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Widnes problems


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20 minutes ago, Bomb Jack said:

I was born in, and live in Runcorn. I started to watch Widnes as a child, who went with his Dad and Uncles/Cousins. The ground is approx. a 6 minute drive from where I live.

There used to be around 10-15 of us who went, now there are just 2 left.

If someone buys Widnes, and moves it lock, stock, and barrel to Liverpool, there's no way I'd continue supporting them, and I'd guess 95% of Widnes fans will say the same.

Im a Liverpool FC fan but wouldn’t have any interest in a Liverpool Rugby club. 

I live in Warrington. I’d probably get a season ticket for the away end, next best thing ??

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1 hour ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:

Can the RFL not create a league under League 1 for new clubs, with no funding given unless the achieve promotion to the next league? This is where clubs will be able to start if they are serious about investment, and the current pro clubs who are just surviving will have to drop to and cut their cloth accordingly?

Actually what the RLF should do is ensure that all Australian players should be made to play with lead weights round their feet and all their nr7s be given pre frontal labotomies.

British rugby league will not win a series against them until either that happens or the game grows up and reforms itself.

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1 hour ago, Wellsy4HullFC said:

For me, there needs to be a point where you either get funding or you don't (obviously the RFL only have a finite amount of money). I don't like how some new clubs are expected to have no funding continuously because other clubs were there first. That's not progressive.

If I club with no central funding finishes above one wth central funding, well we know where the better investment would be.

dont disagree but i just dont see where there are enough of these sorts of teams to form another league... you could easily say that you qualify for funding as soon as you finish above 6th (for example) rather than, as you mentioned, promotion from the league below.. or something like that.. i agree its not ideal but we need to work with what we have to a certain extent.

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1 hour ago, Bomb Jack said:

I was born in, and live in Runcorn. I started to watch Widnes as a child, who went with his Dad and Uncles/Cousins. The ground is approx. a 6 minute drive from where I live.

There used to be around 10-15 of us who went, now there are just 2 left.

If someone buys Widnes, and moves it lock, stock, and barrel to Liverpool, there's no way I'd continue supporting them, and I'd guess 95% of Widnes fans will say the same.

the point is though in the "pick it up and drop it somewhere new" argument is that even 100% of the Widnes fans is not enough to make the club work at the moment, so you need to go somewhere else with the hope/knowledge that you get more from the new area.. 

95% of fans say I wont support Liverpool but not 100% of them will walk away from the game.. and if we lose 3,000 but gain 30,000 (exaggerated numbers) then actually thats fine.

Personally I think this is wrong as you should be allowed just to start the other club and have access at which point you still gain the new clubs fans without necessarily losing the old clubs... but this is what the RFL are wanting people to do!

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4 hours ago, The Parksider said:

What I think is misleading on here is where a club get's a rich owner and is then hailed "The future of RL" the obvious topical example being Liverpool. A couple of £Millionaires roll up invent a club and suddenly they are the saviours of  superleague when in reality Liverpool is devoid of any real interest in playing or watching the game, whilst clubs like Widnes are declared "basket cases" despite a long history of people there supporting the club and playing the game often to International level.

   Dr Koukash has tweeted - 

Quote

NO intention of taking over a championship club and relocating it to Liverpool .

  It begs the question of what level Liverpool will be starting off - should they get going along the M62 corridor.

  Mr Argyle is also associated with Widnes at the last two paragraphs of this press report 

  https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nrl-premiership/teams/exclusive-rugby-league-clubs-bold-play-to-bring-sonny-bill-williams-back-from-union/news-story/92a231127d12181ac86d1166d3f79bde

   Expansionists come to aid of heartland club after yet another rich benefactor leaves...

   Good job for expansionists,Parky?  What say you? 

     No reserves,but resilience,persistence and determination are omnipotent.                       

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Blimey. Reading this news makes me feel sick and bringing back a lot of awful feelings I've felt too many times, so I really feel for all the Widnes fans - a club who were so kind to the Bulls during their original troubles. I hope that if needed, the favour can be repaid. 

SQL Honours

Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009

CHAMPION - 2005, 2009, 2010

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This is tragic. I grew up on Saints v Widnes derbies in the 1980s, when Davies, Offiah and Tait used to regularly beat us. The rivalry was intense, but never as hostile as the Pies. That obviously died away as their fortunes declined, but I;'ve always had a soft spot for Widnes. They had a decent stadium, they had the crowds within living memory to be able to compete as a mid-table club. Yet they didn't seem able to pull those crowds back into that decent stadium. And what used to be a superb junior talent production programme seemed to stop producing talent in the right amount.

This is, in my view, the inevitable consequence of having P&R between a fully-pro competition kept fully-pro by TV money, and a semi-pro competition without the TV money to sustain full-time professionalism. When people bang on about P&R, they always focus on the 'P' - the dreams, the right of the up and comers to pursue that dream based on their performance in the semi-pro comp. Yet there's never as much focus on the 'R', and the consequences for any organisation of a huge overnight loss in its income and profile. Leigh have come very close to shutting their doors too. That's the last two relegated clubs hitting serious problems, neither of them minnows, but medium-sized clubs with decent support and grounds.

We don't have enough money in the game to be able to sustain automatic P&R based solely on on-field performances. The chances of catastrophe off the field for relegated clubs is too high. The chances of uncompetitive pointlessness on the field for promoted clubs is too high.

We need to adopt a system which allows for proper planning for both advancement and retraction. We're not big enough to do otherwise. I know that tradition expects P&R, but we're going to cling to that tradition all the way to extinction if we're not careful. This is tragic for Widnes, but it has to, surely, be a wake-up call for our game to understand that we can no longer afford to let an attachment to tradition kill our clubs.

 

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1 minute ago, Roy Haggerty said:


We don't have enough money in the game to be able to sustain automatic P&R based solely on on-field performances. The chances of catastrophe off the field for relegated clubs is too high. The chances of uncompetitive pointlessness on the field for promoted clubs is too high.

 

Is it really relegation that has CAUSED these issues, or clubs that were managed in ways that were at best a massive gamble and at worst total incompetence? It seems very harsh to punish clubs that may have ambitions to be promoted because of the disastrous management that has taken place at some (not all!) of the relegated clubs.

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1 hour ago, Spidey said:

Im a Liverpool FC fan but wouldn’t have any interest in a Liverpool Rugby club. 

I live in Warrington. I’d probably get a season ticket for the away end, next best thing ??

Unfortunately, looks like this afternoon's news confirms the worst fears...

Even though there is/was a rivalry I'm sure Warrington fans will warmly welcome you to the HJ.   You can just mentally re-brand things as 'Cheshire' whenever you see the Warrington logo.   Or hypnosis, whichever works for you. 

You could even sit with all those new RU fans we seem to be tapping up, and claim the old Widnes jersey as a Barbarians one? ?

One less derby-day on the cards, RIP ?

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On ‎2‎/‎20‎/‎2019 at 12:47 PM, scotchy1 said:

Hull KR

Salford

Castleford

huddersfield

Hull, Wigan and Wakefield havent been relegated in the professional era and London were relegated and now play in a park in front of hundreds and are kept alive solely on David Hughes kindness.

As opposed to playing in a large stadium in front of hundreds you mean.  Hull and Wakefield were both excluded from the original SL  and promoted, same applies to Widnes.

“Few thought him even a starter.There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM. An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.”

Clement Attlee.

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22 hours ago, RP London said:

Its also probably worth mentioning that RU clubs often struggled to do this too. Football clubs used to massively struggle from prem to football league and from league 2 to the conference.. this has changed a bit due to the larger parachute payments and size of finishing position payments in the premier league and at the other end the closing of the gap between the conference and the football league (its not longer as semi pro). 

Exeter Chiefs were promoted to Union's top flight in 2010 and are now fairly dominant.  They are not one of the "traditional" top drawer clubs like Bath, Leicester, Wasps etc.

“Few thought him even a starter.There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM. An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.”

Clement Attlee.

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4 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

My argument wasnt that no club could survive promotion (though both Hull and Wakefield went bust after promotion, so not really a great help to your cause) But that clubs struggled to survive relegation.

And not as opposed to anything. London survived by cutting off field costs dramatically, to the point where their infrastructure isnt sustainable for an SL club, and still relying on the largess of David Hughes.

Hull and Wakey are still in SL whatever their finances.   Wakey had quite a good season last year.  Name one SL club that is thriving with the exception of the "usual" suspects:  Saints, Hull, Wigan Wire, Leeds.

“Few thought him even a starter.There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM. An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.”

Clement Attlee.

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Love how the usual suspects immediately start blaming P&R.

I guess it's nothing to with spending more than you're getting. 

Why retain or recruit high paid players in a season where they had little chance of bouncing straight back up?

Why weren't the bulk of the contracts cancelled at relegation?

The main issue seems to be none payment of stadium rent, this has not occurred solely since relegation. 

Once again fans are let down by rank bad management.

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Halifax showed how it should be done last season, recruiting local players. Fev  gambled on big names and it blew up in their face.

“Few thought him even a starter.There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM. An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.”

Clement Attlee.

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1 minute ago, Trojan said:

Halifax showed how it should be done last season, recruiting local players. Fev  gambled on big names and it blew up in their face.

I wouldn't say it blew up in Fev's face. We finished one point behind Halifax last year and have adjusted the wage budget accordingly this year. I agree recruiting local players is the best in an ideal world but I doubt any team would win anything with players only from their town.

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1 minute ago, scotchy1 said:

Well, yes. Wakefield and Hull do seem to be in a far better position being SL clubs rather than ones dealing with the near impossibility of switching between the leagues through promotion and relegation.

Those who opposed P&R on this forum are invariably those who follow teams not confronted with their team perpetually being in the lower tiers.  They claim to care about the game.  Easy in such circumstances.

IMO apart from the clubs named, SL is knackered.  The whole game needs to take a good look at itself. 

“Few thought him even a starter.There were many who thought themselves smarter. But he ended PM, CH and OM. An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.”

Clement Attlee.

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