RL clubs with football clubs as rivals

[HawkMan]

7 minutes ago, EggFace said:

Footballs wasted on Soccer as part from the big firm teams and the a few in your premiership its crowds are pretty poor.

You seem to be conflating a couple of issues here. Agreed, Celtic and Rangers dominate in terms of crowd support. It's a very unusual situation,  that even in the Premiership when a team like St. Mirren play Celtic or Rangers at home, three of the four stands are full of away fans. You only have to go down to tier 3 to get crowds in the hundreds. 90% of fans in Scotland are Old Firm fans, but  the overall number totally dwarfs Union or any other sport. To suggest otherwise is frankly letting your obvious hatred of football,  its fans, and its popularity get the better of you.

[EggFace]

1 minute ago, HawkMan said:

You seem to be conflating a couple of issues here. Agreed, Celtic and Rangers dominate in terms of crowd support. It's a very unusual situation,  that even in the Premiership when a team like St. Mirren play Celtic or Rangers at home, three of the four stands are full of away fans. You only have to go down to tier 3 to get crowds in the hundreds. 90% of fans in Scotland are Old Firm fans, but  the overall number totally dwarfs Union or any other sport. To suggest otherwise is frankly letting your obvious hatred of football,  its fans, and its popularity get the better of you.

I don't hate it just don't like it anymore and its over hyped presence and never liked hooligan aspect attach to it.

Shame back in the day Rugby never spread all over  Scotland back in the day and I always Rugby League would off been the perfect Sport for the Scots.

[Tommygilf]

6 minutes ago, EggFace said:

Compared to Ireland with the same population and have 4 codes I think Scotland is pretty poor when it comes for team Sports in the UK.

Ireland has just 4 professional Rugby Union teams and the "Professional" League of Ireland is closer to semi pro with players taking on second jobs left right and centre, particularly in the off season. GAA of course is Amateur.

None come close to Celtic or Rangers, let alone the rest of Scottish football in terms of interest or attendances. Celtic and Rangers are arguably two of the biggest football clubs on the Island of Ireland anyway!

[EggFace]

1 minute ago, Tommygilf said:

Ireland has just 4 professional Rugby Union teams and the "Professional" League of Ireland is closer to semi pro with players taking on second jobs left right and centre, particularly in the off season. GAA of course is Amateur.

None come close to Celtic or Rangers, let alone the rest of Scottish football in terms of interest or attendances. Celtic and Rangers are arguably two of the biggest football clubs on the Island of Ireland anyway!

Yeah Ireland can be a bit messy with having 4 codes and the man love of EPL and the Big Firm teams but at least they have 4 codes for fans to play and to watch unlike Scotland blanket coverage and Rugby Union just Internationals in Edinburgh, a bit in Glasgow and off course the Borders.

[corkonian77]

3 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Ireland has just 4 professional Rugby Union teams and the "Professional" League of Ireland is closer to semi pro with players taking on second jobs left right and centre, particularly in the off season. GAA of course is Amateur.

None come close to Celtic or Rangers, let alone the rest of Scottish football in terms of interest or attendances. Celtic and Rangers are arguably two of the biggest football clubs on the Island of Ireland anyway!

The League  of Ireland in Football  suffers from talent drain to England. 

Munster  Rugby got 41,400 for their match v a South African  15 in Cork yesterday. But attendances like this is once off. 

Gaa has a handful  of big attendances.

[Tommygilf]

1 minute ago, EggFace said:

Yeah Ireland can be a bit messy with having 4 codes and the man love of EPL and the Big Firm teams but at least they have 4 codes for fans to play and to watch unlike Scotland blanket coverage and Rugby Union just Internationals in Edinburgh, a bit in Glasgow and off course the Borders.

Doing it on the number of codes is silly, because only 1 team is required to mark presence. By your logic Wales has 4 sports with League Cricket, URC Rugby Union, League 1 Rugby League, and Football (English and Welsh leagues) being played by players paid to do so. Ice Hockey and basketball too maybe?

The number of teams and the support they get demonstrates the strength of the sport in a country. Scotland is dominated by football, and even then by 2 massive football clubs. Their attendances are fine.

[Tommygilf]

3 minutes ago, corkonian77 said:

The League  of Ireland in Football  suffers from talent drain to England. 

Munster  Rugby got 41,400 for their match v a South African  15 in Cork yesterday. But attendances like this is once off. 

Gaa has a handful  of big attendances.

Tbh I've been reading a few articles that suggest that League of Ireland (and irish football more generally) just doesn't produce the talent in the numbers it used to. Combined with English teams looking further afield for youth talent, the reliable route of "go to England" to play and train at a higher level just isn't as easy as it once was.

I agree with the rest though. One off occasions seem to do well in both RU and GAA. Although even the GAA have reverted to using double headers at Croke Park for Quarter finals for example with not all of the ground open.

[EggFace]

5 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Tbh I've been reading a few articles that suggest that League of Ireland (and irish football more generally) just doesn't produce the talent in the numbers it used to. Combined with English teams looking further afield for youth talent, the reliable route of "go to England" to play and train at a higher level just isn't as easy as it once was.

I agree with the rest though. One off occasions seem to do well in both RU and GAA. Although even the GAA have reverted to using double headers at Croke Park for Quarter finals for example with not all of the ground open.

Maybe Ireland is oversubscribed having 4 major codes while Scotland is undersubscribed having 2 major codes.

[corkonian77]

13 minutes ago, EggFace said:

Maybe Ireland is oversubscribed having 4 major codes while Scotland is undersubscribed having 2 major codes.

My small part of Cork has 22 Gaa clubs.

Cork County  has 200 Gaelic Games clubs. For a population  of 500,000. 

Participation  is seen as more important  than  commercial  success. 

Edited November 11, 2022 by corkonian77

[The Masked Poster]

My relatives in Ireland, years ago, all supported Man United. This was before their PL success too. It seemed to be quite widespread in my experience. 

 

[iffleyox]

15 hours ago, Exiled red said:

No love lost between the football and rugby clubs in Exeter. Lots of genuine Exonians turning their backs on the rugby because of the extortionate prices. 

I think that feels a bit like a grievance in search of an excuse though. 

Exeter City had bumped along the bottom for decades as the only game in town (other than the race course and the speedway) for decades, and insofar as anyone thought about the union team at all it was to laugh at their ground or patronise them for still existing with no support. 

From about 2001 it became habit to laugh at them for 'ideas above their station' as they started to climb.

Then it was fear fans might defect 'if you're a real Exonian, you should be at St James' Park' - genuinely said to me by the landlord of the Jolly Porter in about 2002.

Then it was 'it's not fair, we've been here for decades, they're taking all our sponsors'

Then it was 'it's too far to get to the ground anyway'

Now, apparently, it's 'they charge you too much to go'

Fundamentally, most of those arguments were advanced by people who were never going to go anyway. The fundamental problem is that over the last two decades the relative positions of Exeter RU and Exeter City have flipped - except that Exeter RU are more successful than Exeter City ever have been.

Anyway, I don't really have a dog in that fight - I went to the County Ground about twice. But you could feel Exeter RU professionalising and flexing its muscles even back at the start of the century. Which was the same (bizarre) period that Exeter City got involved with Uri Geller, Michael Jackson and David Blaine....

If only the internet had been more popular then. It was mind boggling when we had to read about it in the Express and Echo, God knows what social media would have made of it....

[iffleyox]

for those who've got no idea what I'm talking about.... the most surreal day in the history of the City of Exeter. I was there man....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news_features/2002/michael_jackson.shtml

[EggFace]

30 minutes ago, iffleyox said:

I think that feels a bit like a grievance in search of an excuse though. 

Exeter City had bumped along the bottom for decades as the only game in town (other than the race course and the speedway) for decades, and insofar as anyone thought about the union team at all it was to laugh at their ground or patronise them for still existing with no support. 

From about 2001 it became habit to laugh at them for 'ideas above their station' as they started to climb.

Then it was fear fans might defect 'if you're a real Exonian, you should be at St James' Park' - genuinely said to me by the landlord of the Jolly Porter in about 2002.

Then it was 'it's not fair, we've been here for decades, they're taking all our sponsors'

Then it was 'it's too far to get to the ground anyway'

Now, apparently, it's 'they charge you too much to go'

Fundamentally, most of those arguments were advanced by people who were never going to go anyway. The fundamental problem is that over the last two decades the relative positions of Exeter RU and Exeter City have flipped - except that Exeter RU are more successful than Exeter City ever have been.

Anyway, I don't really have a dog in that fight - I went to the County Ground about twice. But you could feel Exeter RU professionalising and flexing its muscles even back at the start of the century. Which was the same (bizarre) period that Exeter City got involved with Uri Geller, Michael Jackson and David Blaine....

If only the internet had been more popular then. It was mind boggling when we had to read about it in the Express and Echo, God knows what social media would have made of it....

Stranger than Tannadice.

[Hopping Mad]

1 hour ago, HawkMan said:

You seem to be conflating a couple of issues here. Agreed, Celtic and Rangers dominate in terms of crowd support. It's a very unusual situation,  that even in the Premiership when a team like St. Mirren play Celtic or Rangers at home, three of the four stands are full of away fans. You only have to go down to tier 3 to get crowds in the hundreds. 90% of fans in Scotland are Old Firm fans, but  the overall number totally dwarfs Union or any other sport. To suggest otherwise is frankly letting your obvious hatred of football,  its fans, and its popularity get the better of you.

Worth saying there are several Scottish 'junior' and senior non-league clubs - e.g. Auchinleck Talbot, Clydebank, Pollok - that get much bigger crowds than some of those in the bottom two divisions of the Scottish Football League. Since the introduction of a promotion/relegation play-off, former 'junior' and senior non-league clubs - e.g. Bonnyrigg Red Rose, Kelty Hearts - are now gaining places in the SFL.

For my sins, I've watched club games on about 40 Scottish rugby union grounds. The largest crowd - just 800 - was at Ayr (for a Premiership play-off semi-final). Truth is, hardly anybody takes an interest in club rugby union in Scotland. Even the better known clubs are very poorly supported. Barely 150 present when I went to Watsonians.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Hopping Mad

[Eddie]

2 hours ago, EggFace said:

Footballs wasted on Soccer as part from the big firm teams and the a few in your premiership its crowds are pretty poor.

I’m fairly sure that Scotland (along with Belgium and Iceland) have the highest football attendances per capita in the world. 

[Tommygilf]

1 hour ago, EggFace said:

Maybe Ireland is oversubscribed having 4 major codes while Scotland is undersubscribed having 2 major codes.

The GAA is content being a cultural organisation rather than a commercial one I think. 

I put on another thread that most towns can support a football club (of any code), the larger cities can support more than 1. In Scotland, the vast majority of those clubs play Association Football.

[iffleyox]

...

Edited November 11, 2022 by iffleyox

[Tommygilf]

35 minutes ago, iffleyox said:

I'd actually narrow it down further - I think most towns can support a sporting focus, and everything else lives in the shadow of whatever that is. In Worcester, before one local man took the rugby club on 'a journey' it was cricket and horse racing. York has got football and RL, but both of those must be dwarfed, really dwarfed, by York races (350,000 attendees per annum). Etc.

I get that to an extent, but then some things can outgrow a single town/city. York races is a perfect example of something which draws folk in from all over.

Leeds United are another. Arguably Leeds Rhinos are getting closer to that too over the past decade and a half.

Its also easier to have a fringe organisation in a large place that already draws people in. Take Ice Hockey for example, I don't think it would work in Batley or Castleford as well as it has in Leeds. Yorkshire Cricket is perhaps another example too.

[hw88]

The League of Ireland averages less than 3,000, the Irish League barely 1,000 per game. The Scottish Premier League averages around 15,000 but this is massively skewed by Celtic's 57,000 average and Rangers' 48,000. The likes of Ross County and St Johnstone get less than 5,000. Ross County must be unique in Britain in that the entire population of Dingwall could fit into the ground with places to spare!

Edited November 11, 2022 by hw88
missed something

[Eddie]

18 minutes ago, hw88 said:

The League of Ireland averages less than 3,000, the Irish League barely 1,000 per game. The Scottish Premier League averages around 15,000 but this is massively skewed by Celtic's 57,000 average and Rangers' 48,000. The likes of Ross County and St Johnstone get less than 5,000. Ross County must be unique in Britain in that the entire population of Dingwall could fit into the ground with places to spare!

It doesn’t matter if the average is big because of the Old Firm, the average includes them and shows how popular football is in Scotland as a whole. Plus to be fair Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen get more than respectable attendances too. 
 

The only other club I can think of in your Dingwall example is Heerenveen in the Dutch league. Possibly Forest Green Rovers nowadays too? 

[hw88]

4 minutes ago, Eddie said:

It doesn’t matter if the average is big because of the Old Firm, the average includes them and shows how popular football is in Scotland as a whole. Plus to be fair Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen get more than respectable attendances too. 
 

The only other club I can think of in your Dingwall example is Heerenveen in the Dutch league. Possibly Forest Green Rovers nowadays too? 

 

This is an intersting site if you like attendance figures!

https://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm

[Eddie]

20 minutes ago, hw88 said:

 

This is an intersting site if you like attendance figures!

https://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm

A superb website that, its been on my favourites list for years

[iffleyox]

45 minutes ago, Eddie said:

The only other club I can think of in your Dingwall example is Heerenveen in the Dutch league. Possibly Forest Green Rovers nowadays too? 

You can get 2/3 of Fev into Post Office Road (just shy of 10k out of a population of 15k)

[Exiled red]

3 hours ago, iffleyox said:

I think that feels a bit like a grievance in search of an excuse though. 

Exeter City had bumped along the bottom for decades as the only game in town (other than the race course and the speedway) for decades, and insofar as anyone thought about the union team at all it was to laugh at their ground or patronise them for still existing with no support. 

From about 2001 it became habit to laugh at them for 'ideas above their station' as they started to climb.

Then it was fear fans might defect 'if you're a real Exonian, you should be at St James' Park' - genuinely said to me by the landlord of the Jolly Porter in about 2002.

Then it was 'it's not fair, we've been here for decades, they're taking all our sponsors'

Then it was 'it's too far to get to the ground anyway'

Now, apparently, it's 'they charge you too much to go'

Fundamentally, most of those arguments were advanced by people who were never going to go anyway. The fundamental problem is that over the last two decades the relative positions of Exeter RU and Exeter City have flipped - except that Exeter RU are more successful than Exeter City ever have been.

Anyway, I don't really have a dog in that fight - I went to the County Ground about twice. But you could feel Exeter RU professionalising and flexing its muscles even back at the start of the century. Which was the same (bizarre) period that Exeter City got involved with Uri Geller, Michael Jackson and David Blaine....

If only the internet had been more popular then. It was mind boggling when we had to read about it in the Express and Echo, God knows what social media would have made of it....

Glad you went back 20yrs to find that. Didn't mention the two owners getting sent down for fraud. The supporters trust taking them over, rebuilding the ground and building an academy that has netted them over 10m in player sales. 3 promotions, trips to playoff finals and all the amazing community work. The training ground being rebuilt as well.  A model that might be followed in RL?

[SalfordSlim]

Sporting hierarchy in Salford....

#1 - United

#2 - Citeh

#3 - Salford RLFC

#4 - Salford City FC

Only rivalry in the city is the obvious Utd/Citeh one but despite the usual claims from the Blues Salford is still massively Red. Plenty of crossover in the fan base of Salford Rugby & the other 3 (I've got ST's for both SRLFC & SCFC and have been a Utd fan since birth).

It's a struggle to see where Salford Rugby pull in the additional fans required without a spell of perceived success (consistent top half finishes would be great and a cup win would be immense). Even with the attractive style of play adopted by Rowley & the current team, Rugby League is still a very tough sell round here.