Wolfpack fans' impressions of RL

[West Leeds Riviera]

I'm guessing most Toronto fans are new to rugby league, I don't know how many are on here but after 6-7 months what do you think of RL?

Do you watch Super League, NRL, USARL?

Looking forward to World Cup (2017 and 2025)?

Started playing league?

 

 

 

[Wirefan1968]

While your guess may be true of most of the followers of the Toronto Wolfpack, I am a supporter of my hometown club, Warrington Wolves and have been since the age of 6. Also, having worked in Ulverston, Cumbria for a number of years, I also follow Barrow Raiders. I have been to the previous 4 World Cup finals, I holiday in Toulouse to take in Warrington's away match against Catalans Dragons. I am a supporter of Rugby League full stop, I hate the round ball game with a passion and am all for the expansion of our beautiful game. However, I didn't realise that I had to explain my credentials on here. Who made you the rugby league police? I think it's important that other people from different countries enjoy our great sport. Not all of us wear a flat cap and walk around with a Kestrel on our arms any more. Time has moved on.

[deluded pom?]

1 hour ago, Wirefan1968 said:

While your guess may be true of most of the followers of the Toronto Wolfpack, I am a supporter of my hometown club, Warrington Wolves and have been since the age of 6. Also, having worked in Ulverston, Cumbria for a number of years, I also follow Barrow Raiders. I have been to the previous 4 World Cup finals, I holiday in Toulouse to take in Warrington's away match against Catalans Dragons. I am a supporter of Rugby League full stop, I hate the round ball game with a passion and am all for the expansion of our beautiful game. However, I didn't realise that I had to explain my credentials on here. Who made you the rugby league police? I think it's important that other people from different countries enjoy our great sport. Not all of us wear a flat cap and walk around with a Kestrel on our arms any more. Time has moved on.

No-one made him the rugby league police, he just asked a few questions. 

[West Leeds Riviera]

1 hour ago, Wirefan1968 said:

While your guess may be true of most of the followers of the Toronto Wolfpack, I am a supporter of my hometown club, Warrington Wolves and have been since the age of 6. Also, having worked in Ulverston, Cumbria for a number of years, I also follow Barrow Raiders. I have been to the previous 4 World Cup finals, I holiday in Toulouse to take in Warrington's away match against Catalans Dragons. I am a supporter of Rugby League full stop, I hate the round ball game with a passion and am all for the expansion of our beautiful game. However, I didn't realise that I had to explain my credentials on here. Who made you the rugby league police? I think it's important that other people from different countries enjoy our great sport. Not all of us wear a flat cap and walk around with a Kestrel on our arms any more. Time has moved on.

No trying to be the rugby league police I was just wondering what a new audience think of RL. It's good and refreshing to hear different views and opinions on things

[RayCee]

The problem of getting feedback here is twofold. 1) Few come down this end of the forum. 2) I have noticed most Wolfpack fans that come to this site are expats from the North of England. There are plenty of Canadian Wolfpack fans that don't even know this forum exists. 

From what I have seen of the games, they love it. The secret is keeping them coming and gradually in greater numbers. Promotion to a higher level will raise the profile. More people playing it, especially if it ever gets into some schools, would be immense. I think Canadians get RL, in a funny way it has a similar culture to ice hockey.

 

[Captain Survival]

I regretfully have been absent from the forum for a couple of weeks due to pressing work and personal matters.  But its Sunday evening on a long weekend leaving me some actual free time so I thought I would chip in.  And I note for the recordd that I am a born and bred Canuck from the Ottawa area.

 

On 2017-08-05 at 0:28 PM, West Leeds Riviera said:

I'm guessing most Toronto fans are new to rugby league, I don't know how many are on here but after 6-7 months what do you think of RL?

Do you watch Super League, NRL, USARL?

Looking forward to World Cup (2017 and 2025)?

Started playing league?

 

 

 

Thank you for making your way down to the L1 forums WLR!  Actually a lot of Canadians are not "new" to rugby, many of us like I played in high school - but the sports profile overall has been relatively low in Canada because we play a lot of different sports here, and rugby lacked a professional outlet in Canada up to the TWP.  Of course without the professional outlet its not hard to guess that only diehards - mostly UK/Aus/NZ transplants plus those playing in the union rules leagues in Ontario and BC follow regularly.

 

23 hours ago, RayCee said:

The problem of getting feedback here is twofold. 1) Few come down this end of the forum. 2) I have noticed most Wolfpack fans that come to this site are expats from the North of England. There are plenty of Canadian Wolfpack fans that don't even know this forum exists. 

From what I have seen of the games, they love it. The secret is keeping them coming and gradually in greater numbers. Promotion to a higher level will raise the profile. More people playing it, especially if it ever gets into some schools, would be immense. I think Canadians get RL, in a funny way it has a similar culture to ice hockey.

 

Hi Ray, we have already spoken on the forum before and you are generally spot on in your current and past observations.

I absolutely agree that most Canadians are not hitting this forum and its unknown to them unless they decided to hit google.  I also think that given this forum's overall lack of activity (by our standards) were they to find it many would not bother registering.   Many of the attitudes displayed on TRL would also be viewed as very "native/parochial" and most Torontonians would write it off and not bother.

West Leeds - TWP are getting regular press coverage now, and the L1 results are even being published weekly in the 2 largest daily newspapers.  

@Ray  the TWP owner was absolutely correct when he said that RL Rugby was the most Canadian game Canadians had never seen/played.  Both of our national sports (we have 2 rather then the usual one) being hockey and lacrosse are very rough physical sports.  Really Canadian Football (not soccer) is the 3rd national sport since virtually every highschool in the country has a team as do all the universities and there are hundreds of junior to senior leauges.  BTW, most universities in Canada have a rugby team as well.

Canadians by and large thrive on physcial sports (although not my daughter!) and most would speculate it has something to do with the environment here (big, large, rugged if you get outside the major cities).

West Leeds, one thing I will tell you is that everytime I read a post on this forum about how it is necessary to develop juniors, and it will be a generation before we produce any native players, I want to spew.  The skill sets in RL rugby are so similar to our current sports, and speaking as one who has played them all (I played football, hockey, lacrosse all through my childhood and teens, and 2 yrs rugby) the transition to rugby for many athletes here would not be significant.

I have spoken on the forums before about this - most Canadians are multsport through their developing years.  Its not like the euro thing where you attend an academy and are almost exclusive to one sport.  For example many of our NHL hockey players also played lacrosse right through to being drafted to the NHL. If the high school one attended had both football and rugby one played both.  Its just completely different here vs what you see in the UK and mainland europe. 

BTW, sports channel subscribers here can watch SL and NRL games, but I could not tell you how many are following as there are no published stats of which I am aware.

[RayCee]

2 hours ago, Captain Survival said:

I have spoken on the forums before about this - most Canadians are multsport through their developing years.  Its not like the euro thing where you attend an academy and are almost exclusive to one sport.  For example many of our NHL hockey players also played lacrosse right through to being drafted to the NHL. If the high school one attended had both football and rugby one played both.  Its just completely different here vs what you see in the UK and mainland europe. 

I have to say NZ has similarities there. The school I went to offered RU, soccer, cricket, basketball and rowing, yet at the lunch time break we all played RL. If the fields were closed due to weather, we'd play soccer on hard surface courts. By playing different sports, you gain skills from one that can assist when you play something else. 

[John WP Fan]

I played rugby in high school many years ago; that was union, and I did not know anything about league until a visit down under 3 years ago. I have always liked rugby for its continuous action (compared to North American gridiron football). I loved the 7s at the Pan Am games hosted here in Toronto 2 summers ago. I bought season tickets for the WP early on, and have greatly enjoyed all the games so far. As I have watched the games and learned more about the differences between league and union, I find I like league better, as it's more free-flowing, and the scrums and rucks in union are not as entertaining (the line outs are cool though). I just subscribed to Sportsnet World to get access to the Super League and NRL games and have watched a few. The level of skill is clearly better than what I've seen so far in League 1: more imaginative running and passing, and more use of kicking as an offensive weapon. I love the game, and it may be catching up to hockey as my favourite (and note, it's always "hockey", not "ice hockey"; there is no other form of hockey...). I have not seen anything of USARL (apart from the visit to Lamport by the White Plains Wombats). I am looking forward to the World Cups, and I hope Toronto gets to host some games in 2025. I will not be playing myself!

But on the forums and in the Wolfpack fans Facebook group I am struck by the huge cultural differences around how sport is organized and run between Canada and the UK. It's difficult for me to understand how a sport can survive with so many teams so incredibly close together, each with a relatively small supporter base with such fierce loyalties. Over here teams get huge exclusive geographical territory, and only the hugest cities get multiple professional teams in a sport. 

[John WP Fan]

Also it is taking me a while to get used to team jerseys where the team logo is smaller than every sponsor's patch! I know sponsorship on the jerseys is necessary (though coming from NHL & MLB I'm not used to it, though I have seen it with Toronto FC), but it's difficult for me to understand why the brand of the team has to be so hidden. As I'm starting to watch SL and NRL games, it can be difficult to figure out what each team's logo even looks like.

The WP jerseys aren't nearly as bad as most, and I don't mind the large Air Transat logo. They are such an appropriate sponsor in how they support the transportation of all the teams back & forth across the Atlantic that their dominance of the jersey is more acceptable to me. But I still think the gorgeous WP logo needs to be a lot larger than it is.

 

[RayCee]

5 hours ago, John WP Fan said:

 I love the game, and it may be catching up to hockey as my favourite (and note, it's always "hockey", not "ice hockey"; there is no other form of hockey...).

Oh I forgot to mention our school offered hockey too!  The one played on grass ;-)

Nice to know your appreciation is growing with exposure to RL. Indeed the top pro games are at another level. 

[RogerT]

Hello there John WP fan,

There are rules or regulations about the size of club badge(branding) that is allowed by the RFL, the same applies to sponsors branding.

The original reason for so many teams so close to one another was due to the industries at the time in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumberland(Cumbria), they where either mills, factories or pits(coal mines), they lived, worked together and usually went out together to the pubs and social clubs.

Yes expansion and contraction as happened and at the inception of Super League there was a move to try and amalgamate teams which was fiercely contested, as you will have noticed there is a few expansion teams in League 1.

I am so glad you are enjoying the RL experience.

Cheers Roger(Batley Bulldogs fan). 

[TheReaper]

I've played rugby (union) for 8 years now, since grade 10. Played a bit of soccer before that but pretty much dropped it by high school. I also played football in gr. 10 but I had to pick one sport after that (parents) and hated wearing a helmet so I stuck with rugby. High school, bit of college, and local club.

In 2014 I did a bit of training with Brantford Broncos, thinking I'd give RL a try, as a way to get to play more rugby in a year, and it was earlier in the year so it would help with preseason fitness. Ended up playing in two games, but for the other teams as they were short players. To be honest, I didn't like playing it that much. I'm a union forward, so I really enjoy rucks, scrums and lineouts. And really don't enjoy 10m sprints...

So as a spectator, I still tend to prefer RU, since I tend to see what's "missing" from RL. It's still great to watch compared to basketball, soccer and baseball. I like the constant play, hard hits, great runs and passes. My sports watching habits nowadays tend to be CFL (mostly live) > RU > RL, with a fair amount of dropoff between each one. In fact I had stopped watching any RL until TWP came around, and now watch some of their games. So I guess you could say that's at least one more set of eyes that are watching RL due to TWP.

I still haven't made it out to a game yet, since I'm playing on Saturdays. But maybe in September once my season is over.

[RobertAM]

I've been a rugby fan since childhood and before moving to Canada played RU consistently at school but fully agree that there is so much indigenous sport in Cdn schools that rugby gets lost. The advent of the WP and their success will change  I am convinced that but it will be a slow process and adding new teams in somewhere like Montreal will help especially if they are successful in bringing French Canadians onside (and French teams in the league will be a critical element) as they will love the speed and physical play.

As far as forums like this are concerned then promotion of the forum at games would help - how about hoarding and fan T shirts?

[deluded pom?]

7 hours ago, RobertAM said:

As far as forums like this are concerned then promotion of the forum at games would help - how about hoarding and fan T shirts?

Over to you Mr Drake.