bowes

Irish RL (West Wicklow Vikings aside, who are struggling both for fixtures and consequently numbers) is just RU clubs having a way to keep players fit in summer and Scottish RL (Edinburgh Eagles/Napier University (more or less the same thing) aside) is the same. Scotland at least have juniors and could at a stretch be a long term aim, but Ireland doesn't have a single junior team in the whole country (there are efforts to set up West Wicklow Shamrocks but again one side doesn't work) There are so many places better to get a Championship 1 side than Scotland and Ireland and given that Skolars and Gateshead are really struggling despite infinitely better local setups, the problem is the players of the right standard aren't there and nor are the supporters. Championship 1 has too many weak struggling teams as is without artificially creating more where noone wants them. Far better to look at somewhere in the midlands than Scotland or Ireland and even then I'm not convinced we're ready You really need to get a grip on reality it really isn't simple and we really aren't wasting our time not blowing lots of money for nothing.

This is rumoured to be coming in, anyone know any details? Apparently it won't be full on franchising maybe it will be like soccer in NI which basically works as follows: Top 12 applicants when it started get in to the top flight. After that all interested teams have to apply for a license annually. Any top flight team failing (guess this would be teams going into admin in RL) automatically relegated, any team wanting to go up has to receive one. If top 2 of the 2nd tier meet criteria then the top 1 goes up to replace bottom team in division above and the 2nd place plays off against 2nd bottom of the division above. Otherwise just 1 team promoted (if someone meets criteria) unless more than one top flight team fails. This would be a fair compromise and would have to be better than the current system of promoting and relegating 2 teams automatically even if they're promoting a team in administration or with a ground unsuitable for 2nd tier (also really don't see the point of letting a poorly supported side get promoted). The thorny issue is French sides of course. The alternatives would be go for the top 12-14 sides 3 year license but to me this would be too harsh on the sides that just miss out or merge the divisions and drop the unsuitable teams (could work though would have on field standards gaps).

Salford are the other club whose crowds are a real concern, hopefully the new ground will increase the crowds but they are still very poorly supported especially for an M62 team. The other thing is they're more vulnerable than most as A. there's less local RL fans to buy them if Hughes leaves and perhaps more significantly B. they're at the mercy of the RU club who may well decide a club getting very few fans with their name is bad for the image or may up the rent even further

It's the combined influence of France, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa I'd have thought. NZ alone wouldn't have that much influence

I was responding to ParisSutroll bringing it up. But even if their entire squad were from London it would be for nothing if they folded due to crowds of 3000

I want them to move to sonewhere in the south where they get more than pathetic 3000ish crowds to matches, but where they still provide a pathway to SL for London players. I'm far from the only person to believe that Harlequins RL has been a huge failure as an experiment, doesn't mean I want a north only SL. Somewhere like Oxford would be preferable, if they do stay in London then East London where they'd be the biggest rugby club is the best bet When London rugby union clubs were all folding or close to it, 2 dropped out and 3 left London and have had far more success outside London than they ever had in lettig Harlequins RU be the pro rugby club for London or at least West London. Competing head to head in the same ground and with the same name as the only other tip flight rugby club is not attracting many fan at all, burI know you want SL crowd averages down to 3000 just so we can say we have teams in places like London and Paris and about 6 French sides, 4 in places RL is small and where the talent is this far just enough for 1 side, hopefully 2 by 2015. Your trolling is getting boring now just go back to supporting Huddersfield and moderate your expansionism to at most Parksider's level (though you don't want to expand within England outside of London)

Agree with the exception of the mention of Doncaster who certainly can't support a team at that level. Better Batley or Dewsbury (or a combined club of the two if mergers take off), OldhamRochdale would be a possible joint side, but as it stands Rochdale would have a better bid due to Oldham's small ground capacity

Unfortunately the current 2-up-2-down promotion and relegation massively reduce the chance of York becoming an established Championship club. Bring in Championship franchising (with more teams than now) and they will have a chance to achieve their potential

Well neither of them will be in the Championship next year and the Championship will have to go to franchise at some point.

They might need to merge to play in the Championship, never mind SL

On other forums the mode view pushing the report button grassing never mind the posters. Rare I see a problem on here, had much worse elsewhere

The 20 was including those games. Not really enough without the extra NRC cup games

No I agree. I think we should have one bigger franchised Championship division (restricted by criteria not a fixed number of teams) and have everyone else in a proper pyramid setup.

They only play 20 leagues games plus cup and playoffs so shouldn't be too hard to fit 4 more fixtures (over 5 weeks) as they don't really play enough games

He did say social club not RLC club. But some RLC clubs are the equivalent of pub teams, some are very well run amateur clubs, some are somewhere between. At Coventry we run: 1sts 2nds Under 16s Under 14s Under 12s Women's Girls Under 12 Plus have a schools competition and this is about average for the big clubs in the midlands. However, in the deep South West (i.e. not Gloucestershire and Bristol) every club is just one team of RU players. Also in the midlands we had one club Burntwood who were just a team of RU players wanting a summer keep fit and a few fights

Yeah it really is that bad, but they only offer 4-6 games plus playoffs so not surprising. An extra 4 games of being hammered's not enough to change that. There was a suggestion of an Irish winter league for off season Gaelic footballers, not sure if it is still happening Scotland could get something together but would basically be Edinburgh Eagles/Napier University with maybe some of the forces players from Moray. They'd still ship 100-150

Yeah Blackpool and Gateshead seem very shaky. Skolars won't fold ever but wouldn't be surprised if they end up in the NCL some time after it switches to summer

No because you'd still struggle to get 17 players from the Irish league to enter even between all the clubs. Still seems a bad idea to me

Actually seems like these French groups are a pre qualifier and there will be 24 teams in the NRC, 20 English plus South Wales and 3 French. Toulouse, the French champions and the winners of the French NRC qualifier tournament. Seems like fixture congestion for the French team but if they can get over it it should be alright. There's been talk of Irish and Scottish clubs but that is clearly going to come to nothing

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I suppose pub teams were the equivalent (a lot harder to enter them in winter leagues nowadays due to there not being leagues down to about division 8 or 9 anymore). I do think you raise a valid point though and I think merit leagues for new clubs are a very good thing rather than chucking clubs that can't fulfil weekly fixtures into the main leagues like they used to (actually the early days of the RLC you had to play friendlies like we did in our first season; the throw anyone in started with NL3 and the RLC Premier divisions leaving gaps needing filling). I think when the season is in summer we should aim for the established non-heartland clubs to play a full season when possible, but still retain shorter seasons and merit leagues for getting RU players and new players into the game, and also for the social element and reserve teams. The RLC was originally as much to save rugby league outside the heartlands as to grow it and it has certainly done that and got us back to about the same numbers in full adult leagues, but actually more when you take merit leagues and juniors into account there's a lot more players (outside of places like Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Gloucestershire than used to have a lot of winter clubs), only you have to factor in the RU reliance. Long term I think the RLC will become redundant and each region will have its own league structure as part of the pyramid on a par with the BARLA leagues. With merit leagues as the lower divisions of this structure and some short season leagues as an alternative. Is much of this to do with SL, not really, some of the growth in London and Wales is, but not as much as people would make out. Hard work from volunteers, regional development officers and community coaches has done more (Sport England money largely). I think the contrast between the large number of players in London and the appalling crowds at Harlequins shows it's not just SL supporters going along to play. But yes SL has done a lot for the top level and if done properly franchising will increase the top level quality (i.e. select clubs according to quality as opposed to either just keeping the same clubs in or rigging criteria to put in unsuitable expansion clubs 3-6 years before they're ready). I think the new direction of the community game will be a big benefit to the sport in the same way BARLA saved the amateur game and introduced it to non-heartland areas (3 amateur teams in London were the only non-heartland teams in the whole of the UK in 1973 when BARLA was formed!) and the RLC saved it outside the heartlands. In fact in 1973 Wigan, St Helens, Widnes, Leigh, Bradford, Heavy Woollen, South Yorkshire etc. didn't have a league for their clubs to play in at all. Some played in other district leagues (Wigan St Patrick's in Warrington League comes to mind), but the game really was dying before the forced mergers of leagues

Not true really, the game expanded by far the most in the BARLA boom at its pinnacle in the 80s with huge increases in numbers of amateur clubs both in and outside the heartlands, the game really was in a bad state in 1973, just unfortunately this boom was already significantly in decline by the time SL started. About 20 years ago there were 5 RL clubs in Gloucestershire playing the same season as RU, unimaginable now. What has improved in the last 10 years is juniors outside the heartlands. The flipside of the coin is that this is little to do with SL and more a combination of better communications and the ability to use RU players in the offseason rather than having to find committed RL players (in some cases these are one and the same players of course, but in somewhere like Ireland, Scotland or the deep South West that is less the case). In fact the non-heartland juniors will have grown up on 8 months RU and 3 months RL unless we change this and the current set up will be continued Of course the answer to this thread is SL has improved the top division and done less for clubs in lower divisions. The sooner we have a sensible Championship setup the better and hopefully bringing the game into one season will allow that. Drop the unsuitable clubs from the pro leagues to a more realistic level and go for one Championship division

That's the plan, though the NCL and the reserve teams of NCL clubs it's got to be certain will switch by 2012 and BARLA plan to move across, though maybe more slowly. Juniors will also be early to switch. There's enough clubs in Yorkshire or Lancashire that if some want to stay winter it won't wreck the pyramid, a split in Hull or Cumberland may be more of an issue (though I expect the desire to play summer will be high in Cumberland for obvious weather reasons)

http://www.com1site.com/FFRXIII/actualites.php?a=256 The format doesn't seem certain but seems to have 2 groups of 5 and the winners playing off for a NRC spot (in knock out?) Not sure what the Lezignan already in means. The Welsh club coming in I presume means the Scorpions, not sure why Ireland's suggested as Irish and Welsh domestic clubs are RU off season clubs and couldn't play at that time of year and would get thrashed, would far rather see clubs like Bramley in than them. irish clubs hardly ever even turned up for one off Challenge Cup matches. Seems a good idea for French Elite clubs in to me as long as they have their own groups for travel cost reasons. Would be terrible if they tried to include Irish domestic clubs though. Also they only get 20 domestic games (18 home and away plus 2 extra fixtures) plus Cup so the extra 4 guaranteed is good. Also in the news there Montpellier are moving up to expand the league to 10 teams with struggling St Gaudens linking up with Toulouse as their reserves (think playing matches at both)

Think it just applies to the stadia that are used in the world cup, which is more of an issue in Australia than here as they have fewer big stadia that several clubs share over there. The only issue I can think is if they give a world cup match to somewhere like Hull but I doubt they would