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Conference league south


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Looking at the regional leagues this year, if cls had reappeared as proposed, with east & west divs it would have swallowed up the London, east, midlands & west leagues pretty much in total! With many teams out of their depth. Cls looks a pipe dream at moment. 

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Probably said it a dozen times but it seemed to me that they were trying to turn the London Premier into the Southern Conference East Division by stealth. Coventry and Hemel amateurs this year, Northampton next, perhaps Bedford if they're interested.

It's simultaneously thinking too big and not big enough.

 

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I can't see it.  You can't have a league where you tack four weeks on a summer season, add a 1500 miles extra travel and expect people to make it a priority.  Unless 12 teams (are willing to step up and play a 22 game double round-robin with playoffs across eight months (perhaps with a mid-season break for the school holidays), what's even the point?  You'd need 400 guys at least who'd commit solely to League and either not play Union or give it a cursory look to maintain fitness.  Plus you'd need landlords or grounds who'd accommodate it.

It's an idea whose time has passed.  It would've worked a few years ago when Bristol and St Albans and Chargers had some sort of appetite for it.  Now, it's yesterday's news.

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9 hours ago, bbfaz said:

I can't see it.  You can't have a league where you tack four weeks on a summer season, add a 1500 miles extra travel and expect people to make it a priority.  Unless 12 teams (are willing to step up and play a 22 game double round-robin with playoffs across eight months (perhaps with a mid-season break for the school holidays), what's even the point?  You'd need 400 guys at least who'd commit solely to League and either not play Union or give it a cursory look to maintain fitness.  Plus you'd need landlords or grounds who'd accommodate it.

It's an idea whose time has passed.  It would've worked a few years ago when Bristol and St Albans and Chargers had some sort of appetite for it.  Now, it's yesterday's news.

You could probably get away with 10 teams and 18 games, but I agree. Slightly overlapping the season with RU is the worst of all worlds and usually leads to a high walkover rate

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4 hours ago, bowes said:

You could probably get away with 10 teams and 18 games, but I agree. Slightly overlapping the season with RU is the worst of all worlds and usually leads to a high walkover rate

My aim would be to have a product that is competitive with amateur union, so we'd need a comparable number of games. While top amateur union leagues are playing 26 or 30 games, the lower-end regional leagues are generally 12 teams. Playing through the summer, with its associated issues, we'd need playoffs, probably replacing a cup.

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I'd dare say its the travelling that puts most people off.  When we used to do games in the London League years ago it could be a 2 hour plus car journey (one way) to get to a game that was only nominally 60 miles away as the crow flies.  Add another hour to go south of the river.

No idea if Bedford would go for it in the future, but that amount of travel/time is the real killer.  

With the best, thats a good bit of PR, though I would say the Bedford team, theres, like, you know, 13 blokes who can get together at the weekend to have a game together, which doesnt point to expansion of the game. Point, yeah go on!

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At this point, the RFL needs to support and stop empire-building.  They're making things worse, interfering and causing knock-on effects.  If they can't sit on their hands, focus on developing a greater number of clubs.  You can't have cross-regional super leagues if there isn't a network of smaller clubs below that.  They're forcing "local" clubs beyond their means.

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