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iffleyox

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Everything posted by iffleyox

  1. I think the bold is a stretch - firstly Clifton Lane is many things, but it's not a 'stadium'; and secondly one of the many things it is is a cricket pitch whose outfield covers part of the rugby pitch. Dual code in Rotherham would mean pooling funds to either move to a new facility, or evict the cricket club.
  2. don't disagree - after years of living in both Devon and Cornwall when we visit now I generally want to be on the road from Northants by 0500 in the winter, and 0400 in the summer months. The trick (such as it is) is to make sure you're south of the Avonmouth bridge on the M5 before the peak of morning rush hour in Bristol - if you get caught out there, you're set up to fail everywhere further south. One tip from RU - teams playing Pirates generally come down the day before and leave the day after.
  3. Yes, the story is more that Redruth get one in fourteen of the inhabitants of the town to watch their matches (very few away fans).
  4. I've driven it literally thousands of times...
  5. to be strictly fair it's motorway for another hour south of Bristol - to Exeter, then it depends where you're going as to how long you can stay on the Devon Expressway...
  6. from my time watching Oxford, I'd have said to not get tonked every week you need 7 if not 8 of your starting thirteen to be established league 1 players who know what they're doing, and everyone else to be a fast learner. Ideally I'd want a whole squad from the heartlands in year 1, because the one thing that Oxford did right in its first season was compete and win matches, which meant the curious locals came back to the next match. The Oxford board knew what it was about. Getting smashed every week from day 1 is a daft idea.
  7. RU is a funny one though - that's one of the best attendances in the Championship at 1700... Premiership rugby is worth another 5-6k. But I agree - and said earlier in this thread, sport in Cornwall is hyper local - rugby, rowing and wrestling, village v village. Tbh the bit that I agreed with in the launch release was that they genuinely have found the place most like the M62 in the rest of England*, but my take from that, unlike theirs, is that's precisely why it won't work. The real Cornwall is a bit more Wycliffe than Doc Martin.
  8. Hmm, not convinced by Bristol. Neither of the football clubs is very good but it's a bit like Manchester or Liverpool in that everyone supports one or the other. The RU club's owned by a billionaire, and with the Bristol Combination, it's the only one of the old list A clubs that could recruit a top flight team without having to leave the confines of the county borough - ridiculous number of RU sides for a relatively small city. Then there's county cricket. Bristol looks good on paper but in reality would take a lot of work because it's a mature sports market. I would have been looking at any of Portsmouth, Reading, Norwich, Stoke, Derby - appreciate it's all pins in maps but I wouldn't start with Bristol or Cornwall.
  9. China has one time zone, although it is famously quite small….
  10. That’s not really what happened to Oxford…
  11. true and agree, but my point was, if they can't demonstrate they can be there as unequal tenants, then they really will be toast. As I said back up the thread, the need to sort out access to the S4C (on pretty much any terms) is going to be a pretty rapid test of how serious they are, regardless of whether it's as equal partners or not. Cheque book time. How much do Perez and backers really want a team in Cornwall, or a share of bricks and mortar....?
  12. My view is if they haven't got this sorted already (almost regardless of what was actually agreed) then they're on a hiding to nothing because there's going to be one sensible place this will work in Cornwall in terms of grounds, and the way to it goes through Cornish Pirates. Everything else is scratching on the sidelines - plenty of other grounds, but none that would bear level 2 or 3 RL, with the potential exception of the Mennaye Field (Pirates' current ground) - but that's even further away in Penzance. The long term goal of the club, assuming they've got one, has got to be playing at the Stadium for Cornwall.
  13. If I were a cynic, I could see a case for this whole thing being a year of fun for the backers in a nice location before they pop up in one of whichever big cities they're currently talking to on the quiet. Because if they're actually serious then it's going to take a lot of cash and no guarantees of it going anywhere. Hopefully it's the latter (them being serious).
  14. which will be the quickest way to find out whether Cornwall RL are serious or not I suppose.
  15. Under the current plan AIUI Pirates are in the driving seat with Truro FC as their enabling tenants.
  16. actually, the more I've engaged with this thread and my own experiences of rugby union, rugby league, and living in the far southwest (and trying to get anywhere else at various times of the year), the madder I think the idea is - and I'm keen to go and watch them.
  17. all true, but the roads - as someone who used to live down there - are a nightmare. No one/team is going there and back in a day in July or August for a start, unless they've got a private plane (oddly enough seats for the summer county are at a premium in the summer months). I live in Northants now and even leaving from here at 4am I'd not be confident of making it to the ground for kick off in July/August. Then you've got to get back. And overnight of course you've stayed in one of the many Cornish hotels who are happy to do one night bookings during peak season...
  18. Pirates would/will be a whole other proposition in the Premiership - they already benefit from what money there is at other Level 2 clubs coming down for the weekend to watch their team play them, and that with the Premiership clubs would be magnified massively. I don't know whether the locals will get behind an RL side because (to be quite honest) until about 48 hours ago I'd never stopped to think about it. I'm not *sure* that I can see it but would be delighted to be wrong. The RU side probably are genuine sleeping giants though.
  19. without going cross-code, because it's relevant to whether or not the RL side have got a chance - the owner of Cornish Pirates has put millions in since pretty much the game going pro and the planning has been a nightmare because in the initial years of the over-a-decade this planning battle has been going on, the council didn't want a professional sports team or a stadium because of crowds, traffic, etc, anywhere in Cornwall. That's slightly changed but in the meantime obviously the sums needed have risen. Bottom line, Pirates are first in the queue, it's their stadium, the RFU actually probably do want them in the top tier if they can ever get it cracked, and anyone else - whether Truro FC or Cornwall RL, will probably have to be second fiddle/second-go on the Pirates' trainset.* They're actually a nice club, and look after the people who go and visit them right down there. In level 2 RU fans from other clubs make a weekend of it, because it's the only way it makes sense. *the other problem they've consistently had for a long time is the rivalry between different parts of Cornwall making it difficult for places to get behind one club. They love RU down there, but they want to see Penzance playing Launceston playing Redruth etc. Which is why the Pirates play on Sundays (to the chagrin of basically every other union club having to travel down there) because on Saturdays the rugby population of Cornwall is watching or playing for their own town or village. Actually the further I got writing that, the more I hoped Perez et al have done their homework, because sport in Cornwall is complicated...
  20. fair - but within the humour the 'contributions' didn't (at least AIUI) cover the travel in full anyway. It's a trade-off certainly. There are clubs at level 4 who said quite openly they'd be picking and choosing which away fixtures they fulfilled this season (though that seems to have gone a bit quiet). Big league re-org going on which means probably no relegation at that level this season, so bolshy clubs can afford to play games.
  21. On the same subject of digression, there is no longer any travel funding from the RFU (not a pandemic thing, it went a few years ago). National 1 (level 3) get a 'contribution' to their travel costs but only if they stay within a ludicrous salary cap, which none of them do, so no one gets it. National 1 goes from Plymouth to Darlington (and until the last couple of seasons also Corbridge and Blaydon). I said on here the other week, the regionalisation at level 4 with National 2 North and South sounds better, but N2S goes from Redruth to Canterbury (and Guernsey). In terms of transport funding, it's not that the grass is greener - there's not actually grass on either side of the hill...
  22. If you were being really picky, you can just about parse that safely as town or county name does not equal representing that town or county, it just means 'in' that town or county. So by way of example you can be Cornwall RL but you can't be 'Cornish RL' Or you can be Wakefield, but you can't be Wakefieldians. Which is pretty much nonsense but it does technically probably mean that Town or County/in this caase Duchy names are ok. Or, as Tommy says, you've got permission.
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