Funding cuts could mean the end for Coventry Bears

[Eddie]

42 minutes ago, Derwent said:

I’m not saying they should do it but the above isn’t really a valid reason for not doing it. The Cumbrian clubs in the NCL do that sort of travelling routinely and seem to manage ok.

They’ve never been semi pro and competitive in league one though? 

[Eddie]

28 minutes ago, Sir Kevin Sinfield said:

If the funding does drop to £20k a year would Coventry, West Wales Raiders and London Skolars be better splitting into a League One South. Bring back in teams like Hemel, Gloucestershire all golds, Oxford, and South Wales Scorpions. Yes the standard would be lower than the current League One (to be renamed League One North) but the teams in League One South could run on much smaller budgets.

It would be a tin pot league no better than the current southern conference (as Cov and Skolars would have to drop down to their level). The best team in it would be worse than the worst team in League One North. 

[Damien]

10 minutes ago, Eddie said:

It would be a tin pot league no better than the current southern conference (as Cov and Skolars would have to drop down to their level). The best team in it would be worse than the worst team in League One North. 

Indeed. On paper it sounds great but the reality would be very different. The former professional clubs get dragged down to a very poor level, and one that even struggles to fulfil fixtures, against teams consisting of RU players playing in the off season. It will be much harder for those clubs to attract players and they certainly wont grow. In time the likes of Coventry and Skolars will struggle to even survive and/or may end up with few teams to even play against based on past history. That route only goes one way at this moment in time.

[Derwent]

32 minutes ago, Eddie said:

They’ve never been semi pro and competitive in league one though? 

No and I’m not saying it’s what Coventry should do. I was merely pointing out that the travelling issue isn’t really an argument against it. There are other perfectly valid reasons against it but that isn’t one of them.

[Eddie]

1 minute ago, Derwent said:

No and I’m not saying it’s what Coventry should do. I was merely pointing out that the travelling issue isn’t really an argument against it. There are other perfectly valid reasons against it but that isn’t one of them.

It is, they’ll have amateur players and no income. Amateur players won’t want to travel for hours every other weekend for no remuneration to play in a low standard competition, and even if they did it would cost too much. There’s a reason why as you go down sports pyramids the leagues get more and more regionalised / local. 

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, zylya said:

The point is that the RFL is essentially saying that it's worth potentially ruining a semi-pros club future so that the Super League clubs can share an extra £50,000 a year and everyone's solution is "well we could stick them in an amateur league."

This nonsense needs challenging - the RFL have no authority over what the Super League clubs do with their money.

[Damien]

2 minutes ago, Eddie said:

It is, they’ll have amateur players and no income. Amateur players won’t want to travel for hours every other weekend for no remuneration to play in a low standard competition, and even if they did it would cost too much. There’s a reason why as you go down sports pyramids the leagues get more and more regionalised / local. 

Expecting Coventry to play in an amateur competition where you will have players spending 10 hours traveling there and back to somewhere like Egremont just isn't feasible. For London Skolars that is probably more like 14 hours. Yes its doable but players will quickly be put off that when they can play in a nice little regional RU league and earn a little bit of money on the side.

Again though why would the teams behind these clubs, who have professional aspirations, bother going down this path anyway. The door is being firmly closed on them with little prospect of being professional again unless something like League 1 comes back. That of course would then make the entire exercise pointless. Maybe some of the people that have done all the sterling work to build these clubs up over the years will just think why bother.

[iffleyox]

1 hour ago, Sir Kevin Sinfield said:

If the funding does drop to £20k a year would Coventry, West Wales Raiders and London Skolars be better splitting into a League One South. Bring back in teams like Hemel, Gloucestershire all golds, Oxford, and South Wales Scorpions. Yes the standard would be lower than the current League One (to be renamed League One North) but the teams in League One South could run on much smaller budgets.

If I could be bothered I'd do a search and work out how many times you've proposed this now on threads but I suspect it's into double figures now over the years - what's the personal attraction of it by the way? - so here's my also traditional reply...

The answer is *still* no, just as it was last year, the year before, etc.

Oxford are gone, Scorpions are West Wales Raiders - so that's two out to start with.

It also betrays a misunderstanding of what RL is down here outside a few very dedicated amateur clubs and the L1 sides - basically a bit of fluff throwaround for a mix of die hard fanatics and RU players out of season. The really committed amateur sides work wonders on a shoestring (and we all know who they are), but you can't just wave a wand and turn points on a map, or current semi pro clubs into really committed amateur sides - it's not what many of them put their hands in their pockets for, or play for.

A national League 1 validated/s the Southern semi pro sides, who *want* to play 'proper' RL clubs, and whose fans want to see the same.

In my previous posts on this subject to you I've said that the quickest way to kill the southern semi-pro clubs would be to put them in a southern league. I was, I'll admit wrong, because the quickest way as it turns out is actually to just cut all their central funding.

But your alternative will still kill them.

Bluntly, cutting all the funding to League 1 is the stupidest way of handling southern rugby league I can think of, and a League 1 South is the second stupidest. Given the choice of either I would bet most people would still walk away (fans, players, backers, volunteers). You'll get the die hards, but you always get the die hards.

[Jeff Stein]

1 hour ago, Spidey said:

London Skolars started in the NCL before League One (or whatever it’s called). It’s doable and Coventry have done it before also. I don’t this Travel is a blocker

Skolars pulled out of the NCL because it was not doable 

[OriginalMrC]

20 minutes ago, Damien said:

Expecting Coventry to play in an amateur competition where you will have players spending 10 hours traveling there and back to somewhere like Egremont just isn't feasible. For London Skolars that is probably more like 14 hours. Yes its doable but players will quickly be put off that when they can play in a nice little regional RU league and earn a little bit of money on the side.

Again though why would the teams behind these clubs, who have professional aspirations, bother going down this path anyway. The door is being firmly closed on them with little prospect of being professional again unless something like League 1 comes back. That of course would then make the entire exercise pointless. Maybe some of the people that have done all the sterling work to build these clubs up over the years will just think why bother.

Just to add to this and the other comments. This is spot on. Anyone who thinks if Coventry drops out of league one they will go and play in amateur leagues with loads of travel are deluded. Its not going to happen! The likely outcome if the club was to continue is that it would just keep developing Juniors. As it stands the Southern conference is just not suitable. 

[iffleyox]

... duplicate post 

[OriginalMrC]

2 minutes ago, iffleyox said:

If I could be bothered I'd do a search and work out how many times you've proposed this now on threads but I suspect it's into double figures now over the years - what's the personal attraction of it by the way? - so here's my also traditional reply...

The answer is *still* no, just as it was last year, the year before, etc.

Oxford are gone, Scorpions are West Wales Raiders - so that's two out to start with.

It also betrays a misunderstanding of what RL is down here outside a few very dedicated amateur clubs and the L1 sides - basically a bit of fluff throwaround for a mix of die hard fanatics and RU players out of season. The really committed sides work wonders on a shoestring, but you can't just wave a wand and turn points on a map, or current semi pro clubs into really committed amateur sides - it's not what many of them put their hands in their pockets for, or play for.

A national League 1 validated/s the Southern semi pro sides, who *want* to play 'proper' RL clubs, and whose fans want to see the same.

In my previous posts on this subject to you I've said that the quickest way to kill the southern semi-pro clubs would be to put them in a southern league. I was, I'll admit wrong, because the quickest way as it turns out is actually to just cut all their central funding.

But your alternative will still kill them.

Bluntly, cutting all the funding to League 1 is the stupidest way of handling southern rugby league I can think of, and a League 1 South is the second stupidest. Given the choice of either I would bet most people would still walk away (fans, players, backers, volunteers). You'll get the die hards, but you always get the die hards.

Spot on

[newbe]

Didn't Hemel win NCL 3, the season before they joined League 1. It can be done I suppose. 

[dealwithit]

3 hours ago, zylya said:

The point is that the RFL is essentially saying that it's worth potentially ruining a semi-pros club future so that the Super League clubs can share an extra £50,000 a year and everyone's solution is "well we could stick them in an amateur league." I don't get why you guys are so fixated on the amateur leagues - it's not the solution here. I'm sure they're great for the clubs that are in them, but that doesn't make it the best place to put a League 1 club because the RFL can't stick with anything for more than 10 minutes. 

To take a club that has turned itself semi-pro and say "sorry that we set you up with all this stuff and sorry that you've worked hard to build your club up on that basis - how do you feel about 200+ mile trips every other week for no money instead?" Shambles.

A good way to look at it is ‘what would be the opportunity cost if the £50k was diverted to the RFL’s operations or to Super League clubs?’

The first thing that needs investigating is ‘what % of midlands players took up rugby league because Coventry exists as a semi-pro team?’ That is a pretty simple thing to do. You can then start working out my first question regarding opportunity cost. 

Without doing the above we’re all simply hypothesising. Of course the owner is going to advocate for maintaining or increasing funding - as he should. But any decision should go through the above rigour. 
 

If the £50k is to be divided by 12 SL clubs, you’d be asking what value £4,000 pounds has for a SL club. 

[zylya]

2 hours ago, Dave T said:

This nonsense needs challenging - the RFL have no authority over what the Super League clubs do with their money.

I'll take the hit on this for being lazy with my wording. You're right that it's the Super League clubs that made the decision on total funding to the RFL, although it is still the RFL that makes the decision on how to distribute that funding that SL gives them, for example between operations, Championship and League 1 etc so they're not entirely blameless. Especially considering that the RFL haven't done near enough to increase their own commercial revenues.

Massively missing the point to hone in on that pedantic issue when there's a much more important discussion going on about where the money would be best spent.

[gingerjon]

57 minutes ago, newbe said:

Didn't Hemel win NCL 3, the season before they joined League 1. It can be done I suppose. 

Would that not have been Rugby League Conference (National), or whatever the former National League Three was called at the time?

[zylya]

26 minutes ago, dealwithit said:

A good way to look at it is ‘what would be the opportunity cost if the £50k was diverted to the RFL’s operations or to Super League clubs?’

The first thing that needs investigating is ‘what % of midlands players took up rugby league because Coventry exists as a semi-pro team?’ That is a pretty simple thing to do. You can then start working out my first question regarding opportunity cost. 

Without doing the above we’re all simply hypothesising. Of course the owner is going to advocate for maintaining or increasing funding - as he should. But any decision should go through the above rigour. 
 

If the £50k is to be divided by 12 SL clubs, you’d be asking what value £4,000 pounds has for a SL club. 

It's over-simplistic just to look at players that have taken up the game - what about fans who are watching the Bears each week? Fans who are buying RLWC tickets for the Coventry game? But yes, the opportunity cost is definitely the thing to look at.

But of course we're hypothesising, it's a discussion forum. Are you really saying that we can't make any argument unless we have 100% of the stats available to us? How would I even get the figures on who plays RL in the Midlands? Do these figures even exist in a meaningful format? If there was some transparency coming through from the governing body, we might be able to make these calculations more accurately. Based on my opinion of what I see in the game, I see Coventry doing more good work with £50,000 than the 12 Super League clubs, mostly because £50,000 for Cov is a much higher percentage of their budget than £50,000 for the SL clubs.

I mean, if you have all these numbers available, and you can demonstrate quite clearly that I'm wrong then I'd happily change my mind. I just don't see how removing £50,000 from Cov (and all the other League 1 clubs for that matter) is going to help the whole game.

[Jeff Stein]

1 hour ago, newbe said:

Didn't Hemel win NCL 3, the season before they joined League 1. It can be done I suppose. 

A travel grant was paid in NL3

[Dave T]

26 minutes ago, zylya said:

I'll take the hit on this for being lazy with my wording. You're right that it's the Super League clubs that made the decision on total funding to the RFL, although it is still the RFL that makes the decision on how to distribute that funding that SL gives them, for example between operations, Championship and League 1 etc so they're not entirely blameless. Especially considering that the RFL haven't done near enough to increase their own commercial revenues.

Massively missing the point to hone in on that pedantic issue when there's a much more important discussion going on about where the money would be best spent.

It isn't a pedantic point at all, it's quite an important point. The money that was previously being directed to these clubs is literally no longer there. The RFL can only do so much with that, everyone (including themselves) is taking a large cut. So focusing on the fact that the RFL have allowed the SL clubs to take more money is just a nonsense. 

There is a valid point about how this distribution of the £2m is made - and if we look at it on a simple basis it is probably something like £150k per Champ team and £20k per L1 team - so I suppose the debate should be centred around do clubs like Widnes, Bradford, Fev, Halifax give a better return for that £150k than L1 clubs. 

BUt either way, nobody is winning here, difficult decisions need to be made.

[Ivarr the Boneless]

As an ex Oxford RL season ticket holder I'd be stunned if they returned for any upgraded Conference South.

One of the reasons they packed up, not the only one, was they believed League One would fold within five years and the owners weren't willing to spend lots of money trying to turn the club around knowing they wouldn't have time to make that money back.

Those at the top at Oxford were generally less than impressed by the RFL's handling of them. There's surely no chance of them stepping back in.

RL down south and in the Midlands is on the verge of collapse as anything other than a recreational sport. The sport needs to decide how much it values that presence but make no mistake, they need their eyes open as to the consequences.

I was a season ticket holder at Oxford and supported Prescot Panthers, I am well aware teams die. I also watched South London Storm in the old Conference. I have also had a total of about 25 season tickets at Skolars and Broncos. Unless I move north, I doubt I'll be watching RL for much longer.

 

[zylya]

11 minutes ago, Dave T said:

It isn't a pedantic point at all, it's quite an important point. The money that was previously being directed to these clubs is literally no longer there. The RFL can only do so much with that, everyone (including themselves) is taking a large cut. So focusing on the fact that the RFL have allowed the SL clubs to take more money is just a nonsense. 

There is a valid point about how this distribution of the £2m is made - and if we look at it on a simple basis it is probably something like £150k per Champ team and £20k per L1 team - so I suppose the debate should be centred around do clubs like Widnes, Bradford, Fev, Halifax give a better return for that £150k than L1 clubs. 

BUt either way, nobody is winning here, difficult decisions need to be made.

The RFL have been assigned an amount which they can distribute. The understanding, based on this topic, is that they're cutting around £50,000 from League 1. That's a decision, and that's what I'm criticising. Is it a tough decision? Yes - but I disagree with the one they've made and have outlined my reasons.

Additionally, SL & RFL haven't done enough to keep the commercial income high - a huge drop in funding can hardly be blamed on the League 1 clubs yet they're facing an 80% reduction on an overall reduction of about 37.5% (£40m - £25m). And even if we take the previous Sky deal as overpriced and this one as more realistic to the value of SL, there's still the real question of why the RFL hasn't done things like develop the international game or create some other source(s) of revenue to fill this gap.

The whole "difficult decisions" is a cop out - it's chickens coming home to roost.

[Jeff Stein]

6 minutes ago, Ivarr the Boneless said:

As an ex Oxford RL season ticket holder I'd be stunned if they returned for any upgraded Conference South.

One of the reasons they packed up, not the only one, was they believed League One would fold within five years and the owners weren't willing to spend lots of money trying to turn the club around knowing they wouldn't have time to make that money back.

Those at the top at Oxford were generally less than impressed by the RFL's handling of them. There's surely no chance of them stepping back in.

RL down south and in the Midlands is on the verge of collapse as anything other than a recreational sport. The sport needs to decide how much it values that presence but make no mistake, they need their eyes open as to the consequences.

I was a season ticket holder at Oxford and supported Prescot Panthers, I am well aware teams die. I also watched South London Storm in the old Conference. I have also had a total of about 25 season tickets at Skolars and Broncos. Unless I move north, I doubt I'll be watching RL for much longer.

 

That is my impression as well. I have been attending professional games in the south since 1983, had multiple season tickets at various clubs and been involved with a community club, but I suspect that will be ending soon and my only contact, if any, with the game will be through Sky. It is disappointing as it has been the major interest of my adult life, but after all these years I don't get the feeling that areas in the south are seen as integral or important to the game any more than they were back in the 80s. Lip service will be given, but the time when successful structural support could have been given has passed. 

[zylya]

2 minutes ago, Jeff Stein said:

That is my impression as well. I have been attending professional games in the south since 1983, had multiple season tickets at various clubs and been involved with a community club, but I suspect that will be ending soon and my only contact, if any, with the game will be through Sky. It is disappointing as it has been the major interest of my adult life, but after all these years I don't get the feeling that areas in the south are seen as integral or important to the game any more than they were back in the 80s. Lip service will be given, but the time when successful structural support could have been given has passed. 

Be a huge shame if this happens. Despite a lot of comments saying that RL will never take off in the South, the truth is that almost every attempt has either been half-assed or unsupported. When I played in the London Leagues back in the early 2010s there were a load of development officers around making stuff happen. They all got pulled and teams started collapsing. Of the 5/6 teams playing in that League in 2014 I think it was, only 1 of them still exists in any capacity.

I think the Southern Conference League is a great idea, but it's so poorly supported by the RFL. The tables they post on Twitter look like someone didn't in Microsoft Word. No branding, nothing to make it seem interesting. Great they they streamed the SCL 2019 Grand Final, but can't just hope for one strong day a year.

[Jeff Stein]

14 minutes ago, zylya said:

Be a huge shame if this happens. Despite a lot of comments saying that RL will never take off in the South, the truth is that almost every attempt has either been half-assed or unsupported. When I played in the London Leagues back in the early 2010s there were a load of development officers around making stuff happen. They all got pulled and teams started collapsing. Of the 5/6 teams playing in that League in 2014 I think it was, only 1 of them still exists in any capacity.

I think the Southern Conference League is a great idea, but it's so poorly supported by the RFL. The tables they post on Twitter look like someone didn't in Microsoft Word. No branding, nothing to make it seem interesting. Great they they streamed the SCL 2019 Grand Final, but can't just hope for one strong day a year.

The London League and Southern Conference finals are on at 4:30 and 6:30 this Saturday at Rosslyn Park. Apart from the fixtures being shown in League Express I know nothing else and I  can't find any other information online (including why the odd Times and whether admission is being charged). 

[Derwent]

4 hours ago, Damien said:

Expecting Coventry to play in an amateur competition where you will have players spending 10 hours traveling there and back to somewhere like Egremont just isn't feasible. For London Skolars that is probably more like 14 hours. Yes its doable but players will quickly be put off that when they can play in a nice little regional RU league and earn a little bit of money on the side.

 

Isn't that the case if they stay semi-pro on the proposed funding ? Players will be expected to do the same travelling for little more than beer money. If the funding is £20k and income from other means is similar then how do they pay a squad of 24/25 players plus coaching staff etc as well as meet all other costs of staging games such as insurance, stadium costs etc ? The players will be on absolute peanuts and a lot of them will just pack in.