TrueBull

Few years ago now, but I'd heard the council, Bulls and BPA were broadly on the same page. Unfortunately the RFL are a stakeholder too and were either too greedy/incompetent (delete as required) so the council & BPA went their own way. Thanks RFL. Christ it's good being the RFL's favourites.....

At the half way line, there was easily 7-8m of additional grass on both sides. Unfortunately, the pitch is currently oval and there was only 7-8cm of spare grass at the corner flags..... The RFL ( as the head leaseholders) are supposedly working on the temporary corner upgrades.

Could have played at Tetley’s with the same result. Bulls Odsal advantages - more fans, back home, more support, more cash. York Odsal advantages- none RL in general- feel good for RL Which is why I was asking what was in it for York? And the only 2 possibilities were financial (as above) or the RFL asked nicely as a favour. But now I’m getting what you mean. York weren’t given the option of Tetley’s or Odsal, you were given the option of Odsal now or Odsal later on. Sneaky, sort of forced your hand.

Does anyone know why York & Newcastle agreed to the Odsal move? I’m assuming it’s financial? Perhaps the away team would be allowed to keep a bigger % of their ticket sales? There has to be a bigger inducement than “it is good for the game” hasn’t there?

The only way I can see it being a matter of law is how the academy impacts on the integrity of the SL comp. Having an elite academy and developing your own elite players allows you leeway on the salary cap. If nothing else changes, in a few years time, Hull could have an effective salary cap of £150k greater than HKR, which would be perfectly ok with the current rules and also a level playing field in the current rules. As I said before, to maintain fairness, either everyone or no one (regional) can have academies. If they press on with this, then to minimis

Why? Someone seems to have decided that the main reason for players falling away at the u18 and open age is academies. Which is a small reason I suppose, but it’s being blown out of all proportion. It would be useful to see the research the RFL is basing this on. For my u18’s (a few years ago) - remember there isn’t a 17’s, so drawing from 2 years - out of 42 registered players for a Sunday game, 6 were playing for academies, usually between 10-15 were working and 10 were unreliable due to being out on the Saturday night. The recovering ones went on the bench but we always had 17.

And Bradford were forced to stay in Championship when the holding company was liquidated and the rules mandated immediately reforming in L1, purely because all the Championship clubs whinged that they would have a £25k hole in their accounts if that happened. As soon as the RFL got involved with Odsal, it created governance and integrity problems and the RFL have vacillated between helping and harming Bradford ever since.

Highlighted the important words just in case anyone missed them

I would assume then, we'll have 1m grass run off either side with a covering over the dirt track for the extra 2m and a 55m pitch then.

And another thing. I assume compensation will now be dropped. If 9 of the 12 SL clubs are generating the future players of the game, How do the 3 clubs get the players? If they have to pay £20k compensation every time they sign an academy player, that’ll get old very quickly. Remembering that academies are Rfl funded and that the Rfl is a member organisation- The 3clubs have a case that they’ve already subsidised the training of the players in those academies and why should they pay more?

How is that even close to fair? Fair is every SL club runs a Cat 1 academy, or no club runs a Cat 1 academy - with the Rfl running regional academies directly. The easiest way to compare fairness and competition integrity is East Yorkshire. In the future, Hull have a couple of first team wingers go down with illness. They then go to their star u19’s winger who has come through the elite academy and has already learned the plays & processes of Hull. This helps them to win the game. Also in the future, HKR have the same problem. They can’t go to their elite u19 winger beca

You’re talking about the Cat 3 academies, which are attached to a local college. They’re designed to churn out part time rugby league players with a good trade. And they play in a winter league. Any club can set them up, before last week’s decision, Bradford were planning on running both a Cat 1 & a Cat3 from next year. I can’t see an SL club being excited about having a large pool of part time players training in the evenings.

4000

And it has actually been given a facelift. Looks pretty good. Touchdown bar looks renovated, paint is all fresh, cracks in the end terracing been filled. Assuming we're staying, the concourse food/drink concessions need a bit of work, then the biggie, 2x stands over the terracing.

Ah, I was under the impression that only academies with an elite license could play against each other in the season, so even if your club could find the £200k it takes to run an academy, they would never be able to play a game as they would be excluded from the comp. So it would be fairly pointless. But you're confident the opposite is true and that other elite academies can exist, just without central funding. Which isn't quite as bad as I thought