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To poach some Welsh union players in the next couple weeks as rumours going around that Ospreys and Scarlets are set to merge. With the cap dispensation for players coming over from union could some teams in SL like Wigan and Leeds look at signing some players?

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I'm more concerned about the formation of the new North Wales team.

It's bad enough having the likes of the Daily Post, (the regional newspaper for North Wales) openly boycotting rugby league, without them drooling over this new team.

On the other hand, how ironic that the WRU appear to be choosing expansion at the expense of the heartlands.?

For all the latest news on North Wales Crusaders, please click on the link below to the new club website.

https://www.nwcrusaders.co.uk/

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I think Wales easily has the players for a number of semi professional clubs and certainly a Super League club. Whether the money is there or not to make it happen is the question.

Regardless I'd expect heartland Super League clubs to scout any talented Welsh talent, as they do now anyway, but it would be great if the game in Wales could take advantage.

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20 hours ago, NickWeaver said:

To poach some Welsh union players in the next couple weeks as rumours going around that Ospreys and Scarlets are set to merge. With the cap dispensation for players coming over from union could some teams in SL like Wigan and Leeds look at signing some players?

The days of the flair Welsh player at or near the top end of the game that could readily slot into league have all but gone, I'm sure some of them might be able to switch and do alright but I can't see anyone that is going to be 'out of a job' going to be much impact over and above other league players that might/are coming through.

Give players a trial if they are up for it, nothing ventured and all that, but there's the concern that they might take/be offered more money than their value and with development from grass roots a massive thing I'd be concerned that steady players from union will be taking vital monies from young kids delelopment not to mention how that effects their thinking. 

We've lost loads of kids at Hull under Lee Radford, still not a single player to debut under his tenure from the academy that has cemented a 1st XVII place, Matongo is the closest but is there because of long term injuries to Bowden and Green.  oth of which are better players IMHO and would be ahead of him every weekend tbh.

We have had far too often young kids have either not being given games, not developed and so left or simply not offered a new contract, or stayed, given crumbs, stagnated and wasted and when eventually contract runs out after been on a pittance are lucky to get a decent gig elsewhere because of said stagnation, all because they'd hoped to get a regular chance instead of filling for injuries.  Radford continually signs players from outside the clubs local player pool and even then as has been seen it's hardly been great so It must be so disheartening.

Same applies here signing players that are probably squad fillers for the most part, no disrespect to any players from the other code but if they aren't getting another union gig then they are likely to be canon fodder. 

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Offer Ospreys a place in SL if they switch and really put the cat amongst the pigeons.

A big established regional club would be interesting fit as opposed the start ups we have had before. If the WRU are going to effectively kick clubs out might not be as daft as it sounds

I dont think the anti league feeling exists as much in Wales these days so who knows. PR alone from offering a meeting would be worth it

  

 

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1 hour ago, Damien said:

I think Wales easily has the players for a number of semi professional clubs and certainly a Super League club. Whether the money is there or not to make it happen is the question.

Regardless I'd expect heartland Super League clubs to scout any talented Welsh talent, as they do now anyway, but it would be great if the game in Wales could take advantage.

It would be great to see the game in Wales take advantage.

What is being proposed is equivalent to Saints and Wigan being merged to allow a new Superleague team to be formed on the south coast. Not surprisingly, it's causing quite a stir among RU fans in Wales.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/47457719

And people think rugby league is full of daft ideas.

For all the latest news on North Wales Crusaders, please click on the link below to the new club website.

https://www.nwcrusaders.co.uk/

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Just now, fearnowt said:

It would be great to see the game in Wales take advantage.

What is being proposed is equivalent to Saints and Wigan being merged to allow a new Superleague team to be formed on the south coast. Not surprisingly, it's causing quite a stir among RU fans in Wales.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/47457719

And people think rugby league is full of daft ideas.

Combined with the World League proposal from last week, and Union are really trying to screw themselves over it seems.

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13 hours ago, headtackle said:

Offer Ospreys a place in SL if they switch and really put the cat amongst the pigeons.

A big established regional club would be interesting fit as opposed the start ups we have had before. If the WRU are going to effectively kick clubs out might not be as daft as it sounds

I dont think the anti league feeling exists as much in Wales these days so who knows. PR alone from offering a meeting would be worth it

  

 

Is the issue not that these are franchises rather than clubs and that they are exclusively owned by WRU, so its a different situation from say Wakefield Trinity being thrown out of Super League and the RFU offering them a place in their Premiership.

Nothing wrong with trying to cut a deal with Swansea City or whoever owns their stadium though.

 

 

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55 minutes ago, BladeHearts said:

Is the issue not that these are franchises rather than clubs and that they are exclusively owned by WRU, so its a different situation from say Wakefield Trinity being thrown out of Super League and the RFU offering them a place in their Premiership.

Nothing wrong with trying to cut a deal with Swansea City or whoever owns their stadium though.

 

 

The only place where these union owned franchises works is in Ireland where the defined provinces (Ulster, Leinster, Munster, and Connaught) have been long established way before union went professional.

The ones in wales were created as a level above the traditional leagues for the celtic league (now called Pro14)

I'm no expert but i think they've always struggled for crowds and so on but it seems crazy to merge Ospreys who are they most successful one out of the 4.

i'd imagine all the decent talent available will be quickly hoovered up by the english and french leagues.

I'd be interested to know exactly where this new North Wales club with be located.

england_identity2.jpg1921_button.jpg

 

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20 minutes ago, tuutaisrambo said:

I'd be interested to know exactly where this new North Wales club with be located.

Colwyn Bay has always been the front runner if memory serves me right. A town which cannot even support a football team playing in the English system judging by recent developments where Colwyn Bay FC are looking to join the Welsh football league system rather than continuing to play in the English Northern Premier League.

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On 3/6/2019 at 11:58 AM, Leyther_Matt said:

Colwyn Bay has always been the front runner if memory serves me right. A town which cannot even support a football team playing in the English system judging by recent developments where Colwyn Bay FC are looking to join the Welsh football league system rather than continuing to play in the English Northern Premier League.

The current team (semi-pro, I think, could be wrong) are RGC1404, who are based in Colwyn Bay. CB has also hosted junior Union internationals, Cru pre-season RL games among others. I'd say it's definitely favourite...  

cru....Cru.....CRUSADERS!!!!!!

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On 3/6/2019 at 10:33 AM, BladeHearts said:

Is the issue not that these are franchises rather than clubs and that they are exclusively owned by WRU, so its a different situation from say Wakefield Trinity being thrown out of Super League and the RFU offering them a place in their Premiership.

Nothing wrong with trying to cut a deal with Swansea City or whoever owns their stadium though.

Only the Dragons are owned by the WRU, and they were bought last year at below cost. The rest are all private.

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4 minutes ago, Celt said:

i know one of the Ospreys players and he is looking for a job right now.  He would be suited to RL too - very quick, good skills, and an excellent work ethic.  Not the biggest player, but very strong.  He is actively seeking pro opportunities via his agent.  In RL he would play as a centre I reckon. He would be affordable for Super League clubs.

 

Surely would they not just transplant the team? its more just the "entities" that merge isnt it? 

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34 minutes ago, Celt said:

i know one of the Ospreys players and he is looking for a job right now.  He would be suited to RL too - very quick, good skills, and an excellent work ethic.  Not the biggest player, but very strong.  He is actively seeking pro opportunities via his agent.  In RL he would play as a centre I reckon. He would be affordable for Super League clubs.

 

 

I'm fairly certain that any RU player agent will be aware of RL!

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A much better opportunity that became news today is that the England 7s team might be axed and replaced by a GB team instead. That will mean quite a lot of 7s players will be out of a job. They earn between £25-£90k so are in budget and hardly any of them, if at all, will get contracts in XVs.

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3 hours ago, Celt said:

This is an RL thread, and I really don't wish to populate it with union-guff.  But.... Glasgow Warriors are pretty successful, no??

Also - WTF is Connaught?

Connaught is the old spelling of Connacht according to Wiki. 

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North Wales seems very random for Union expansion. Not many people locally to draw on as Colwyn Bay, Llandudno, Conway all pretty small and not going to drag over many from Lancashire, Cheshire & Merseyside.

Can't think it would be worth sacrificing a South Wales region for

If anything was going to work would surely be league as North Wales populated by Scousers and Mancs and if that failed Union wont do much better

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14 hours ago, Celt said:

it looks like the 'merger' is off.  However when i last spoke to him, he was definitely being released.  They may now reopen negotiations with him i guess.

Not good though.. never nice to have such uncertainty in your like.. bad enough that you worry about injuries and performance without extras. Even if it were necessary for the clubs it’s never great for the people involved. Hope it ends up well for him

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12 hours ago, JCXV said:

A much better opportunity that became news today is that the England 7s team might be axed and replaced by a GB team instead. That will mean quite a lot of 7s players will be out of a job. They earn between £25-£90k so are in budget and hardly any of them, if at all, will get contracts in XVs.

I mentioned this earlier on a different thread. A lot play championship level or Nat 1 level ru though in the England set up. Wales and Scot seem to try to blood future 15s players. They’ve got good attributes though that could be interesting. 

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15 hours ago, Celt said:

This is an RL thread, and I really don't wish to populate it with union-guff.  But.... Glasgow Warriors are pretty successful, no??

Also - WTF is Connaught?

Glasgow Warriors are relatively successful but very much to the detriment of Scottish Rugby as a whole and even then they get crowds of 6k or so in an 8k stadium, in a catchment area of almost 3 million people.

The creation of the Warriors killed the ambition of a couple of semi-pro clubs in the city and the 6k going to watch them is drawn from people who previously would have been playing.

There was an excellent interview with Iain Milne in The Scotsman earlier this week in which he said that there are only 4500 max Adult Male rugby players in the whole of Scotland!!!

https://www.scotsman.com/sport/rugby-union/we-simply-don-t-have-enough-bad-players-scottish-rugby-s-participation-problem-1-4882284

To get things back on a RL slant, whilst I would love to see RL crack the Scottish market, the simple fact is that there is barely a market for RU and as in Australia it is completely dependent on Private Schools.

 

 

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11 hours ago, headtackle said:

North Wales seems very random for Union expansion. Not many people locally to draw on as Colwyn Bay, Llandudno, Conway all pretty small and not going to drag over many from Lancashire, Cheshire & Merseyside.

Can't think it would be worth sacrificing a South Wales region for

If anything was going to work would surely be league as North Wales populated by Scousers and Mancs and if that failed Union wont do much better

There's comfortably room here for two semi-pro clubs, one from each code, despite North Wales being very much a round ball area. A fully professional club is another matter altogether, as we have already seen.

For all the latest news on North Wales Crusaders, please click on the link below to the new club website.

https://www.nwcrusaders.co.uk/

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