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NEWS FROM RLEF WEBSITE

 

More good signs coming from Spain

 

The Spanish Rugby League Association’s (AERL) plans to launch provincia leagues underpinning the natoinal championship becomes a reality on 30 May when the Andalusian Regional League kicks off in southern Spain. The competition comprises teams from the three provinces of Cordoba, Seville and Malaga and will play on six dates for a total of 12 matches until the end of July.

Miguel Angel Mudarra, President of AERL Andalucia, said, "We are really proud of the work we have done at club level to organise the first regional rugby league championship in Spain. The work of the last couple of months has been huge, both at the organisational, logistical level as well as increasing the training given to our referees. We believe it will be an exciting and very competitive championship and I wouldn’t like to predict a winner."

The first round will start with the matches between Córdoba Phoenix versus Mineros Peñarroya and on the same day Bandoleros Ronda versus Coria Samurais. The AERL has concentrated a lot of its focus on Andalusia this year, running coaching and match officials courses to prepare the local rugby league community, which now totals six teams, only one less than the Valencian Region, the birthplace of Spanish rugby League.

Aitor Dàvila, general secretary of AERL and RLEF level 1 coach educator, said, "Andalucia is already the second biggest regions in terms of the number of players and clubs and the championship we're announcing today is evidence of the game’s progress in the south. Andalusia, like Valencia, is witnessing rapid development and interest and with the best possible level of coaches and referees, thanks to the help of the RLEF. From the AERL’s point of view, we have high hopes for the future in this championship."

Javier Vergara, director of the Andalusian competition, said, "Today we have the honour to announce the first regional league in our country, and I would like to thank our clubs, the volunteers as well as the AERL and RLEF. The Western Development League the AERL launched with southern and Madrid clubs, and the coach and referee courses run in our region laid the foundations of this competition and as our President said, we all hope they will be very competitive. "

Besides the four participants in the Andalucía Regional League, Sevilla RLFC and Tercios XIII Tomares, both development teams, complete the southern Spanish group.
 

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I trained with the Madrid Griffons the other night.  I know, I'm too fat and slow and old but they're a nice bunch of lads, a lot of fleet footwork and speed.  The aforementioned Thierry clearly knows what he's doing and is a nice chap.  If they have a pack, they're a difficult outing.

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I trained with the Madrid Griffons the other night.  I know, I'm too fat and slow and old but they're a nice bunch of lads, a lot of fleet footwork and speed.  The aforementioned Thierry clearly knows what he's doing and is a nice chap.  If they have a pack, they're a difficult outing.

 

Do the Griffons have any games planned?

 

By the way, I hope you didn't have to tackle Thierry as a couple of the Custodians players had to go off after trying to put him down in the game  a few weeks back.

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They're playing a union sevens tournament in Alcala on Saturday.  I'm in two minds whether to play because I haven't played union in 20 years and had no idea technically what I was doing back then.  I get league much more.

 

Luckily, it was a touch session though I did the world proud as he was distracted, stood too close at a play-the-ball and I blocked him off.  Can't beat a little cunning.

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http://www.rlef.eu.com/news/article/1071/spain-prepares-for-german-test

 

4th June 2015

Germany will play Spain for the first time on Saturday in a match that will welcome the arrival of a new national governing body and mark the end of captain Kristian Keinhorst’s long association with the national team.

Nationaler Rugby League Deutschland was formally recognised earlier in the week as the governing body in Germany, a move which has generated renewed vigour in a country that has been involved in rugby league since 2005 without ever really fulfilling its enormous potential. A national team victory will further increase NRLD’s enthusiasm, but co-head coach Simon Cooper is under no illusion it will be easy against one of international rugby league’s form sides.

“We are in a rebuilding phase in Germany, both on and off the field after a difficult period,” admits Cooper. “We have a young, inexperienced squad that is missing the likes of Bene Rehm, Christoph Huber, Max Schöngen and others due to various reasons, but the coaching team have been very impressed with the commitment of the squad this year.”

Spain, which defeated Latvia last month to break into the first rung of the 2017 Rugby League World Cup qualifiers later this year, remains unbeaten in its three matches, two of which were away from home, and coach Darren Fisher is looking forward to a new opponent to test his relatively new crop of rugby league players.

“The Germany game will be another great test match for us,” said the Yorkshireman, who assembles a squad representing nine clubs. “We know the Germany side will be confident and it's something we will aim to match. We have a couple of sessions before the game and we will be aiming to build on our last performance against Latvia. We must keep raising the level of our performances in the build up to European Championship C and I'm sure the challenge of our visitors this weekend will provide that for us. Our main focus will be to compete and start to really focus on completing our sets. It's very exciting that these types of games are happening and it helps loads in our development.” 

Cooper thinks that his side, which include Leeds Rhinos back Jimmy Keinhorst, will have no excuses for a below par performance: “It is probably the best prepared the side has ever been, due to a couple of training weekends and a number of the players being involved in technical courses that have been run this year by the RLEF. Spain is going to be a tough match for us and will help us see where we are and what we need to do, to help all our players in Germany improve.

“Our focus is very much on the development of our players rather than results this year. It will also be the last game for our captain, Kristian Keinhorst. The Keinhorst Family has been great servants of the game in Germany and has played a big part in our development, not just on the field, but also off it.“

Keinhorst (pictured) played in Germany’s first international match, in 2007 against Serbia, and has missed only two matches since. On Saturday he will win his 17th cap.

Germany next face Netherlands in Gnarrenburg on 20 June, while Spain plays Italy B in Alicante next Saturday.

SPAIN 22-MAN SQUAD
Hector D'Alessandro (Alcoià Comtat), Alejandro Gordon, Diego Lagunas, Hadriel Mego, Gonzalo Morro, Ezequiel Pérez-Fuster (Ciencias XIII Valencia), Hugo García, Iago Vázquez (Custodians Madrid), Ivan Ordaz (Eastmoor Dragons), Matt Dulley, Oli Giroguy, Juan Pablo Rango (Irreductibles Mislata), Alex Doutres (Palau XIII), Aitor Dàvila, Raul Simo (Tigres Torrent), Adrian Alonso, Carlos Aragones, Christian Domínguez, Joaquin Fraile, Andrew Pilkinton, Luis Thorp (Valencian Warriors), Daniel Garcia (Woolston Rovers)

GERMANY 20-MAN SQUAD
Karsten Brüning, Simon Cooper, Mitchell Evers, Jannek Hagenah, Marco Kühne, Sebastian Peter (Karlshöfen), Mawuli Amefia, Matej Beslic, Sebastian Roczyn (Karlsruhe), Ben Behr-Heyder, Felix Buhla, Liam Doughton, Arne Falk, Fabrice Fehlemann, Vivien Seelweger, Marc Zupan (NRW Broncos), Andrew Hoggins (Oxford RLFC), Kristian Keinhorst, Nick Keinhorst (Leeds Akkies), Jimmy Keinhorst (Leeds Rhinos)

rldfsignature.jpg

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It finished Spain 16-32 Germany.

Is that definitely the case? I asked the Spain coach who confirmed it with the ref as 16-22 (although the RLEF site has it as 16-32)

Check out upcoming international fixtures and highlights of past matches at http://rlfixtures.weebly.com

 

St Albans Centurions International Liaison Officer and former Medway Dragons Wheelchair RL player.

Leeds Rhinos, St Albans Centurions y Griffons Madrid fan. Also follow (to a lesser extent) Catalans Dragons, London Broncos, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Jacksonville Axemen, Vrchlabi Mad Squirrels, København Black Swans, Red Star Belgrade and North Hertfordshire Crusaders.

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16.32 was the score as Germany scored 6 tries and kicked 4 goals.

Cheers

 

The overwhelming consensus is 32, so I'll mark it down as that

Check out upcoming international fixtures and highlights of past matches at http://rlfixtures.weebly.com

 

St Albans Centurions International Liaison Officer and former Medway Dragons Wheelchair RL player.

Leeds Rhinos, St Albans Centurions y Griffons Madrid fan. Also follow (to a lesser extent) Catalans Dragons, London Broncos, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Jacksonville Axemen, Vrchlabi Mad Squirrels, København Black Swans, Red Star Belgrade and North Hertfordshire Crusaders.

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That's a shame. Development in Spain seems to be much better than in Germany at the moment, athough maybe it's just getting more exposure on this forum.

It's certainly going faster at the moment, but Germany have had a bit of a head start (despite their setbacks with governing bodies etc)

 

Hopefully Spain will do well this weekend against Italy. I'm not expecting a win, although if Italy are unable to call up some of their bigger names (which I imagine will be the case), then you never know!

Check out upcoming international fixtures and highlights of past matches at http://rlfixtures.weebly.com

 

St Albans Centurions International Liaison Officer and former Medway Dragons Wheelchair RL player.

Leeds Rhinos, St Albans Centurions y Griffons Madrid fan. Also follow (to a lesser extent) Catalans Dragons, London Broncos, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Jacksonville Axemen, Vrchlabi Mad Squirrels, København Black Swans, Red Star Belgrade and North Hertfordshire Crusaders.

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That's a shame. Development in Spain seems to be much better than in Germany at the moment, athough maybe it's just getting more exposure on this forum.

 

Germany have always done well at international level, it's just the domestic side of things that has been poor (or non-existent at times).

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Germany have always done well at international level, it's just the domestic side of things that has been poor (or non-existent at times).

Correct up to end or 2010 there was always a couple of 9s or 13s game going on even if not a proper domestic comp. Since that time nothing domestically. There was a 9s comp ran last year but was not organized by the RLD then. This year will see 3 9s events played over summer which hopefully will help build a domestic base to work from in future.

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Spain needs to keep taking steps forward.  Essentially, there are now two strong regions; Andalucia (from nowhere) and Valencia.  Catalunya needs to catch up, as does Madrid.  The Autonomous Community of Madrid has the third highest population in Spain but the highest population density in mainland Spain, triple that of the Basque Country in second place.   It's just people to run clubs and how you carve up not only a complex city but its contiguous and non-contiguous suburbs.

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Spanish players said Italy game off this weekend. Nor sure why or even true.

Spain website now has this listed as "PENDIENTE DE FECHA" (Pending date), so it seems to have been postponed

Check out upcoming international fixtures and highlights of past matches at http://rlfixtures.weebly.com

 

St Albans Centurions International Liaison Officer and former Medway Dragons Wheelchair RL player.

Leeds Rhinos, St Albans Centurions y Griffons Madrid fan. Also follow (to a lesser extent) Catalans Dragons, London Broncos, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Jacksonville Axemen, Vrchlabi Mad Squirrels, København Black Swans, Red Star Belgrade and North Hertfordshire Crusaders.

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Rugby of either code isn't widespread anywhere! There are 220ish clubs across a population of 50m. That said, union is much more of a northern game. Popular in the Basque Country, Asturias, Cantabria. There are teams in Madrid, Barcelona, Valladolid is a bit of a hotbed. In Valencia, Villajoyosa is the place to be.

Don't know about Valencia but the games in Andalusia are being held on football fields.

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That's great if the Andalucian teams are completely seperate entities. I worry that being too tied to a RU club (using the facilities, off-season players etc) puts these teams in a weak position and makes it difficult to present RL as a different sport (see UAE for example). Although I say that as someone with no involvment in RL expansion.

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Does anyone know if the Spanish clubs are RL offshoots of RU clubs or completely separate entities? Is RU played widely in Valencia and Andalucia or is this virgin territory?

Most are off-shoots of rugby union clubs.  It is correct that this is a weakness, but any RL organisation this young will have weaknesses.  I am very impressed by what they have done.

"You clearly have never met Bob8 then, he's like a veritable Bryan Ferry of RL." - Johnoco 19 Jul 2014

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