Sat 14th-Sun 15th May: The Betfred League One Match Thread

[Bearman]

15 hours ago, Dan Taye-Sinferno said:

Delighted for the Raiders, especially for their skipper Joe Burke and coach Ash Bateman, in getting a victory with the vast majority of their players coming from South and West Wales. The Skolars have,I believe, a mainly local side also whereas Cornwall are bringing down shedloads of northern based players and the Midlands Hurricanes might as well rename themselves the Yorkshire Hurricanes. Long term it will be interesting to see who is right in their approach.

We ( in the Cov Bears days) have tried that.

The reality is that we are in a competive environment and as others on here have pointed out there NO teams in the British game that can field a purely local " winning" team. That is even more daunting the further away from the M62 you go.

Yes, the Cumbrians team come close to succeeding but they still have to have travellers to make them competitive.

We in the Midlands are having to reinvent the wheel. Clubs in the heartlands can call upon the NCL clubs to provide them with well coached athletes that have been immersed in RL since they were at their mother's breast. In order to start a production line of " new blood" we have to nurture the very clubs that MIGHT be able to give us players in 10 years time. The Pro teams in the heartlands do very little to help with the day to day running of the amatuer clubs in their area. Often a kid might join a pro club and have a very successful career, Then he might go back to his roots and give something back to the game. It all helps to keep the production line up and running. We in the Midlands have to actively give new clubs help with their infrastructure.  

We know it can work as in the past we have nurtured our own boys who are now in our squad and others have moved onto other professional teams. NWC have 3 ex Bears in their first team. Bears Junior Jacob Jones is now playing for Leigh. Heydon Freeman the Hurricanes to try scorer was from our junior programme.

Meanwhile it all takes time, graft and money. The easy way is just to throw up ones hands and say its too hard so we are not even bother to try. But we do TRY. And all the while we hear " expansion doesn't work, and the game should stick to its geographical area, They might be right, Wales, London and other outposts have or are struggling. At one time France and Australia were "new". They did alright.

Any one that thinks RL can live in an M62 bubble is deluded. The bubble isn't nurturing them it's strangling them and stopping them from flourishing.

Anyway the game is too good to be left to just Lancashire and Yorkshire it DESERVES a chance (again) to try. Yes, there will be failures but in the meantime their are still idiots like me trying to do their bit to give opportunities to people who can't just jump on t'tram t'ground.

 

 

 

[Bearman]

7 minutes ago, ShropshireBull said:

Bears had it tough with not being able to make money from stadium. I think that has been a major part of the problem that expansion without infrastructure isn´t expansion at all. What´s the progress with you guys becoming a tenant at Alexander stadium, that might offer some long term hope. 

To be fair to our hosts this season, they are letting us run our own bar. It might not be as nice as the BPA but it's a pleasure to see a welcome from them. Plans for 2023 are coming along nicely.

 

[guess who]

22 hours ago, glemiln said:

I wish it were Donny on the receiving end of Hornets 40-16 loss today!  Having two Hornets players sin-binned in a 15 min spell from 16-16 all after 55mins didn't help!

The second sin bin. Was the turning point.

Both sin bins were good calls by the ref.

[dkw]

On 15/05/2022 at 16:54, clwydianrange said:

A good performance from the Raiders, they certainly didn’t look like a team with their record. I was a bit disappointed in Cornwall. Having seen them play before I expected better. They need a couple of old heads to guide them but they’ll get there. Anybody hear what the crowd was?

How did Broster play yesterday, he's a good kid who could do well in the sport. Definitely not lacking in confidence ha ha...

[Rach]

22 hours ago, Dan Taye-Sinferno said:

Midlands Hurricanes might as well rename themselves the Yorkshire Hurricanes. 

Leigh have 9 or 10 Australians / Kiwis / Aussies playing tonight at Batley.

Don't see the same criticism leveled at them bringing in players.from out of area ....... 

 

[PhilCarrington]

1 hour ago, Rach said:

Leigh have 9 or 10 Australians / Kiwis / Aussies playing tonight at Batley.

Don't see the same criticism leveled at them bringing in players.from out of area ....... 

 

Dont they or some of the other clubs mentioned in his thread put out stories about how they were going to have lots of local players. Cornwall did and got plaudits for it. Hardly surprising that they've picked some very minor criticism for going back on that so quickly, doubt if would have been commented on if they hadn't made it part of their launch. They were very naive, surprising given the experience brought by Kelly and Perez.

[Hemi4561]

10 hours ago, PhilCarrington said:

Dont they or some of the other clubs mentioned in his thread put out stories about how they were going to have lots of local players. Cornwall did and got plaudits for it. Hardly surprising that they've picked some very minor criticism for going back on that so quickly, doubt if would have been commented on if they hadn't made it part of their launch. They were very naive, surprising given the experience brought by Kelly and Perez.

Or very smart and media savvy.