Rach

Nice to see that that there's no bias in the RFL's coverage of League 1 ...... http://www.rugby-league.com/kingstone_press_leagues/article/40085/kingstone-press-league--previews

No Guff at all ...so tell me if its an 'insurance ' issue who is responsible ? ... and if it is down to the individual player , why the hell should they be responsible as lowly paid PT Players for insuring themselves to play in Canada ? Can you tell me which other Sport in this Country expects its Club Players playing at an equivalent L1 Level (ie not on international duty or representing a NGB ) to travel to as far as Canada for an everyday league fixture ? If its TW who are responsible for this cover ..as I said if they cant even do something as simple feed players visiting them how can we be confident that all the insurance safeguards are fully in place ? I make no apologies for being worried about the wellbeing of my lad and other PT L1 players like him ...if its 'guff' to you so be it ...

As family of a L1 player my arguments around the Wolfpackhas always been about player welfare of the P/T lads traveling over to Canada and the issues mentioned by the OP don't inspire me with confidence ... We already have the spectre of potentially under strength teams travelling straight from in many cases a full time occupation for many hours cooped up on an aircraft for many hours with jet lag and the like then playing an artificially strong opposition after a short recovery time and being then having liitle post match recovery time before another punishing journey home and a return to work ..unlike SL Players who get rest and rehabilitation time after travel abroad If the Wolfpack cant even look at feeding teams whilst they are visiting my concern is what will happen to a player should they suffer serious injury whilst in Canada , will they be supported (medical bills, travel home etc ) or just quietly forgotten about. Toulouse was a fair old hike last year but had owt happened to our lad we could as a family got in the car and driven to the South of France and been there for him , cant ruddy do that with Canada ... Those on here posting on here that are saying the guys are just whinging should be grateful for the opportunity to play the Wolfpack ..there are more issues at stake here than just 3 days in another country

The players from Keighley came mainly from the Cougar Cubs , a ridiculously successful Amateur Junior Club which was started initially when Joe Grima moved to Cougar Park from Widnes and got caught up in the groundswell of Cougarmania , the Cubs in their heyday had teams from 7s through to National Youth League 18s . As an example I coached 7s through to 11s through the late 90s , at mini level I could have had 3 separate teams on the pitch much was the popularity of RL in the town at that point . As well as the Cubs Players came from the Bradford Clubs through Service Area mainly kids who the Bulls choose to overlook , mainly cause at 12 or 13 years old they were not 6 foot Giants ( see Karl Pryce for details) . and at that point natural body development was seen as an imperative to signing players for SL....###### if they could actually catch a ball :-( I'd assume that the RFLs objection was along the lines of Championship / League 1 cant be seen to be doing better than SL so we'll just tell em all that they are banned whatever ... My nephew plus a a good bunch of my U7s came through the Scholarship at Keighley , it was an awesome system , the boys were never taken away from their amateur teams but got good quality coaching that cascaded down to their other clubmates , their was a lack of kids lost to the game at 14/15 (Girls n Beer syndrome ) as there was always the chance of that they could turn Pro and as we were a PT Club much emphasis was put on regular positive school reports for the boys , if you ###### about learning you were booted , no argument :-) All good but hey SL knows best ...my ###### ..

Not just about spotting local players but about as Lee Greenwood has intimated before in interviews but targeting Young Northern Lads who are have a positive attitude and are prepared to take a chance , attend Glos Uni and move their lives southward ,,the commitment these guys put in not just on a rugby field but in Uni life and as a rep of the All Golds generally makes their contribution to the effort to the cause far more defined than a lot of our heartland based players ..

Go back five or 6 years and clubs like York Dewsbury and my club Keighley were running Academy's and Scholarship schemes to attract junior talent that run successfully for many a year until the RFL decided in their infinite wisdom that lower League Clubs shouldn't be actually allowed to be trusted to actually produce their own players and effectively banned them from operating such schemes .. At least of 5 of the current Cougar First Team (Buster Feather , Josh Lynam , Ben Sagar ,Sean Kelly, Matt Bailey ) all came through the scholarship , Both of the Walker brothers began as 12 year olds with the Cougars , and I can think of 4 or 5 others dotted around League 1 that are ex Cougar Scholars . Joe Lumb and Ethan Ryan from the Bulls began their Pro Careers as 17 year olds in the Youth set up along with current Cougars Winger Andy Gabriel Even for the Local Game there was a knock on effect as effect as the players who didn't make the Pro Ranks carried playing back into Amateur Ranks . Scholarship didn't just produce higher quality players but also Coaches as well , upskilling Club Coaches and giving them chances to work at a higher level

The funding models are changing so much now for Championship 1 Clubs and long they may continue ..we are not going down the traditional Northern Club 'Chairman / Directors ' old established model that has its sadly outdated place in RL. Newcastle have thrown their oar in with the local RU team with Great Results - All Golds are run by the University looking to underpin their development building success in the Student Game by attracting players to be based locally if they study at the Uni .Coventry a little like Newcastle are building RU likes and pushing the community model ..similarly Skolars and Stags (despite their unfortunate Dewsbury links :-( ) who are working ridiculously hard to be a massive part of their community sporting life . Shouldn't be excluding these teams , just helping them to build on these links and expand in their own way , in many ways they are the future and our 'established clubs ' are stuck in the past ..

Completely agree , but RL has a small faction of amateur clubs ,all within the traditional M62 corridor that everyone knows , have a reputation for thuggery that no one seems to be able to get a handle on , Ive watched southern n University teams the last couple of years that quite happily i know i can watch when the result will be the team who plays the best rugby league , not those who have the most violent individuals ..

Copy of my post on another thread .. Was at the game - obv supporting Keighley but a watcher of RL throughout the land ..to be fair at the point the brawl happened Fryston were in the accendance drawing 22 apiece and looking like the next team to score so can't work out why they chose to close out the game like they did ! What happened after that was effectively a 2am Nightclub Brawl with the majority of the Fryston team segregating a member of the Cougar team on his own n sadly,no bull**** battering him senseless..with some help off the Fryston Warriors bench ( was talking to a long standing Pennine League Club Official Stalwart just literally mins before this who couldn't understand how Fryston had so many 'bodies' on their bench ) Everyone knows the game is a physical one but this went way past this , but more galling is the response of the Fryston club through their social media channels and through the responses of their players and supporters on Facebook n the like , who saw the beating that occured n the subsequent abuse of the Keighley Players Family as just part of the game n chose to respond to criticism with shall we say 'industrial language ' and the usual s**** of 'its a mans game' . erm yes if you are stuck in the era of 'this sporting life ' , at that point b***er off home, shout at the wife cause your teas not ready and kick the dog..... so sad really

Was at the game - obv supporting Keighley but to be fair at the point the brawl happened Fryston were in the accendance drawing 22 apiece and looking like the next team to score so can't work out why they chose to close out the game like they did ! What happened after that was effectively a 2am Nightclub Brawl with the majority of the Fryston team segregating a member of the Cougar team on his own n to be fair battering him senseless..with some help off the Fryston Warriors bench ( was talking to a long standing Pennine League Club Official Stalwart just literally mins before this who couldn't understand how Fryston had so many 'bodies' on their bench ) Everyone knows the game is a physical one but this went way past this , but more galling is the response of the Fryston club through their social media channels and through the responses of their players and supporters on Facebook n the like , who saw the beating that occured n the subsequent abuse of the Keighley Players Family as just part of the game n chose to respond to criticism with shall we say 'industrial language ' and the usual s**** of 'its a mans game' . erm yes if you are stuck in the era of 'this sporting life ' , at that point b***er off home, shout at the wife cause your teas not ready and kick the dog..... so sad really

Not many ..Watched Hemel every game last year as my nephew was playing for em - now hes gone to All- Golds -sad to see few of the regulars turn up at Pennine Way today .Summed it up when there was two coaches parked outside the ground and one of my party commented that the home team had probably traveled farther to get to the game than the away team . Despite their playing record I enjoyed watching the Stags last year , there was a spirit there that had its base in the town , the boys on the field has some connection to the club however loose ,today was just hollow n without passion and to be fair thoroughly pointless .....

After watching a particular few years of one the old 'service area ' teams,at several different age groups (due to a family members involvement) its been interesting to see what has happened to those young players in terms of their involvement in the Pro Game and look at the 'talents 'of those very few who actually made into into the Professional ranks . Apart from one ridiculously gifted individual who is now a GB International and was always destined to go far (though interestingly def not the most physically developed at 13/14 ), the other two lads who have made it through ,at service area level both were 'grafters ' with a decent level of technical skill and game awareness and were without doubt among the less developed physically ,however what both possessed was a real passion for the sport, a fantastic attitude to training and preparation, were prepared to learn and were the sort of lads that whatever the result you knew that they'd given the game all they'd got . I saw many more of the 'stars' of the team , fall by the wayside lads who's six inch height advantage or three stone weight advantage became irrelevant as by 16/17 others began to catch up physically, others who assumed because being spotted by an SL Scout meant an-automatic full time career without any graft , others who just naturally discovered' beer and women' ,some of which are happy to continue in the sport on the amateur RL fields on a Saturday Afternoon . 'Talent' can be defined as so many things but attitude is a massive massive part of it , reading especially in the Championship and League 1 Columns (where as a PT Player there are far different demands on an individual from the FT SL Boys) how many Coaches now are stating that they will not sign a player , however he performs on the field if they do not buy into the 'culture of the Club' off field and on the training ground.

I'd actually read the report and say the RFU has come out of this pretty well . Its had the bottle to put its safeguarding processes out in the public domain and crucially produce an exact figure to demonstrate that its processes are effective . ,read beyond sensationalist headlines and you'll see this 141 is the total number of misconduct cases (poor coaching practice ,bullying complaints , inappropriate language , racism/sexism all included in these figures ) it has investigated , not 141 instances abuse of a sexual nature of the type that is blighting football as we speak .Don't get me wrong its still 141 too many but as the RFU says out of 100,00 volunteer coaches and half a million kids, its a ridiculously small amount, I wouldn't say on this evidence that things are 'not looking good 'for the RFU at this stage . Maybe time for the RFL to be transparent and produce a similar statement likewise ...

Ok I'm thick, I don't understand why you need to be defensive about something so positive .... In the main I don't care who wrote the piece where it was published and In what context , I think it shows our game positively I read it, it made me smile and it made me recount many similar occasions be it on a tube to Wembley , in the Spoons in Huddersfield City Centre before the NZ Game last month , the tributes paid to Danny Jones at Cougar Park or the choruses of Delilah in the Cougars Bar after the game from the NW Crusaders Fans , being a tad inebriated in the Bar of Barrows Craven Park as the only Stags fan post game and being accepted as a local (similarly at Toulouse ) ...I could go on and give you hundreds more examples from my 40 years of following the game ... 'It doesn't show anything about the thoughts of RL fans or the experience of RL fan'.... speak for yourself mate ...it does to me , that will do me and Im sure many other fans as well .. ​Coming next from CH Calthrop a damning critique on why the amazing Chorley Panthers Junior RL Video is damaging our game and is directly responsible for the lack of quality British Half Backs in our sport ....

This thread gets more and more about folk ridiculously up their own ###### .... Long and short of it is southern journalist writes short piece about great response of RL fans on a train , is ridiculously complementary and backs up all the 'friendly game ' experiences that most of us witness regularly at matches and would actually like the world to know about it ...exactly what we want ... Reaction of some idiot argumentative keyboard warriors ..make it it into some union / league . north /south , intellectual / working class argument .... ffs do one and allow those who can see the great in our game see it for what it is a great piece of journalism in a major newspaper that shows our game the thoughts about our fellow fans and the experience as an RL fan ..in a positive light...(Four never been to an RL game have been with me to Wembley in the past few years - all have returned as much for the experiences Carol describes as for the game itself ) BTW I'm no argumentative behind the screen - watched every Hemel Stags game in 2016 travelling from Yorkshire , friendlies n Toulouse included .....all the critics what was your supporter stats