iffleyox
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Posts posted by iffleyox
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Obviously Brentford will, now I've said that, be announced as a venue for next year...
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1 minute ago, crashmon said:
Possibly but this is an England game. There is some prestige of hosting your national team. And covered by the BBC so ideal also from a sponsership / Marketing possibilites
I agree if this was some form of club game Brentford would probably say no, but this is the National team covered on the BBC primetime on a sat. This may sway thinking
see my edit I posted while you were typing - they're a cashed up premiership football team that has just received huge applause from their fanbase by saying 'no more rugby' - Brentford simply don't need to do it anytime soon.
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6 minutes ago, crashmon said:
This
I don't think either Brentford or Fulham would say no, its more I just don't see the RFL taking the risk of speaking to them
I think it's politics though that would scupper Brentford - they'd essentially already given London Irish notice to quit even before LI collapsed. They didn't need a co-tenant given they were in the Premiership (rather than lower down, as they were when trying to get the stadium built) and it was a quick win for the owners to throw the Brentford a fanbase a bit of red meat given the persistent claims that RU was ruining their pitch. We all know that RL doesn't have the same impact, but I'd guess that Brentford's owners in particular just have no upside in taking a five or six figure sum for a one-off as things stand.
I'm sure other grounds would say yes, but Brentford at the moment I do think would say no. Or charge through the nose.
Obviously in the medium term things might change, but I can't see the sense in them receiving the thanks of their fanbase for kicking out a rugby team then saying 'by the way, we've organised this rugby match' - especially in a part of the world where it's not immediately going to be obvious to that fanbase that RL is going to be any different to RU in terms of carving up the pitch.
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26 minutes ago, crashmon said:
Its more likely to be south Midlands, which is ok IMHO as that is commutable from London (couple of hours max)
Stadium MK then - 25 mins from Euston, direct West Coast Main Line services from the West Mids and NW...
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2 minutes ago, Simon Hall said:
That's all very nice, but this is a Transfer Tracker thread...
see my edit, with which this crossed
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11 minutes ago, Coco said:
It's just my own personal opinion. After what Beaumont has done at Leigh, I have seen a lot to like with what he has done to the club, the brand and the publicity. Living in London Leigh gets a lot of national press. It's brilliant what he has done.
I been following the new owner Ellis, and he has been making a lot of noise. Would not have a problem he followed the Beaumont route. Make a lot of signings / new nickname / a new brand / make good publicity. Makes national press.
Right well that's fine as far as it goes. I don't often pull rank on here as a johnny come lately not from the north, but nearly two decades in brand and marketing consultancy has taught me two things as my professional opinion:
1) just because something works in one place doesn't mean you don't have to look very carefully before you do the same thing somewhere else
2) doing anything other than trying to reinforce a brand like Wakefield Trinity is (expensive) madness
What Trin have been lacking for decades is cash. Inject that, and there's nothing wrong with the brand. They are one of the best candidates (along with St Helens and Hull KR) for just running a brand on cash and pure heritage.* They don't need to become Wakefield Wombles or Trinity Titans.
Anyway, back to signings...
*Actually I think you could probably do the same with Batley and Hunslet, but the sums involved would be eye-watering.
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1 hour ago, Rene_Artois said:
Great signing for York. As a Dons supporter I can't wait for next year. Massive step up but I think we're making the right signings
I've got everything crossed for Dons - I know someone there from years back so always keep an eye out.
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52 minutes ago, Coco said:
Hopefully the new owner will do a Beaumont and rebrand the club name.
are you high?
Even as someone who only properly committed to RL when Oxford came along in my very early thirties (I'm 42 now) I've known who Wakefield Trinity are all my life.
The whole reason the Wildcats was a pointless nonsense was that (and I'll stand by this one even with the current 'youth') they've got one of *the* iconic names in English sport.
Not a lot else for the past couple of decades, but they've got that.
I don't think these days the average person in the street would name them off the top of their heads, but I'd bet you'd still get a plurality of random public intercepts across England that *claimed* to have heard of them if presented with a list of sports teams*
*yes I do/have done research for a living, I'll now get my coat.
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On 02/11/2023 at 10:07, headtackle said:
Going to regional leagues below SL should not be seen as a backwards step. With a proper structure it is one that could allow for new clubs to be more effectively introduced.
Many other sports follow this model ie a National premier league then below a certain point regional leagues.
Take our main competitor, rugby union. Premiership, National League 1 then at level to whilst called National is basically 3 regional leagues, North, East & West.
On a point of order, the split is at tier 4 in RU - Premiership, Championship, National 1, National 2 E/W/N
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4 minutes ago, Chrispmartha said:
Wakefield with shirt of the season so far, and it’s great to see them doing a proper promo to launch it rather than a Photoshop mockup. Well done.
Like that a lot.
obviously the shirt’s been in the works a while but it’s amazing what you can do when you’ve finally got cash
Up the Trin
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46 minutes ago, graveyard johnny said:
not a mention of the biggest defeat in the kangaroos history on the BBC website - not even recognition the match took place WTF?
I appreciate not everyone is going to be crawling round the sports pages of the Guardian online but I’ve just read it covered there.
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Toby Boothroyd from Cronulla Sharks to Trin
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44 minutes ago, sam4731 said:
I know the NRL are venturing into the USA but I feel that the RFL reaching out to the the NFL to form a partnership could be mutually beneficial. The NFL would be able to utilise (the apparent) higher levels of rugby league engagement in the UK as well as being able to put down roots in parts of the UK that they could explore which they may not have considered. The RFL would gain from the juggernaut that is the NFL in terms of marketing and exposure and we might get a bigger US audience.
I'm not sure suggesting to the NFL that they could use the M62 as a bridgehead to making NFL really popular in the north of England is necessarily a compelling proposition for them, and if it did come off it's almost the definition of not being careful what you wish for!
Gut feel however is very much 'what on earth is in it for them?'
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24 minutes ago, Barley Mow said:
I think my reply to Chrispmartha here addresses some of what you say:
We were essentially told when the new system was first discussed that the hope would be transferred from being solely on-field to sitting withon various criteria - as you allude to, it would still exist but you wouldn't just be 'hoping' for on-field improvement.
Assuming that is how it would work, it would be down to balance - how important are the on-field and off-field considerations.
For my part (subject to enforced minimum standards off-field) I weight the on-field much higher in the balance.
But the reason I began responding to the thread this morning (having largely stayed out of it because it is a huge circular argument with nobody changing anyone else's mind) was that Chris said that clubs wouldn't be frozen out.
While that may be true in theory, in practice after the first few years, I can't see any movement in or out of SL - practically, clubs will be frozen out and the hope factor even less than under on-field P&R.
But it's the hope meets reality interface in all of this that is the issue isn't it? In reality there's about 3-4 clubs that could make a tilt at Super League - next season, if all this grading wasn't happening, that would be Fev*, Toulouse and Trin. Potentially Bradford.
Anyone else would be 'doing a London' - and regardless of the sport, play offs that allow the team finishing fourth to go up are even more of a nonsense.
Literally every other club is sitting there thinking 'well if we had the players and did it on the pitch then we should be allowed up' - lovely but the chances of that happening are minimal because almost inevitably, grading or no, if you've suddenly got the squad to allow you to do that then the bigger boys will come in and sign them.
All this is doing really is shining a light on a closed door that was always closed, but the room was dark enough to not have to concentrate on the fact that it was closed. FWIW its exactly the same in the other code, and below the premiership the running costs are about the same. More RU clubs have folded having ill-advised tilts at the top, than have done because they're a historically big old club that has been 'frozen out' - giving up and walking away hasn't happened in that code, so why should it in RL?
All this grading is doing really is showing clubs what they need to do to bring something to the top table, and frankly the clubs knocking on the door - even through straight promotion and with no grading - should be there or thereabouts anyway. If they're not then much more blame should be on the heads of those clubs than on IMG (especially in year 1).
Meanwhile, in terms of freezing out, it only formalises a process that already exists - if you don't have the cash you won't compete - and cash should be spent on more than players. Trin seem to have found someone with deep pockets at exactly the right time, but if an equivalent can be found who wants to take Batley or Swinton (at random) on a journey, then literally all this is doing is providing a roadmap for something that will take more than buying the right squad of players and winning the Championship - the putative Swinton billionaire would still need to do that, but they'd have to spend money on the other boxes too and it would take more than one good season with a squad packed with retiring NRLers.
That's not freezing anyone out - it's saying 'when your club is ready on and off the pitch, you can come up.' If people want to spend the money on jumping through the hoops then that's great for the club, and the wider sport. If they can't find the money to be a top flight club on and off the pitch, then that's a sign that they need to hope a bit more that one day they will... That's all.
*with the obvious current caveat, but this time last week I'd have said Fev anyway
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17 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:
It will always be your own circumstances, to a point.
How many people does the hope value apply to, and how many of them are the audience RL otherwise wouldn't get?
The basic reality we are facing, and what the grading is making clear, is that without significant growth and development, a lot of clubs are miles off being what Super League (and therefore RL as a sport bc SL is the only bit that brings serious money in) needs. If you are sat there with a club that is maxxed out in revenue and audience and is still too small to ever hope to be full time, then the answer is there for you.
The sport isn't big enough or rich enough in the modern economic landscape to pander to literally a few thousand folk who think Whitehaven* could or should be a super league team. There is a terminal point for most clubs, one which most fans will accept is playing good standard semi pro RL every weekend against similar sides, something they have done for over 100 years in some cases.
If they can grow beyond that, taking advantage of social media, local economic strength, a top matchday experience etc then great they will grow and add to the Super League competition and add to the asset pot the sport has.
I agree, in an ideal world, we'd have a pyramid system of 20 Top flight clubs, 72 football league clubs, a national league, regional competitions and 8 more steps below that to filter out clubs to their appropriate level more naturally based more on sporting merit. But we don't have that, we have Swinton and Sheffield 1 "promotion" away from Super League. London who have gone up must be the worst prepared side in the past 20 years to join the top flight.
*chosen at random.
on those terms, 100% agree
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1 minute ago, phiggins said:
But that takes us back to clubs doing things for the IMG points, rather than for the benefits a good practice should bring. So, the IMG points becomes the outcome, when really the grading should be a measure of outcomes, if that makes sense?
My take is that it's harder to pull those two things apart. To be honest, anyone with half a brain should have a rough idea of good practice across most of the pillars, and yet many clubs are a long way off the pace (top to bottom being brutally honest).
The history of RL to date in the last 20 years is that it being obvious hasn't actually led to clubs doing it - whether for the right or wrong reasons.
The clubs without the money to do anything are one thing, but if *some* clubs start to spend/invest differently to chase the grading (the points become the outcome) then given where we are at the moment is it actually a bad thing?
Let the minds that can be focused be focused*, because they haven't been so far, whether social media or anything else.
*again, clubs with no money are simply not in a position to do much, but I'd argue that there's few clubs that could look at the entire list and find *nothing* they could afford to do....
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24 minutes ago, Pulga said:
The fact that basically every pillar isn't already being implemented by every team is almost laughably amateur.
This - the first year is designed to give clubs an idea of what they need to do. Some of the categories are imprecise, but even with loose/woolly finger in the air targets (which don't actually in themselves feel unreasonable, it's the workings that are more opaque) the fact that so many clubs just aren't doing the basics across pillars is unsurprising but pretty laughable when it's written down in black and white.
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Keith Fielding Welsh? He's got some explaining to do re his 10 England RU caps and 7 England RL ones...
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22 minutes ago, Ivarr the Boneless said:
There was a bit of strategy left when Oxford etc joined. The third tier was first seem as development, somewhere teams could try to develop an RL infrastructure and pass the odd talent up the line. The likes of Oxford had zero interest in Superleague, they knew that was never viable.
The the powers reduced Tier two and dumped the unwanted clubs in Tier three. At that point Tier three ceased to have any real purpose. It wasn't a true pro league and it wasn't a development league. There still doesn't seem to be any strategy or vision.
When they folded, Oxfords owners privately stated they thought the third tier would be cut adrift within five years. They will be wrong on the exact timespan but I fear they won't be too far out.
Exactly - L1 the year Oxford, GAG, Stags etc joined was the last gasp of strategy, before the whole thing was overcome by an outbreak of tactics...
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5 hours ago, sam4731 said:
The big question of course though is, can rugby league survive what would be optimistically a 15 year development plan?
Or, more importantly, can a 15 year development plan survive in rugby league…?
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42 minutes ago, Yorks Tim said:
Yes and no. It's not about a local rivalry though, more about leaving the lower half of the table and joining the play-off contenders pack. In the olden days though there were local rivalries between Coventry Bears and Hemel Stags, Nottingham Outlaws, Leicester Storm. Coaching staff and players moving between the Midlands clubs fed this.
As much as I would like those teams back in League 1, and I think those games would help with building crowds, the thrill of supporting a club like Cov Bears / Midlands Hurricanes is in bridging the gap and competing regularly with the likes of Oldham, Doncaster and (eventually) Dewsbury.
There has to be the ambition and potential of promotion to the Championship and Super League beyond that.
This.
In the 'olden days' there were also tiny gates, because beyond the players and their families, very few other people wanted to watch it. The crowds of paying punters, certainly at Oxford, and multiple hundreds rather than one man and his dog, were for playing 'proper' northern sides. Pub conversations were much easier to pull in people to watch Oxford v Oldham, than trying to explain that Oxford vs South Wales Scorpions was not a clash of 'basically pub teams then?' (genuine quote).
We wanted to watch competitive matches with 'real' clubs who had been doing this for a century - especially when we beat them. Even as a STH I had little interest when we were playing Scorpions or GAG (and I only lived over the road from the ground) - and there was a psychological feeling amongst some fans that playing the other expansion clubs was at best a chance to see how far you were progressing vs the other newcomers. As @Hemel Rugby Leaguesays, the League 1 we thought we were in was great, then (to the surprise presumably of no one involved in RL for longer than we had been - as fans I mean) the goalposts moved. My ideal would still be what L1 was that first season Oxford were in it - expansion clubs mixed with enough 'proper' northern sides to give the whole thing legitimacy and some sort of sense that it was a real league with some sort of continuity with the sport's past.
I accept it would be different for the players, but the whole point about that wave of expansion clubs into League 1 was they were supposed to have spectators rather than just be giving player opportunities.
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11 minutes ago, Les Tonks Sidestep said:
I make it only 12 of the 36 'pro' clubs own their stadium
I'd argue there's a slight difference between 'rent' and 'rent with primacy of tenure' though - essentially if you control the gates and all the income generation then aside from not being able to borrow against the land, does it matter if the local council actually owns the site?
The clubs in the worst position are those renting stadium access on 'pay per play'
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1 hour ago, tim2 said:
College Football in the US has 6 regular season matches yet they rake in millions and millions in merch and ticket sales in massive stadiums bigger than the Premier League. And their national finalists get picked by some kind of secret committee. Not helpful, but it shows what money and marketing can do.
And that is the opposite of RL. No money and the marketing skills of a drunk donkey.
I still find it odd that 25 years on from RU going pro, and building a full pyramid overnight, in RL we still have an artificial divide between "amateur" and "pro". Utterly bizarre if you don't understand the nuances and egos.
If Skolars can hang in, a 10 team League One is still viable.
In fairness, RU went pro in 1995 but built the English league pyramid overnight in 1987…
England v Tonga series
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted · Edited by iffleyox
Agree, and I know that but bluntly how many of the Brentford fans or management care about England RL, and the former are still celebrating 'no rugby'?
As I said, obviously now my head has decided it is unlikely it will inevitably happen, but of all the open doors the RFL could push at, it just seems like at the moment Brentford would be the one with a security chain on.
Milton Keynes, on the other hand... 30500, quicker to get to from central London than Brentford by rail....