival

Robert, there was a comment made in the Batley forum (Toronto thread) indicating Swinton had some problems and was quite unhappy about some matters, but no details as to what. To the point they were intending to complain to the RFL. Any ideas from the Swinton fans you met with?

What happened? I live in Toronto (although about 75 km from where the game was played). It looked like a good crowd on tv and I did not see any unhappy fans. Toronto got wiped off the map Friday evening by hurricane force winds. At the time the game was played there still might have been a quarter million people without power. I was surprised anything was even left standing although it was worst closer to Lake Ontario. Or was it player accomodation and other related matters? This was a one off use of this stadium while waiting for the City of Toronto to get its toothpick out of its ass and complete the renovations on the stadium TWP normally use. The new fieild should have been done last fall, not now. Typical municipal mismanagement. If there were Swinton issues I think most TWP fans would like to know what they were and would be sorry that any occurred.

Its one off. or so we are told. They travel back to your neck of the woods for Challenge Cup. Then they have Toulouse and Leigh respectively for the various tourneys, coming back to commence the balance of the home games starting July 9. It they are still on top at that point then I think they will coast to winning Championship. Its a smooth, easy drinking beer. Its not a heavy beer and I suppose some die hard beer conniseurs would probably turn their nose down on it. But its perfect for an afternoon outing like this. I used to live only a block from the Amsterdam brewery on King St. If they are not sponsoring TWP they should be. Or at least a player. The attendance given the location was amazing - I was shocked when I watched on TV. TWP pulled out all the strings to make it a success. I was surprised the grounds were still standing after the windstorm Sat evening. The fans appeared to be having a ball. I was insanely jealous as its pretty nigh impossible for me to attend most Saturday games.

Roch does not seem to have played a good game since their close one with TWP. It seems they shot their bolt int the TWP game, as they have not since played close to that calibre of rugby.

TWP posted the following on their website (abridged): Toronto Wolfpack beat Barrow Raiders in the 5th Round of the Challenge Cup in a hard fought battle at Craven Park. ... The game was a tense end-to-end battle with some incredible last gasp defending from both teams

HI. I came to visit and find out the scoop as all we got in Canada was a twitter feed which of course tells us almost nothing. I get an impression reading the comments above: - Barrow played well - TWP played poorly - Ref - whom I thought from reading the TWP feed as it noted several tries called back might have ruled poorly against TWP, in fact may have put a stopper into the Barrow efforts. I am only asking as I have no info on what transpired other then the TWP twitter. No disrespect intended to either team or anyone on the forum. Just seeking some neutral observations from anyone who might have been there.

Morley, I regret I do not understand what you are saying.

Reading the twitter feed my first thought is that if there was ever an occassion that Rowley was going to have some pointed criticism of the refereeing it will be this match. I think TWP had 3, 4, 5 tries disallowed? I will have to go up to the Barrow thread and see how our friends there are reporting on matters. @TMF I am just seeing your comment after posting my words above and I get the impression that despite the disallowed tries we got the best of the refereeing?

Morley, his remarks were made in jest. There has been a running humorous interplay between several of the forum members about the Barrow field and weather through a number of threads past and present, and attempts to have the Rugby gods even out the match via the turf. No one here disrespects Barrow, in fact quite the opposite.

Yes, sadly it appears that Armstrong has some significant injury issues. He has not played a game yet, and the TWP statement suggests that his playing future may yet have some hurdles. It was a nice statement by TWP overall - I certainly got the impression it did not have any animosity on either side. The Westerman statement was in comparison very succinct... Do we know if any fees were received by TWP? I saw no mention of money at all in statements. While the money is I think a drop in the bucket for TWP it would surprise me that they received nothing unless they were just very anxious to see him out the door. IF that were the case then he must have really been disruptive.

I was not far off the mark with the final score: Dewsbury 18 - Halifax 46 QLT got his first Fax try. I forgot Fax has another ex TWP player as well Dan Fleming. How was the attendance? I went to the Dews site to obtain info and it both had not been updated and it did not have any social links that I could find! Someone in marketing needs a good kick in the keister....

To me there is a world of difference in the formal statements put out by TWP on the release of each. The Westerman statement was short and terse and the Armstrong statement was regretful and complimentary. Given that almost all the other release statements (other then the 3 amigos after Portugal) were about equally effusive for the departing players I think it was "not soon enough" where Westerman was concerned. He may have great talent but I think my remarks above about a head that is to big to fit through the door may not have been far off the mark. I am equally sure that its "Rowley's way or the highway" but given that he is very much a "player's coach" I suspect TWP are better off without Westerman. Its unfortunate about Armstrong. The TWP statement gives an inkling that Armstrong may have a tough time ever returning to form. He never did play so we have no way to guage if he could have contributed.

They in fact have one Canadian, and one American on the team. Both are on loan to an L1 club. The team is doing quite a bit to create interest in the sport in Canada. But its going to take some time. They had 2 Canadian Internationals last year and had to release them due to the player import rules, of which Rowley was quite vocal about since he did not wish to let them go. In NA, no team at the pro level anywhere is comprised substantially of homegrown talent. I suspect 99% of the NHL, NBA, NFL, CFL, MLB, NLL don't have one local player on their team although several of the Canadian lacrosse teams might be the exception to that rule. The NLL is actually the closest parallel to RL since although more then half the league is comprised of US teams, 93% of its players are Canadian. And no one cares. Anyways this is a very old argument on this forum and it seems the only ones who continually make it are local supporters who have a very introspective view. I don't dismiss the need for all clubs to be champions of talent development but the Canadian perspective, as Kayman above points out is that if they play for us, they are Canadian.

At risk of being pummeled for my temerity to post such in this thread I assess in favour of Halifax. Rams 18 - Fax 30 Halifax has shown more scoring ability and reasonable defence overall. The ability to have a core of full time players benefits them.

The OP expressed a genuine emotion about the playing prospects of his club and I assess reopened the great debate that consumed many threads last year - a meaningful competitive revised structure for the entire RL top to bottom. As BSJ has pointed out nothing likely will come of any restructuring ideas good or bad due to how matters are controlled, and the fact the sole source of substantial income is a tv contract. Several forum members have contended that everything about RL depends on Sky. Well IMHO that is a position of substantial weakness for RL overall. If RL is to have any real future I and most of my NA peers would argue that the income sources have to become more diverse - the clubs really have to substantially up their local attendance, sell a lot more merchandise, sell a lot more top quality advertising, and those at the top of the heap need to be more forward thinking in their determinations of how they spread the income about if interested in a progressive league future. Otherwise OP I believe you will be eternally frustrated.