JM2010 Posted March 2, 2017 Share Posted March 2, 2017 Every time development and increasing participation is mentioned there are many different ideas and arguments how it should be done. I agree with Parky that a big push is needed in the North West and Yorkshire to expand on what we already have as these areas are a quick win in comparison to others. Should London also be targeted as a potential hotbed of the game? There are already two established professional clubs and quite a few community clubs and schools already playing. Would directing any funds into development in London give a good return and help create another hotbed for rugby league like the NW and Yorkshire? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deluded pom? Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 London should have been a development area since at least 1980,. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lowdesert Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 I understand the Sky Try incentive is being successful in reaching high numbers of kids/youths. Hopefully, we can see how these numbers stack up Club by Club or/and Region by Region where London, who have an immense number of schools to target, can create development opportunity. Whether they have enough staff, dedicated to that delivery, is another question but imo London have already had their fair share of development cash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nadera78 Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 The game will never take off in London, or the south as a whole, because the people down here just don't have what it takes to play Rugby League. It's genetics. Or proximity to pit villages. Or whippets. Something like that, anyway. Mike McMeeken is not one of the most exciting young forwards in the game right now. Dan Sarginson hasn't moved to the NRL. SL squads are not filling up with players from the south. The England team of the future will not contain numerous men with elongated vowel sounds. I wonder what could be achieved if the game took development down here seriously...? "Just as we had been Cathars, we were treizistes, men apart." Jean Roque, Calendrier-revue du Racing-Club Albigeois, 1958-1959 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEANO Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 Face facts. Hardly anybody wants the game outside the heartlands sometimes you have to take a step backwards to move forward Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deluded pom? Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 49 minutes ago, nadera78 said: The game will never take off in London, or the south as a whole, because the people down here just don't have what it takes to play Rugby League. It's genetics. Or proximity to pit villages. Or whippets. Something like that, anyway. Mike McMeeken is not one of the most exciting young forwards in the game right now. Dan Sarginson hasn't moved to the NRL. SL squads are not filling up with players from the south. The England team of the future will not contain numerous men with elongated vowel sounds. I wonder what could be achieved if the game took development down here seriously...? Leave it aht nad, leave it aht. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RidingPie Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 Perhaps London should take over from the failing Leeds franchise ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbfaz Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 Did somebody dredge up a really old forum post? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damp squib Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 6 hours ago, nadera78 said: The game will never take off in London, or the south as a whole, because the people down here just don't have what it takes to play Rugby League. It's genetics. Or proximity to pit villages. Or whippets. Something like that, anyway. Mike McMeeken is not one of the most exciting young forwards in the game right now. Dan Sarginson hasn't moved to the NRL. SL squads are not filling up with players from the south. The England team of the future will not contain numerous men with elongated vowel sounds. I wonder what could be achieved if the game took development down here seriously...? 5 hours ago, DEANO said: Face facts. Hardly anybody wants the game outside the heartlands DEANO once again demonstrating his perfect comic timing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sports Prophet Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 19 hours ago, JM2010 said: Should London also be targeted as a potential hotbed of the game? There are already two established professional clubs and quite a few community clubs and schools already playing. Would directing any funds into development in London give a good return and help create another hotbed for rugby league like the NW and Yorkshire? Nigel Wood and his henchmen in their infinite wisdom cut funding to the 18 full time development staff in London and the South East from 2011. What you are proposing is nothing new, but the RFL have no further interest under its current administration in expanding the sport from grassroots to the professional through their own initiative and programmes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbfaz Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 Sport England funding was cut, participation has fallen, funding has fallen and so it's probably not coming back. I hear of certain things that happen in London and the South East though and I shake my head. People who have it all in their own handwriting, they don't need the RFL, and yet they trip over their own feet. Clubs who get given qualified coached by the RFL and yet can't run the admin side of the club. I can understand why the RFL get annoyed when people just don't want to put the graft in either. When I started in Rugby League, I had no idea how to do things but I learned. I googled stuff. We needed a poster for Facebook; I learned how to make a basic flyer from a Google search, downloaded Paint.net for free and went from there. I downloaded fonts from websites when I wanted something different, I learned about Paint.net plugins so I could get different looks or, and this is so important, how to send the background of an image transparent without a jagged look. As a result, our posters look sharp. I've changed up my style this season for a Soviet propaganda-inspired look but the old flyers were really excellent. My chairman paid somebody in India to design the crest and we got a professional quality crest for very little. It's all there; freelancer, fiverr, oDesk. It's all inexpensive, just need to know where to look. However, if I wrote all of this down, people would just ask me to do it instead. The RFL is not blameless but neither are the clubs. Running a rugby league team has to be a 365 day a year obsession. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sports Prophet Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 36 minutes ago, bbfaz said: Sport England funding was cut, participation has fallen, funding has fallen and so it's probably not coming back. ... The RFL is not blameless but neither are the clubs. Running a rugby league team has to be a 365 day a year obsession. It takes a lot more than 5 years of full time development to turn newly established teams into self functioning clubs with RL and community culture and engagement. You are right, running a Rugby League team does require an obsession. Recruiting volunteers with the required obsession is a tough ask in areas where RL culture is near non-existent. It takes a lot more time than was planned for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbfaz Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 2 minutes ago, Sports Prophet said: It takes a lot more than 5 years of full time development to turn newly established teams into self functioning clubs with RL and community culture and engagement. You are right, running a Rugby League team does require an obsession. Recruiting volunteers with the required obsession is a tough ask in areas where RL culture is near non-existent. It takes a lot more time than was planned for. Well, I think they made mistakes in the past. They handed out money like it was never going to run out. Clubs from the 90's in London are all dead because a lot of them got addicted to having money around. I think the game is more popular than people think. The real problem for me is being the Union off-season sport. If we played eight months a year - and we all have opinions on what eight - then we could be something more than that and really start to get somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sports Prophet Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 10 minutes ago, bbfaz said: Well, I think they made mistakes in the past. They handed out money like it was never going to run out. Clubs from the 90's in London are all dead because a lot of them got addicted to having money around. I can't speak with knowledge of what happened in the 90s, but I suspect the "allocation" of funds then was even less strategical than it was at the height of funding from 2006. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bowes Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 We need a proper league structure before we can have any meaningful development. At the moment we seem to be stuck in the RLC model of short season small leagues designed as filler for RU players. Realistically we should be looking to form a smaller number of larger leagues with clubs playing a full season. This to me means we need to create a league playing a full season including the best of the London Premier and East Premier and also clubs from neighbouring regions (Northampton would seem a good fit) and invest in getting say ten clubs playing at a reasonable amateur level for a full season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwis 13 6 Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 YES London should be targeted for development along with areas in the north of England that are not traditional centers of the game - Chester, Scarborough, Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Liverpool, Newcastle... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bowes Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 6 minutes ago, kiwis 13 6 said: YES London should be targeted for development along with areas in the north of England that are not traditional centers of the game - Chester, Scarborough, Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Liverpool, Newcastle... Yes there's no reason why these clubs can't be brought into the pre-existing amateur leagues structure. In fact Chester Gladiators, Manchester Rangers and Bury Broncos successfully have been (and earlier still Chorley Panthers, Blackpool Scorpions, Bamber Bridge, Leyland Warriors and most successfully Heysham Atoms). More needs to be be done east of the Pennines in particular as we have lost three Barnsley clubs and one Rotherham club in recent years Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwis 13 6 Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 As well as jr development & setting up community clubs always thought Super league games & some rep fixtures must be taken to towns & cities in the North of England that are not traditionally associated with professional clubs. London is a crucial development area for juniors & to stage big event to help profile of the sport in media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westlondonfan Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 If was in charge and controlled the purse strings I would concentrate a proportion of all resources in two areas outside the 'heartlands ', London and South Wales. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwis 13 6 Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 Was reading recently that 7,500 registered players across all forms of the game in Wales. that is way more than i expected! If you want Key development areas London, Wales & non traditional areas of the North of England would be the best bet for lifting profile of the sport & boosting playing numbers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bowes Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 Generally I think most development can be covered by either expanding out from the heartlands or in one of two serious leagues (based in London and surroundings and Wales/the West Country respectively). The main tricky areas to place are Coventry and Leicester which shouldn't be given up on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeordieSaint Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 On 03/03/2017 at 10:24 AM, DEANO said: Face facts. Hardly anybody wants the game outside the heartlands Can you please come and give the preseason brief to my club in Norfolk please? We've introduced a couple of hundred guys to the game in around 5-6yrs and have regularly taken a 100+ people to England internationals in London (incl other nationalities like Lithuanians, Slovaks, and Poles). There will around 30-40 guys there so they'll be pleased to hear they shouldn't both. Just let me know when you can make it and I'll ensure it happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oxford Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 Should London be targeted for development? Yes, next! 2 warning points Non-Political Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbfaz Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 7 hours ago, bowes said: We need a proper league structure before we can have any meaningful development. At the moment we seem to be stuck in the RLC model of short season small leagues designed as filler for RU players. Realistically we should be looking to form a smaller number of larger leagues with clubs playing a full season. This to me means we need to create a league playing a full season including the best of the London Premier and East Premier and also clubs from neighbouring regions (Northampton would seem a good fit) and invest in getting say ten clubs playing at a reasonable amateur level for a full season. I agree completely. I've no problem with an RLC style structure existing to start clubs off or to offer union offshoots something to do. However, we need a league which can compete with union. I don't mean playing the same season but the same length and the same number of league games. That means 22 league games plus playoffs and/or cup across 8 months . That would require 12 teams and their players bases to say "we want this more than union" and be able to survive. You can't develop adult players, juniors for that matter, to the required standard in four month seasons. However, we have a hostile foe. We relaunch our RL club and one of our previous union suitors is starting pre-season on 30th May. Luckily, we have very few, if any, players from that club so more fool them I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
damp squib Posted March 4, 2017 Share Posted March 4, 2017 20 hours ago, bbfaz said: The real problem for me is being the Union off-season sport. If we played eight months a year - and we all have opinions on what eight - then we could be something more than that and really start to get somewhere. I think this is the same problem as Ireland has. The clubs that started when RL was introduced were RU off-season clubs and 20 years later they still are. Except there are fewer of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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