iffleyox
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Posts posted by iffleyox
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30 minutes ago, Johnoco said:
Wheldon Rd may not exactly be sparkling new
I'm on record on here multiple times for saying it's the best atmosphere in SL when it's full and rocking, but I think you've just won the internet for today with that understatement!
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4 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:
I know what Clinton lane is, I am talking about Millmoor which sits empty with a convenant owned by Booths. If it could be brought back into use then it would be ideal.
Fair - I thought that was long gone
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16 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:
Yep people look at places but infrastructure you can :
a) scale b) commercially exploit and c) not be pushed out of is difficult.
Its why the RFL is crazy not to have a team at the MRA.
After that, you are really looking at either non league clubs who arent going to make FL so you can 3g it ( Telford) or RU clubs who you can dual code a stadium with ( Plymouth, Rotherham)
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.
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4 minutes ago, JonM said:
An hour most of the time, but summer holiday weekends can be a 100 mile queue from Plymouth back to the A303 turn off.
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.
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5 hours ago, dixiedean said:
Redruth play in Nat 2 South. They play teams from Leicester, St. Albans, Guernsey, Canterbury and Bury St Edmunds. Many of them are as far away as Wigan or Warrington.
Their closest team is Barnstaple which is 100 miles. Roughly the distance from Salford to Hull. So not really a derby.
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).
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1 minute ago, Billy King's Boots said:
Fair point - it's a while since I last went.
I've driven it literally thousands of times...
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6 minutes ago, Billy King's Boots said:
The bit in the interview about distances from 'Rochdale to Cornwall' is, I think, willfully disingenuous. If you're travelling from Rochdale, Bristol is pretty much half-way - but it's mostly motorway to Bristol. After that it's the South West's gridlocked summer A roads. And the Newcastle to London example is also a misdirection. In this case, Ealing is 70 miles fewer - and the vast majority is on faster roads, so it's almost two hours quicker. (timings below). We've done Skolars lots of times by train - dead easy. But it takes 2 hours 5 minutes to go from Newquay to Penryn by train - the same as Manchester to Euston!
Will I go? Yeah, probably. But people deserve a fair comparison.
Rochdale to Penryn
6 hr 45 min (353.1 mi)Rochdale to Bristol
3 hr 34 min (184.8 mi)Bristol to Penryn
3 hr 20 min (176.0 mi)Newcastle to Ealing
4 hr 54 min (281.0 mi)
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...
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5 minutes ago, Scubby said:
What is actually the level of player/squad required to be competitive in L1?
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.
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5 minutes ago, Billy King's Boots said:
There aren't actually all that many Union fans either. Cornish Pirates owner puts in £1million a year and they get £140,000 from the RFU. Their average attendance is 1,700.
Redruth have had the biggest attendance in RFU's tier 4 this season - 950. At tier 7 where Penryn play, there are grounds with capacities of 500.
If you want a comparison with football, Truro City (owned by the Cornish Pirates) are the highest ranked football club in Cornwall. They average about 150. They had one attendance of 102 this season.
It just doesn't feel like a sporting hotbed.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.
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57 minutes ago, Quinskolar said:
I think Perez has missed a trick and should have set up in Bristol.
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.
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6 hours ago, Big Picture said:
You think a country which is all in one time zone is a vast country? Seriously???
China has one time zone, although it is famously quite small….
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35 minutes ago, NW10LDN said:
It isn't but I also don't think they should be setting up a new club in a union heartland with no solid plan for growing the community game. That's what happened to Gloucester and Oxford. As for the headlines, every negative bit of news get put on the front page of Sky and BBC these days.
That’s not really what happened to Oxford…
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9 minutes ago, fighting irish said:
I agree, but as equal partners.
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....?
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1 hour ago, fighting irish said:
Don't you have an opinion about whether they should demand equal status?
Or are you saying that (because its a rugby league club) they should be happy as the ''poor relation''?
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.
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Just now, Damien said:
It indeed would. It would certainly show their intent and would show they had the backing. We can only hope.
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).
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6 minutes ago, Damien said:
I know but that really doesn't mean much for a proposed community stadium that only has half the funding. Money talks.
which will be the quickest way to find out whether Cornwall RL are serious or not I suppose.
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57 minutes ago, Damien said:
If they don't own the facility then it isn't up to them. If the new club has the finance they can easily be equal partners.
Under the current plan AIUI Pirates are in the driving seat with Truro FC as their enabling tenants.
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3 minutes ago, Dunbar said:
Just like when I was a kid, it's a really long way to Cornwall but you only have to drive there once a year and you will have fun when you get there.
In fairness, that's absolutely true
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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.
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9 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:
Tbf, Mr Hughes at London and Mr Beaumont at Leigh have also spent millions too for practically as little results. Its an expensive hobby...
Playing in Summer should give the RL side a bit of breathing room with fixture timings however.
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...
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7 minutes ago, Exiled red said:
The attendances of the pirates don't back it up though, maybe they would if they made the premiership...very much like Exeter Chiefs when they built there new stadium.
I just don't see the cornish people getting behind a sports side on a sustainable level especially with the geographical challenges that you mention.
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.
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11 minutes ago, Exiled red said:
If there's 500k rugby loving people already in Cornwall, why can't they muster up a top flight union side and build a relatively low cost 10k capacity stadium.
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...
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4 minutes ago, gingerjon said:
Ah, okay, if they didn't spend money like water then they would get funding and there is, technically, funding available for clubs who don't want to make like a Las Vegas stag party at the casino.
But I take your point.
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.
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10 minutes ago, gingerjon said:
It's also worth adding to this bit of digression that the RFU travel funding also goes to clubs who don't have to travel by plane.
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...
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Wakefield Trinity plans submision
in The General Rugby League Forum
Posted
I absolutely get why they're doing the north and the east first (because they need to and the east is where the space is for all the stuff that needs to front the main road) - but it is a real pity they're not doing the north and the west first, because the west is the biggest mess and the east looks quite tidy still. Pausing to get their breath back with the east and south as is, and north and west sorted out, would leave a good looking ground in the meantime.
Anyway, as I say I do know and appreciate why the east's got to happen first.