TheReaper

All eastern teams, are the western/Pacific leagues not involved with the national team?

Did you miss a step? This all came from someone trying to pick up "reject RU players", in Canada.

We absolutely do not do that here. If you don't have enough players to fill out your team sheet, you're happy to have anyone willing to put on some boots. If you have too many players for one squad, you run a 2nds team. Sometimes 2nds will play 10s or 7s if you can't swing 2 full squads. Lots of guys play 160 minutes a weekend. The young energetic ones who are hungry for lots of rugby. If you're easily filling out 2 teams, you might run a third. I've personally played against 4th XVs of Waterloo and Oakville. I think at one point Balmy Beach had 5. No one gets told they can't play rugby. They at worst get told they weren't selected for the 1st team, or that they're on the bench instead of starting. But if you show up and train, you're welcome and you get to play rugby. We don't have the luxury of turning anyone away. Edit: this happens in high school too. My high school had one team for all grades ("varsity" rugby). The girls team had a lot more players, so they ran Junior (grades 9 and 10) and Senior (grades 11 and 12). One of the big schools in Brantford runs a team for every grade.

I clicked on this thread to read about Canada and am very confused by basically every other nation is being talked about instead. Very confusing. Do you think rugby clubs go around telling people not to play? Nobody gets rejected (unless you're a massive asshole).

Only in the sense of their small-town hockey team plays in the same league as my former small-town's hockey team. Or did at some point.

Cool to see a 4th team.... Hilarious that the tiny village of Tavistock is facing off against Toronto!

Nice to see they're quick on the draw...

I can't find what happened in BC this year, but if it was the same as 2022: Mostly seems to be the junior criteria that would hold Canada back. The good thing about BC is they play through the winter so they could get something going by next March, might have to be 9s or something. That would probably also get us to the playing numbers minimum.

Who's in charge of providing sandwiches?

What's "questionable" about realizing that broadcast facilities are more important to getting better TV deals a.k.a. the main source of funding for most sports leagues?

Some guy was just saying this on the MLR subreddit this week, but seems to have deleted all of his posts or his account. Same guy didn't know TWP existed again so definitely not an up to date source.

Fair enough, I had assumed based on my own club experiences that things would hold together better with a game like that on the horizon. I also continue to read claims that USARL is still "semi pro" in some shape or form. On point 3, I think at the "top end of amateur" union, Marshal Premiership/ USA "D1" things would be pretty even. But I'm talking about the bottom end, typical players which is who you say they're sending up. I think your average, run of the mill, not-the-top-flight team - aka branch union in Ontario / D2-3-4 in the USA - I think the level of Canadian "beer league" teams is higher than USA "beer league". I was at Nash Bash this year and 6 Canadian teams travelled down. 5 of those made their division finals out of like 90 teams, the one that didn't faced another Canadian team in the semi final. I also played with a D3 USA team in 2021 and the level seemed a step lower than the bottom of the Ontario leagues. So I guess I'm saying is that it's not that there aren't good players, but the depth isn't there / the average drops off.

The Boston game I agree is a bit different, since they filled in for DC. But for the rest, if you have a game lined up to happen a few weeks after your regular season ends, it's not really "out of season", it's just an extended season. you already have are in in the habit of training and playing, you just... keep doing that. Obviously you can't play the exact same day in a regular league and an exhibition series, but how much more in season could you get? I think it's a combination of: 1) travel. We have a counter example of Toronto Saints at Cleveland this spring, with Saints winning 34-22 with a lot of the same players - I count 13 guys (12 who played) in that Saints lineup who are currently on TWP. So a lot closer with the travel flipped. 2) TWP is, if having no other advantage due to being "professional", is a combination of mostly 2 amateur clubs, which is an advantage over a single club. 3) I think the level of grassroots level rugby in Canada is just a bit better than the USA, in both union and league. Most of the TWP guys also play union, and have been for years. I think more of the Americans are newer in general to the sport.

It's really hard to find schedules, apparently nobody involved in American rugby league can manage a website that isn't just Instagram, but DC + Boston are playing in Rugby League United with schedule running June to August, and Atlanta, SW Florida, Jacksonville, and Tampa are playing in USARL (south?) also running from June to August. So they are very much in season for a TWP schedule that was announced mid-June and started mid-July.

What stopped them from doing that in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 or 2022? What's changed that they'd be willing and able to do that now?

The RFL couldn't handle the team coming to them. What makes you think they have an capacity to help at all here?

The RFL couldn't handle the team coming to them. What makes you think they have an capacity to help at all here?

Gomersall is right. The last couple years there have only been enough league players to have two teams running in Ontario. Back when other places like Hamilton and St Catharine's had teams, it was what now looks to have been a high point in interest in playing rugby. For example around the same time the Niagara Rugby Union ran 4 leagues and these days it's down to 2. Looks similar in the TRU. So interest is down a lot overall, and for clubs it could be attractive to offer something a bit different with league instead of a 3rd or 4th XV squad. Now the clubs that ran 4 teams of various flavours have 2.

He may have bought tickets a while ago (suckers do exist?!) They cut them in half to $17.50 a few weeks ago, since people were questioning the sanity of $35 for something unproven.

Is it "meaningless" if people show up, watch some rugby, and leave happy? There's something attractive about enjoying a game for its own sake, IMO.

Well, we all know what happens when you assume... https://howltv.ca/events/offers/

Not really IMO. It's not the gold we use, and they're still very much "black and white, plus some gold" Soccer seems to like to break that trend around here... Hamilton is pretty consistently black and gold, with the Tiger-Cats, Bulldogs hockey, Honeybadgers basketball (before they left) all using it. So do lots of amateur teams like Hornets rugby, Wildcats Aussie Rules, Hamilton Roller derby, all using the scheme, and Forge FC going with orange and grey. Similarly, Toronto team that don't use blue are notable by being the exceptions. Soccer again with TFC, the Raptors, and now Wolfpack again being the outliers. Leafs, Blue Jays, Argos, Arrows, Rock lacrosse, Marlies, Maple Leafs baseball, University of Toronto, Toronto Metropolitan, Humber College all using blue with varying other colours.

Except for the incentives that haven always been there - to bring in and keep more paying customers, improve your player's work environment so they perform better, and owning a more valuable asset.

double post

Thinking that on-field performance is the only thing that's important in terms of entertainment, is a big part of where the sport is where it is.