Clubs fora

[Anita Bath]

Bit of a sad state of affairs on the individual club fora. Since the start of May the numbers  of fora with new posts are 1 in super league, 9 in the championship and 4 in league 1. In some cases these involve just a small number of posters.

In many cases a club’s forum hasn't been used in over a year.

While some of these clubs may have alternative discussion boards that is not the case for all these clubs.

Is this something to be concerned about?

 

[Damien]

No. I never even think about using the club forums on this site and have never really done so in 20 odd years. Fans of most clubs have other sites and socials to communicate on and RLFans used to always be the site for more club related chat, not that I've looked at that for years either. This forum has always been about a more grown up discussion about the wider game, for me at least.

It's pretty clear though that forums of any kind just aren't what they were and are viewed as ancient by the youth of today. Most wouldn't even contemplate joining a forum these days and its all about other shorter and quicker forms of social media. 

[The Phantom Horseman]

It's something that frustrates me because you can have a more detailed and nuanced discussion about club-specific issues on individual club fora but as Anita Bath says so many

aren't used much.

My own club Featherstone has a very active forum on here thougheven there it's probably about 20 regular contributors and some more occasional ones, and I suspect the average age of posters is some way north of 50.

My own view is you can have far more interesting debates on here than on the FB groups/Twitter etc but each to his own I guess.

It doesn't help that there was a Beatamax/VHS-style split between TotalRL and RLFans many years ago so that in the Championship, for instance, the likes of Fev, Batley, York and Barrow still have fairly active TRL fora whereas Halifax, Bradford and London are RL Fans territory (as well as the FB groups of course).

Then there are quite a few teams where their main forum seems to be on another platform (Hull KR, Castleford, Salford, Widnes and Whitehaven come to mind) which makes them a bit harder to find for non-partisan fans of that team.

Then there are some teams that seem only to have FB groups (and maybe Twitter) and their fans seem to be happy being in that bubble, Sheffield being an obvious example.

It's a shame but old-style fora don't seem to have much appeal for the younger generation in particular.

[Monkeymagic22]

Personally I like and use the Fev Fans Forum on here. It’s always decent and respectful debate, which can’t be said sometimes of the Facebook site. 

[Barley Mow]

I don't have a club, so there's no club forum for me. But I do like to look at how partisan fans see things and also find out things that might not be on the main forums - so do keep an eye on the club forums.

I only very occasionally stick my nose in and comment.

[Sports Prophet]

I would only be interested in a Cronulla Sharks one as I wouldn’t have enough time to scour individual clubs. Shame to be missing out on some really potentially interesting topics, but never mind.

My preference is an open forum for views of everyone on various topics, including the Sharks, even if they are different to my own.

 

Edited May 15, 2023 by Sports Prophet

[John Drake]

6 hours ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

It doesn't help that there was a Beatamax/VHS-style split between TotalRL and RLFans many years ago so that in the Championship, for instance, the likes of Fev, Batley, York and Barrow still have fairly active TRL fora whereas Halifax, Bradford and London are RL Fans territory (as well as the FB groups of course).

When TRL was first set up, it had no club-related forums at all, just a general discussion area.

Club forums were only added on here after TRL merged with another site later on, which had a number of established and well-used club forums, particularly non-SL clubs, some of them semi-official, which we continue to host. 

Initially, we dropped the SL club forums that we inherited from the merger because no one was using them, along with some of the less frequented Championship ones, but then we'd get asked all the time why we only gave some clubs a platform on here and not all of them. So, we added back forums for all the pro clubs, whether anyone uses them or not.

Now we get asked why do we have forums that no one uses, illustrating that whatever you do on the internet, you can't please everyone!  

I'd happily drop the ones that don't get used, if only to tidy the place up a bit, but I know if we do that, we will get asked again why we only host some clubs and not all.

Essentially, the internet is a big place, and people will choose to go where they want to discuss stuff that interests them in whatever way they like. TRL is just one platform amongst many others. Some people will like it here, others won't, and that's ok.

[EagleEyePie]

6 hours ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

It's something that frustrates me because you can have a more detailed and nuanced discussion about club-specific issues on individual club fora but as Anita Bath says so many

aren't used much.

My own club Featherstone has a very active forum on here thougheven there it's probably about 20 regular contributors and some more occasional ones, and I suspect the average age of posters is some way north of 50.

My own view is you can have far more interesting debates on here than on the FB groups/Twitter etc but each to his own I guess.

It doesn't help that there was a Beatamax/VHS-style split between TotalRL and RLFans many years ago so that in the Championship, for instance, the likes of Fev, Batley, York and Barrow still have fairly active TRL fora whereas Halifax, Bradford and London are RL Fans territory (as well as the FB groups of course).

Then there are quite a few teams where their main forum seems to be on another platform (Hull KR, Castleford, Salford, Widnes and Whitehaven come to mind) which makes them a bit harder to find for non-partisan fans of that team.

Then there are some teams that seem only to have FB groups (and maybe Twitter) and their fans seem to be happy being in that bubble, Sheffield being an obvious example.

It's a shame but old-style fora don't seem to have much appeal for the younger generation in particular.

I'm quite fortunate in the sense that Wigan have two relatively active fans forums, one on RLFans and the other being Wigan Warriors Fans, so there's always a place for specific club focused debate. Even having two can be a bit tiresome when you end up having similar conversations on both and end up cutting and pasting responses from one to the other to save some time.

I still find myself being most active on the main forums here though as you get a much more varied debate and it's well moderated. I reckon being in my early 30's puts me as one of the younger users on this forum and the others I use but as you said the other platforms aren't really as good for debating.

I still use Twitter but often find myself just writing generic stuff after the game because the character limit doesn't allow for more detail, then only really interacting with Wigan fans, and then there's the passive aggressive 'quote retweets' that might gain attention from opposing fans, but it's more about one upmanship than debate.

As for Facebook groups, they are all the proof needed that making people use their real names online doesn't make them behave better. It's an absolute cesspool that makes Twitter seem civilised.

Whenever Wigan would loan a young player to a Championship or League One club I'd visit their forum and ask for opinions but there aren't as many club specific ones around and many aren't well used. Twitter can be useful but it's hard to direct a tweet to a specific set of fans unless they follow you.

We should appreciate this type of forum while we can.

[The Phantom Horseman]

2 minutes ago, EagleEyePie said:

As for Facebook groups, they are all the proof needed that making people use their real names online doesn't make them behave better.

 

So true!

[EssexRL]

I have to say I connect with other Skolars fans via the fans FB group, although the club appears in the general discussion on this forum more often than our size probably justifies.