LeytherRob

And I'm pretty confident from my experience of the college leagues(along with a decent level of amateur rugby up to u18) what challenges face teams in the college leagues.

Unless they change the way the leagues work, no they won't. Wigan, Warrington, Salford and Leigh were all in NW division 1 for the last completed season. Cat 3 academies are primarily an educational tool for Elite clubs, which is why they are used in conjunction with a proper cat 1 academy. How can clubs that have had their main academies removed, or application rejected, address things like end product without a means to do so? This isn't about the money, it's about access to the systems to develop players properly. If Garreth Carvell is to be believed(as someone overseeing Leighs bid and former head of the players Union I have no reason to doubt him) there wasn't any funding at stake for these licensing.

Someone get on the phone to Hull KR and Castleford, let them know they didn't get a Cat 1 academy because of someone off the Internet who played for Winstanley college!

None of that toxicity you describe would change without academies. Coaches(or even the loudest parents) kids will always get preferential positions as will anyone with a relative in the pro game. Same with player drain. I played for Leigh East from under 7s right through to under 18s and whilst there were a few in my age group that went into the academy systems, most players started leaving at 15 onwards because they just lost interest in maintaining a 3 days a week commitment when they were discovering girls, parties and then going on to work/education.

They are playing a against teams that only train if there is no game on because they have a single afternoon of contact time a week. I know it's a joke competition because I played in it. Cat 3 academies do serve a purpose, they get players focusing on eduction and life after rugby making them great to run in synergy with a cat 1 academy. Cat 1 academies are all about readying elite players for the pro game, Cat 3 academies are about transitioning those who won't make it into qualifications such as A levels or BTECs so they aren't lost when rugby ends.

Yes, it's a grand canyon in difference in terms of development and league structure. One point of clarification, having looked at the RFL operational rules a lot over the past few days trying to make sense of this all, the system that was referred to as cat 2 seems to be completely gone now and RFL seem now to be using Cat 2 to refer to college league academies.

Which means they lose access to the elite league structures for academies and now get fixtures against a local sixth form, if they bother to show up. So essentially yes, they have had their academy status revoked. About 3 other people already tried that argument about 4 pages back.

You've consistently suggested that the teams without academies haven't done so because of a lack of desire, which is just demonstrably false. In any case, despite being presented with actual evidence which contradicts those assumptions, you've ploughed on undeterred so I think I'll leave it there. If you have any other daft questions, I suggest you at least do a quick Google before making yourself look daft.

The last licensing cycle ends this year, it's no different to this new license system, except that they've opted to reduce the numbers from 14 to 10. Its been licensing for years now. If you still want to argue that fact, despite all the proof available to you, then I can't help you.

This is not the first license period for academies, I really don't know how else to say it. If you don't believe me, have a quick Google or look at the RFLs own website.

Widnes dropped their Academy last year because they knew they wouldn't have their Academy licence renewed when it expired this year. Salfords academy license was revoked as it failed to meet standards. Google is your friend here... https://www.mancunianmatters.co.uk/sport/04092015-another-blow-for-rugby-league-in-manchester-as-salford-red-devils-academy-falls-short-of-category-1/

Do you think this is the first time academies have been licensed?

You're forgetting that the license process has been in place for quite a while now.

We don't know what the criteria was for awarding the final 2 academies, only that multiple clubs have been given geographical proximity as direct feedback for the failure of their bids. If that is the case, then the critical misunderstanding here is people assuming it is purely down to quality that some clubs have been rejected. Take Leigh or Salford for instance, if the board has taken the opinion that the 3 academies at Wigan, Wire and Saints is enough to serve the NW then it doesn't really matter how good or bad their bids were. There is precisely zero chance that any of those 3 clubs would be stripped of an academy right now.

Funny how people have absolute faith in the governing body and processes when it's a decision they like.

We don't have an Academy this year or last year because we haven't been awarded a cat 1 license, which is what this entire thread is about. If you want to listen to both sides of the debate, I suggest you start by looking back through the thread.

You'd need to ask him, clubs and officials can only relay what scarce feedback they've been provided. Carvell certainly doesn't strike me as the type of person to just outright lie about the feedback provided.

Doesn't seem to be the case for several clubs. The below is from Gareth Carvell's twitter account, who was overseeing Leighs bid: "We got rejected at leigh because we have too many clubs near us. Wasted a lot of man hours and went through a lot of stress for nothing. I get trying to grow the game in non rugby areas but not at the cost of already established rugby league areas."

Scrapping the old u20s/reserves below SL was a joke of a decision fueled by lazy SL clubs looking to outsource their player development to the championship in the form of DR and even lazier championship clubs looking for a shortcut to success. Looking back at the last squad at Leigh before the league fell apart, it contained: Joe Bullock(Wigan) Chris Hankinson(Wigan/London) Ben Reynolds(Leigh) Jack Hansen (Swinton) Mitch Cox(Swinton) Frankie Halton(Fev) Plus several more that went on to appear at championship/league 1 level.

Look at the difference between the points difference for the cat 3 academies and the rest. It tells you all you need to know. As I've said in other posts, I know what it's like in that league because I played in it. For colleges like Winstanley the sports program is nothing more to them than the couple of paragraphs in their enrollment brochure. It's a purely academic college and their sole priority is hoovering up the brightest students they can within a 20 mile radius to boost their numbers for successful Oxbridge applicants. We fulfilled at best 40% of our fixtures and it only looks to have gotten worse since i left from a RL standpoint.

See my post above on the standard of opposition at college level

To give you an idea of what the leagues are like, here is the table for the NW division 1 in the last completed season before Covid. Top 4 you've got the Cat 3's for Wigan, Wire, Salford and Leigh respectively, then below you've got a set of uninterested colleges and 6th forms that pay nothing more than lip service to the competition(if at all as you can see from the 2 teams that didn't fulfill a single fixture). For the pro clubs, you've essentially got 3 semi competitive fixtures a season. The problem with a lot of the other colleges(I played for Winstanley in the late 2000's) is that Wednesday afternoon (when classes end early to allow for sports and extra curricular activities) is the only contact time a lot of these teams have, so they only tended to train when not playing a match. For the Cat 3's they will obviously do extra sessions under the guidance of their pro club affiliates but when the standard of opposition is so poor/unorganized it offers nothing to the actual development as players.

That's funny, because this is the second paragraph of their statement. Maybe you should get in touch with Castleford to let them know your feedback? The early feedback given as to the reasons that Castleford Tigers has not been awarded an Elite Academy Licence is due to a large number of clubs in a small geographical location, and that since 2014 the Club has been bottom of the league for producing First Team players.

It doesn't matter how much investment is put into a college team, or how many great coaches they have involved, if the playing pool is limited to who is signed up to the college and they are limited to playing fixtures against local 6th form teams. I don't know if you've ever played in the college leagues(I have), but the quality is vastly inferior even to amateur leagues. It's essentially a series of friendlies, if the matches take place at all(a lot of colleges put very little emphasis on their sporting programs and player availability is a constant issue). Everyone focuses on the funding aspect, but they neglect the full wording from the RFLs own operational rules. It is a 'funding and participation' agreement to be awarded a Cat 1 license, meaning competitive fixtures are ringfenced.

It's matched funding up to £100k plus additional payments on top based on performance. The academy licence period has been changed to be in line with the broadcast contract, which is up at the end of the year. The current funding model sees every academy receive around £100,000 of base funding, with a reward on top of that depending on how productive the academy is.