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Maurice Lindsay's Revolution: Super League Success or Failure?

Tides Of History

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RP London

RP London

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48 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Indeed, perhaps the only successful (and indeed proper) merger?

It does show that they can work but you have to be very pragmatic and it does help that there is no other way you are getting in... the big problem with mergers is P&R in a way, there is always a chance your club will rise and people hold on to that even if in reality there isnt. You dont always get pragmatism even then but without some form of closed shop i cannot see anyone looking to merge they would rather try and go it alone. 

This is both a good thing and a bad thing and the arguments on it will always go on (and i dont want to restart them). 

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Tommygilf

Tommygilf

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4 minutes ago, RP London said:

It does show that they can work but you have to be very pragmatic and it does help that there is no other way you are getting in... the big problem with mergers is P&R in a way, there is always a chance your club will rise and people hold on to that even if in reality there isnt. You dont always get pragmatism even then but without some form of closed shop i cannot see anyone looking to merge they would rather try and go it alone. 

This is both a good thing and a bad thing and the arguments on it will always go on (and i dont want to restart them). 

Yeah, as I put in a later post, I actually think they put forward some merger ideas so that those clubs (or at least the junior members) would turn around and say "stuff that, we'd rather be independent even if its in the second division". That way they could say "oh no, you want to be Wakey, Fev and Cas in the second division? What a shame ah well". 

Mergers only make sense for the prize of operating at a higher level, which is only guaranteed with a closed league system. Even after 2 decades of being in the bottom division (or lower reaches of the 2nd division) nobody in Cumbria has accepted the inevitable there. Or maybe they have, but alongside that recognised how in turning a merger down, they'll never reach Super League.

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Hela Wigmen

Hela Wigmen

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2 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Even after 2 decades of being in the bottom division (or lower reaches of the 2nd division) nobody in Cumbria has accepted the inevitable there. Or maybe they have, but alongside that recognised how in turning a merger down, they'll never reach Super League.

From what I’ve seen from fans of the Cumbrian clubs and Cumbrians in general is that they have accepted the inevitable. The inevitable is that a Cumbrian side is just not feasible for a few different reasons. 

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DEANO

DEANO

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10 minutes ago, M j M said:

There are rules that clubs have to play in different stadia to 25 years ago ?

No but they did bring in certain criteria that stadiums had to meet

sometimes you have to take a step backwards to move forward

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Tommygilf

Tommygilf

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2 hours ago, Hela Wigmen said:

From what I’ve seen from fans of the Cumbrian clubs and Cumbrians in general is that they have accepted the inevitable. The inevitable is that a Cumbrian side is just not feasible for a few different reasons. 

Yeah exactly, which is fine of course but does consign them to a certain reality. 

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Tommygilf

Tommygilf

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2 hours ago, Hopping Mad said:

Not a great look, is it.

The Independent's Dave Hadfield had this structure as the proposed line-up. From a 2021 perspective, it makes interesting reading. Some missed opportunities. My memory tells me of a proposed merger between Halifax and Huddersfield. Not the case, clearly. How much sense would such a merger make now!

Super League: Wigan, St Helens, Leeds, Calder (amalgamation of Castleford, Wakefield and Featherstone), London Broncos, Cumbria, Cheshire (Widnes and Warrington), Toulouse, Paris, Manchester (Salford and Oldham), Halifax, Bradford Northern, South Yorkshire (Sheffield Eagles and Doncaster), Humberside (Hull and Hull KR).

British First Division: Cardiff, Bramley, Leigh, Highfield, Hunslet, Batley, Keighley, Swinton, Huddersfield, Rochdale, Ryedale, Dewsbury.

I think its a sign of 25 years of "consolidation".

I think what that list shows is that then, and to a large extent now, the overcrowding of clubs in a few specific locations was seen as a problem. Its not that the top league can't grow with Wakefield, Oldham, Halifax and Warrington say, but to only exist in those sorts of areas stunts everyone else's growth too as clubs compete for local resources.

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Tides Of History

Tides Of History

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On 22/03/2021 at 14:22, whatmichaelsays said:

Super League was the right answer for the time, but I'd take some issue with the idea that I infered from the article that the objective of Super League was geographic expansion. 

Super League came into being in 1995. In that time, we've seen massive changes in the communities that make up the RL heartlands, a very different media landscape, a very different leisure market, the maturity of digital media, the rise of social media, a global financial crisis and the austerity that followed and changing living and working habits. The "Super League" that was conceived by Maurice Lindsay and Co in the mid-90s could never have predicted what followed in the last two and a half decades, but you can legitimately question how the "custodians" of Maurice Lindsay's plan have adapted to those changes with the benefit of hindsight.  

If the intention of Super League was to go to Paris, London, Barcelona, Dublin or any other new markets and "try to find more people like us", then it was never going to succeed like that (and it's why I'm of the belief that seeing "expansion" as a geographic issue is looking at the problem the wrong way - or indeed, the wrong problem). If the intention of Super League was to put the sport in a position to use the "tools of the trade of the day" to find new audiences to compliment the "people like us", then it could succeed - the question is whether the sport has done that, or done it well enough. 

 

The objective in 1995 appeared to be to merge and expand in order to equip the game for the demands of the 21st century. The move to Summer would make it a better product and align the season with Aus - with the potential for an expanded end of season world club challenge. By making it more of a TV sport - with Manchester, Cumbria, Cheshire etc - seemingly more appealing - the game could grow and then teams from Newcastle etc could join. In the early days, for example, Newcastle United were said to be interested in making a bid.

Of course, it all sounds great on paper and it may not have been possible to grow the game this way. We will never know.

I do take issue with your suggestion that nobody could have predicted what happened - in fact Super League was meant to address the new leisure market, the rising competition between sports for revenue and identified the small areas in the north were we played were unlikely to ever compete on a big level. They didn't predict the financial crash, but identified that any league based on teams in such economically weak - and close geographical - areas would struggle to grow.

In that sense they were right - we as a sport have to decide whether we are going to live with that decision (manage the decline and strengthen small areas) or look again at how we can reach new fans. Either option we can all work with - but it is probably time to decide. 

 

 

 

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whatmichaelsays

whatmichaelsays

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26 minutes ago, Tides Of History said:

 

The objective in 1995 appeared to be to merge and expand in order to equip the game for the demands of the 21st century. The move to Summer would make it a better product and align the season with Aus - with the potential for an expanded end of season world club challenge. By making it more of a TV sport - with Manchester, Cumbria, Cheshire etc - seemingly more appealing - the game could grow and then teams from Newcastle etc could join. In the early days, for example, Newcastle United were said to be interested in making a bid.

Of course, it all sounds great on paper and it may not have been possible to grow the game this way. We will never know.

I do take issue with your suggestion that nobody could have predicted what happened - in fact Super League was meant to address the new leisure market, the rising competition between sports for revenue and identified the small areas in the north were we played were unlikely to ever compete on a big level. They didn't predict the financial crash, but identified that any league based on teams in such economically weak - and close geographical - areas would struggle to grow.

In that sense they were right - we as a sport have to decide whether we are going to live with that decision (manage the decline and strengthen small areas) or look again at how we can reach new fans. Either option we can all work with - but it is probably time to decide. 

I think for me the issue is that my own view (and I know it's one that splits the room here somewhat) is that the game's problem's are not necessarily rooted in geography, but rooted in the audience the game both reaches and, crucially, doesn't reach.

We actually have affluent areas and populations in and around our heartlands. We have major companies and employers in our heartlands who could be sponsors if we offered them access to the right audiences. We have major media organisations in our heartlands. Yes, we've got pockets of deprevation and our teams are a bit close together, but you'll also find pockets of deprevation and competition for resources in London and the SE, in Paris and in any other city you care to mention. The real issue for me is that the game isn't utilising the tools that are, in some cases, literally in our grasp.  

You can create a sporting product that works for TV that doesn't necessarily have to be played in Manchester or Newcastle, London or Paris. Yes, it's nice if you can have that, but what is important first and foremost is that the product is entertaining, that it has constant and consistent bursts of action and unpredictability and that it keeps audiences hooked. Particuarly now in the era of Instagram and moments going viral in a matter of seconds, it matters not where the content is produced - just that it is produced, produced to a high enough standard, produced with consistency and deployed effectively. As much as we like to tell people "TGG", I would argue that RL doesn't do enough of that, often enough but when we do, it transcends geography and it transcends people's sphere of interests - as the Jonny May clip you cited demonstrated.  

This is just my take on it, but if the objective of Super League was to go to Paris and say "this is the 100+ year-old game that we really like, we're going to let you watch it and we hope you like it too", then it was never going to work. What the game didn't seem to do back then (perhaps with the exception of the Bulls), and still hasn't really done now, is identify the exact audiences that it wants to appeal to and understand what those audiences wanted. It just seemed to be looking for "more people like us, but who don't live in the heartlands".  

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Clogiron

Clogiron

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I think for club's outside of SL it's a missed opportunity that like the RFU have done the governing body couldn't assist with the funding of 3G or 4G pitches which would allow them to play a winter season and open up new revenue streams for them. I know RU's governing body is awash with cash compared to RL but I would wager that it was never even looked into giving RU club's a open run at junior player's. Rugby is a winter sport and the opportunity to play without pitch concerns then may have led to a TV deal for that level also.

File it with the other missed opportunities that blight the games history.

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John Rhino

John Rhino

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On 22/03/2021 at 11:33, Lapsed Leeds Fan said:

A great article which I think sums up everything perfectly. If you want the very essence of being a rugby league fan you've captured it with the sentence below:

"Fans still believe that the game should be at the centre of our national life, but at the same time, nobody would honestly claim that the game has made the necessary sacrifices to achieve it."

I would rewrite that to say "the clubs have not made the necessary sacrifices" 

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Tommygilf

Tommygilf

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1 hour ago, John Rhino said:

I would rewrite that to say "the clubs have not made the necessary sacrifices" 

Tbf I think some clubs did - mostly the junior partners in mergers or in the case of the Calder club, all 3 proposed members initially. Most accepted that Super League, at least initially, wasn't going to be for them.

That Super League didn't grow to a point where Wakefield and Castleford were in a position similar to the Cumbrian clubs now, whereby they would be looking at never being capable of sustaining Super League independently, is a flaw of the competition's really. The competition, whilst at least having some parties trying to be bold, inherited far too many of the inhibitions of the previous set up and rendered itself just a renamed and sparklier version of the Stones Bitter Championship.

No wonder virtually all of the complaints of the game then are the same as now, its almost exactly the same!

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