Smith favours return to Super League licences

[Total Rugby League]

Tony Smith has reiterated his belief that Rugby League should return to some form of franchise or licensing system to determine which clubs should be...

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[Gooleboy]

2 hours ago, Total Rugby League said:

Tony Smith has reiterated his belief that Rugby League should return to some form of franchise or licensing system to determine which clubs should be...

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Well there's a surprise. Does this man never give up?

[Les Tonks Sidestep]

As long as one of the criteria is no more than one club in each postcode area.....

[Gooleboy]

38 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Smith has been involved in pretty much every level of the game. His opinion should be listened to

His Club involvement will always look to give his opinion a biased take. 

[Harry Stottle]

44 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Smith has been involved in pretty much every level of the game. His opinion should be listened to

I have listened to his opinion and rejected it, he said following his Chairman's published comments the other week that SL chairs who invest should be protected, no mention at all about any other chairmen who spend their well earned, I have not read his linked comments here, but I shouldn't imagine he has changed his tune. 

Could it be he is only after protecting his own job, and his comments are self-motivated?

[Tommygilf]

1 minute ago, Harry Stottle said:

I have listened to his opinion and rejected it, he said following his Chairman's published comments the other week that SL chairs who invest should be protected, no mention at all about any other chairmen who spend their well earned, I have not read his linked comments here, but I shouldn't imagine he has changed his tune. 

Could it be he is only after protecting his own job, and his comments are self-motivated?

Nah tbf Harry he's been consistent in this from when he was winning trophies at Leeds and Warrington. Not sure how he viewed things whilst he was in charge of Huddersfield.

His basic point, that youth player development is better serviced without the risk of relegation to a semi pro league is a fair one that's hard to argue with. There are two solutions to that as I can see; 1 licensing, which I'm not in favour of based on the poor way it was conducted last time, or 2, expanding the number of teams in Super league to put more space between the mid table and relegation.

[Gooleboy]

18 minutes ago, Hela Wigmen said:

Isn’t that your view on everything Super League though? 

Not at all, I watch all levels of RL including going to some SL games, attend Wembley every year and some, but not all GFs as Saturday night isn't always suitable. It is only my opinion, but that is some of the SL hierarchy don't seem to care about the game as a whole, again only my opinion.

[Hela Wigmen]

8 minutes ago, Gooleboy said:

Not at all, I watch all levels of RL including going to some SL games, attend Wembley every year and some, but not all GFs as Saturday night isn't always suitable. It is only my opinion, but that is some of the SL hierarchy don't seem to care about the game as a whole, again only my opinion.

Does the Championship, then?

[Big Picture]

6 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

The game right now has an opportunity to refocus and it should have one focus grow super league. Grow it in visibility, in attendances/viewership, grow it in stature and grow it in the number of clubs, we should be ambitious and there is nothing wrong with us having lots of clubs. Its a good thing.

Aim to grow by 2 every three years and get bigger and bigger and bigger.

As long as the game's top pro clubs are in smallish economically disadvantaged northern towns, none of that is possible.  That fact by itself severely limits both the game's stature and its ability to bring in the extra money which would be needed to raise the salary cap and/or expand the number of clubs at the top, so that has to change first .

[Big Picture]

15 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

That is nonsense that completely misunderstands the geography of England

It's not nonsense at all.  The game's top pro clubs being in smallish economically disadvantaged northern towns is precisely why there's so little money in the game, as former St Helens Chief Executive Sean McGuire explained in his two interviews with Tony Collins.

[M j M]

23 minutes ago, Big Picture said:

It's not nonsense at all.  The game's top pro clubs being in smallish economically disadvantaged northern towns is precisely why there's so little money in the game, as former St Helens Chief Executive Sean McGuire explained in his two interviews with Tony Collins.

It's a feature not a bug. Rugby League is based in those northern towns. People trying to genetically engineer the sport to appear overnight in places where other sporting cultures are strong will cause damage, not harm. At least a decade, probably significantly longer, is needed between establishing a club, letting it grow roots and then becoming a viable top table team.

[Big Picture]

6 minutes ago, M j M said:

It's a feature not a bug. Rugby League is based in those northern towns. People trying to genetically engineer the sport to appear overnight in places where other sporting cultures are strong will cause damage, not harm. At least a decade, probably significantly longer, is needed between establishing a club, letting it grow roots and then becoming a viable top table team.

At least a decade eh?  Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC and now Toronto Wolfpack all say otherwise.

5 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

The games top clubs are all in major population centres.

Have you ever actually been to any of these places?

Wigan, St Helens and Warrington are major population centres?  ROFLMAO!

[paulwalker71]

3 minutes ago, Big Picture said:

At least a decade eh?  Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC and now Toronto Wolfpack all say otherwise.

Wigan, St Helens and Warrington are major population centres?  ROFLMAO!

What about the metropolis of Castleford .... oh wait

[HKR AWAY DAYS]

8 hours ago, Harry Stottle said:

I have listened to his opinion and rejected it, he said following his Chairman's published comments the other week that SL chairs who invest should be protected, no mention at all about any other chairmen who spend their well earned, I have not read his linked comments here, but I shouldn't imagine he has changed his tune. 

Could it be he is only after protecting his own job, and his comments are self-motivated?

If he is he is going the wrong way about it

Only winning saves your job. 

He is just offering his opinion on a particular subject, I think. 

[paulwalker71]

11 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

There are about 3m people within about 30mins drive of castleford 

It's not really the point though is it?

I live within a 30 minute drive myself, but I have absolutely zero interest in supporting a team that has been historically rooted in Castleford. I mean the clue is in the name, it's not West Yorkshire Tigers, it's Castleford Tigers

[Mister Ting]

10 hours ago, Harry Stottle said:

I have listened to his opinion and rejected it, he said following his Chairman's published comments the other week that SL chairs who invest should be protected, no mention at all about any other chairmen who spend their well earned, I have not read his linked comments here, but I shouldn't imagine he has changed his tune. 

Could it be he is only after protecting his own job, and his comments are self-motivated?

Could be he's an Aussie who's used to no relegation and can see the possible long term benefits, unlike some of a certain age who seem obsessed with a recent past.

[ojx]

1 hour ago, scotchy1 said:

There are about 3m people within about 30mins drive of castleford 

So how come so few of them want to go there?

[Harry Stottle]

20 hours ago, Hela Wigmen said:

Just like everyone at every level from the game then but as he’s from Super League, he’s a murdering, pillaging scumbag, am I right?

No not what soever but his sentiments are flawed, he promotes good buisness practises which has to be applauded, but anyone in buisness will tell you that the opportunity to improve has to be a goal to achieve.

Considering your age Hela (which you eluded to in another thread quite recently) and the team you support, your goodself and others who are of the same ilk are the one's who seem to be more vociferous in re-establishing a closed shop environment for SL, being one's who have experienced only being in the top reaches of Professional Rugby League in the UK throughout your life and not having experienced anything else. 

I have played, worked in and supported this game for a very long time and like a lot of other people my sentiments hope and expectations are primarily with one club, if you and a lot of others tell me you would 'sacrifice' your club for the 'good of the game' I would strongly question your ability to tell the truth!

I honestly don't care what they do in Australia (good connection with Mr Smith) North America or wherever else in sport, I will hold on to the British way and historical value of Promotion and Relegation rewarding and jeopardizing teams in a divisional ladder system for on field performance.

On a personal point and what I was suggesting in the second paragraph being outside the top domain with a pathway of improvement closed off again as it was in the licensing period, I would turn my back on the professional side of the sport, I have enquired the opinion of other fan's from Championship club's both personally and on these pages how would they receive a return to being shut out, and the majority expressed the same feelings and attitude as my own, that they would protest with their absence.

So back to Mr Smith and his good buisness practises, yes they can be initialized but without the finances that the club can generate from its own support base it just isn't going to happen, look back at the attendances of the Championship clubs with ambition through the licensing period when effectively they had nothing to aim for and compare them to how they have improved in a P&R format with a prize to aim for at the end of the season, and not just a trophy to look at. Consider the men who put money into those clubs because there is something to aspire to, take it away again and those investors will vanish because of what they have done and achieved in life they want to be winners, they can only travel so far down a one way street.

I wouldn't expect you or others who have never been there to understand what you have never experienced, it can't be seen, it is tactile it's a touchy feely thing, a return to a closed shop will harm the sport much more than what will be gained from it.

Rant over.

[Harry Stottle]

14 hours ago, M j M said:

It's a feature not a bug. Rugby League is based in those northern towns. People trying to genetically engineer the sport to appear overnight in places where other sporting cultures are strong will cause damage, not harm. At least a decade, probably significantly longer, is needed between establishing a club, letting it grow roots and then becoming a viable top table team.

Toronto, Ottawa and New York?

[Harry Stottle]

9 hours ago, scotchy1 said:

Because it's a small club that doesnt really advertise, playing in a relatively small competition, the stadiums a mess and there are better options for a lot of those people 

Castleford, the best supported team per capita than most sports clubs can probably lay claim to, how many more do Leeds attract from their 12x as many populas, on your theory and explanation your club should be averaging 60,000+ per game, even allowing for not advertising, a mess of a stadium and other options I would suggest they are doing far better than most.

I am not a marketing man by no means, but if the aim of marketing is to entice and convert as many of the possible customers available to buy into attending the club Castleford are achieving much more for their outlay than Leeds Rhino's.

[Harry Stottle]

1 minute ago, scotchy1 said:

You have missed the point completely Harry. 

Ill repeat, Castleford have 3m people within a 30minute drive of them. 

Yes I understand that - and a large proportion of that number is from Leeds - like Paul Walker said he is within that radius but would have no desire to be a fan of them, likewise with a fairwind and traffic conditions I can be at Wigan, Saints, Warrinton or Salford in 15 mins but none are the team of my preference to support.

But, you did move on to why Cas has "so few who want to go there" I think they do a bloody good job under the circumstances.

[Harry Stottle]

8 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

Castleford's support base isnt limited to the small town they are in. Cas fans would be the first to tell you that. As such your fan per capita is meaningless. 

RL has a big problem in growth because it largely does nothing to expand its support base. It could. Plenty of people travel from further than Cas to go to Elland Road for instance.

There are plenty of people for Cas to target and for them to attract. There are millions who are within an easy drive. Xscape in Castleford gets millions of visitors per year for instance

Back again to a football comparrison, to me it is an enigma I can't understand what the attraction is, I couldn't be payed to go to waych football but each to their own as there are many in my town who prefer to spend in attending that sport which prompted a question in my mind, I wonder how West Yorkshire Rugby League attendances would go if on their doorstep as in the west of the pennines M62 corridor they had clubs of the standing of Manchester United and City, Liverpool and Everton instead of 2nd and 3rd tier football clubs in their midst.

[Trojan]

23 hours ago, Harry Stottle said:

I have listened to his opinion and rejected it, he said following his Chairman's published comments the other week that SL chairs who invest should be protected, no mention at all about any other chairmen who spend their well earned, I have not read his linked comments here, but I shouldn't imagine he has changed his tune. 

Could it be he is only after protecting his own job, and his comments are self-motivated?

I lost a lot of respect for Tony Smith when he slagged Fev off after Warrington had to play a middle eight game there a couple of years back.   The "top clubs" don't give a hoot for the rest.  The top four in the  championship had battled all season for crack at the SL playoff and were entitled to better than that from one of their  opposition coaches.   For me the middle eight format was working.  The championship clubs were getting better at it and it was pressurising the lower SL clubs to get their act together.  But they retreated to their comfort zone, and now want to retreat even further.  The clubs in the league depend on one another.  Without the other clubs, eventually individual supporters wouldn't have anything to watch.  A return licencing would probably finish half the championship fairly quickly after the current hiatus.   What happens then?   And what happens when the fans at the lower end of the SL decide that watching a perpetual also ran is not for them and stop coming?  Where will it end?   Leeds, Wigan, Saints, Hull are the money teams.  Perhaps in ten years after RL is fully attenuated, they'll be able to disappear up the backside of the RFU.

[Cerulean]

34 minutes ago, scotchy1 said:

....

The above writer believes that the game will prosper, expand, develop if, and only if, Leeds can be given a sufficiently exciting and enticing fixture list, a list of large cities spread across the country and Europe and the Northern Hemisphere. Sweeping away the remnants of the sport’s history, the small-town scruffy clubs in deprived areas with impoverished residents, will be essential in order to enhance the new product.

He is wrong on many accounts, but here’s three:

One: neither he nor anyone else can, in any way, describe a pathway towards this vision, can find even the beginnings of a route, the suggestion of a direction, or have any idea of where to start this crusade.

Two: a simple examination of the sport shows that only a few teams ever achieve long term success. The rest bump along the bottom. No structure will alter this. The sport’s main appeal, at the top level, is success: not everyone can have it. A terrible shame, but a new team in a new city will soon be found to be too risky an investment. I, along with the above contributor, have no idea how to achieve sustained expansion. I genuinely hope there are people who do.

Three: this sport can no longer sell itself as the greatest game. It has been allowed to become an expensive, homogeneous, high-speed battering activity of limited appeal in a world full of alternative entertainments. All that stands out, to a new spectator, is the endless intensity of collisions. Note the BBC and Sky adverts and introductions to the game. It is not enough.

 

Dream as much as you like, but to make real progress, examine what the game is, what it has, and what it can be, and attempt to move forward from there.

This, of course, will be seen as negative, rather than realistic, so I’ll offer my tiny positive contribution: forget minor issues like promotion and relegation, and work at making the game more appealing to play. And I’d see if anything could be learned from looking at a much-loved, highly respectable, regional, and totally amateur sport - Gaelic Football.

[Hela Wigmen]

I can see why the fans of some lower league clubs may feel as though they’re left out if a licensing system returns at Super League level but shouldn’t every club at all three levels of our professional game be subject to some form of licensing criteria?