The M62

[Tommygilf]

Shocker perhaps and I promise I'm not trolling, but if we are to go for more of this as a strategy, not implanting clubs in the South of England etc, then I think we need to be bold about what our vision is. I enjoy looking at things from a perspective opposite to what I normally would have, but then trying to make it work. Partly this was prompted by the Lancaster thread, partly also by Goole's inclusion in League 1 next year.

Michael Carter said a few years back that in his opinion RL should be looking to be the number 2 sport in the North of England, but what does that look like in practice? Where does funding and attention go?

For me, I'd almost disregard any town that has a team in already, at least from a central POV. The RFL don't need to be worrying about Dewsbury, Leigh or Hull, they've got existing professional clubs already to do that.

Where do we look at and how do we bring them in then?

Well to take the first point, let's go along the M62 (in its broadest sense perhaps the North of England) and make sure each town has an RL club (at least as an aspiration). Goole is a great example, to look at some others: Brighouse, Stockport, Cleckheaton/Liversedge, Selby, Scunthorpe, Bramley/West Leeds, Bingley, Durham, Harrogate, Scarborough, Bury, Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley, Preston, Manchester, Southport, Blackpool, Otley, Lancaster, Chester, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Carlisle, Darlington, Middlesbrough etc - you get the picture. To be truly strong in the North of England, we need presence in these sorts of places. That's before we look a little further south to Chesterfield, Stoke, Crewe, Nottingham, Derby, Mansfield. One thing about a lot of these teams is that they have had teams in the past, they've just not been sustainable at the level demanded by the sport at the time because we didn't have a level appropriate to them.

That brings me to the second aspect of the above point; how do we include them? This is where I think the entire sport below the fully professional level needs a rethink. I'd go as far to consider "Open" competition way down the pyramid, regionalisation (and an acceptance of open payments at the  regionalised levels). Regionalisation cuts down costs, important given the small following many clubs would have, but being open makes clubs attractive to many not just enthusiasts. The NCL would still be an amateur preserve, but I would accept that there needs to be a level, below Championship/League 1, where clubs that aspire to those upper national levels can compete on a similar basis to them. I've no doubt that like football, there would be transitional aspects within the pyramid with some semi pros, some just expenses, and some amateur.

Thoughts?

[Worzel]

8 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Shocker perhaps and I promise I'm not trolling, but if we are to go for more of this as a strategy, not implanting clubs in the South of England etc, then I think we need to be bold about what our vision is. I enjoy looking at things from a perspective opposite to what I normally would have, but then trying to make it work. Partly this was prompted by the Lancaster thread, partly also by Goole's inclusion in League 1 next year.

Michael Carter said a few years back that in his opinion RL should be looking to be the number 2 sport in the North of England, but what does that look like in practice? Where does funding and attention go?

For me, I'd almost disregard any town that has a team in already, at least from a central POV. The RFL don't need to be worrying about Dewsbury, Leigh or Hull, they've got existing professional clubs already to do that.

Where do we look at and how do we bring them in then?

Well to take the first point, let's go along the M62 (in its broadest sense perhaps the North of England) and make sure each town has an RL club (at least as an aspiration). Goole is a great example, to look at some others: Brighouse, Stockport, Cleckheaton/Liversedge, Selby, Scunthorpe, Bramley/West Leeds, Bingley, Durham, Harrogate, Scarborough, Bury, Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley, Preston, Manchester, Southport, Blackpool, Otley, Lancaster, Chester, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Carlisle, Darlington, Middlesbrough etc - you get the picture. To be truly strong in the North of England, we need presence in these sorts of places. That's before we look a little further south to Chesterfield, Stoke, Crewe, Nottingham, Derby, Mansfield. One thing about a lot of these teams is that they have had teams in the past, they've just not been sustainable at the level demanded by the sport at the time because we didn't have a level appropriate to them.

That brings me to the second aspect of the above point; how do we include them? This is where I think the entire sport below the fully professional level needs a rethink. I'd go as far to consider "Open" competition way down the pyramid, regionalisation (and an acceptance of open payments at the  regionalised levels). Regionalisation cuts down costs, important given the small following many clubs would have, but being open makes clubs attractive to many not just enthusiasts. The NCL would still be an amateur preserve, but I would accept that there needs to be a level, below Championship/League 1, where clubs that aspire to those upper national levels can compete on a similar basis to them. I've no doubt that like football, there would be transitional aspects within the pyramid with some semi pros, some just expenses, and some amateur.

Thoughts?

I think there's a good strategic argument for making a virtue out of what otherwise could be a weakness, and focus on being true to your heritage. I don't think it's the best strategy for the sport, but it is certainly better than pretending you have ambitions to be more geographically spread but only paying lip service to trying to achieve that.

Presently we do the latter, and it's the worst of both worlds. 

[Archie Gordon]

24 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

... but if we are to go for more of this as a strategy, not implanting clubs in the South of England etc, ...

...

Thoughts?

How patronising.

[Tommygilf]

3 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

How patronising.

How so?

[Tommygilf]

20 minutes ago, Worzel said:

I think there's a good strategic argument for making a virtue out of what otherwise could be a weakness, and focus on being true to your heritage. I don't think it's the best strategy for the sport, but it is certainly better than pretending you have ambitions to be more geographically spread but only paying lip service to trying to achieve that.

Presently we do the latter, and it's the worst of both worlds. 

That is my major gripe tbf, and even then, I'm not 100% sure it would work anyway.

[Archie Gordon]

Just now, Tommygilf said:

How so?

Why are Southern clubs referred to as "implanted"? And implanted by whom?

[Tommygilf]

Just now, Archie Gordon said:

Why are Southern clubs referred to as "implanted"? And implanted by whom?

People who think the sport should focus on the heartlands, and by the RFL, I assume they think.

Perhaps I wasn't clear but I am playing devil's advocate a bit here.

[JonM]

I think if you're going down this route, the goal should be to create 20-30 more 'big' amateur clubs in those places - the kind that run boys and girls teams from u6 up to u16, open age, womens, masters, touch/tag, their own clubhouse & pitches.  Put Mick Hogan in charge (or get his strategic input at least) as he was able to make good progress doing this across the north east before the funding was pulled. If you want to build a 'pyramid' you need a wide base first.

Takes money though and a long-term commitment to get it to the point where it becomes self-perpetuating. It can be done in new areas - look at eg Bedford Tigers, Cramlington Rockets or Heysham Atoms, but a pot of money for development officers, seed funding, running events/ festivals etc. would make a big difference. Simply cannot see the RFL being able to persuade pro clubs to give up money to do this though.

Edited September 27 by JonM

[Tommygilf]

2 minutes ago, JonM said:

I think if you're going down this route, the goal should be to create 20-30 more 'big' amateur clubs in those places - the kind that run boys and girls teams from u6 up to u16, open age, womens, masters, touch/tag, their own clubhouse & pitches.  Put Mick Hogan in charge (or get his strategic input at least) as he was able to make good progress doing this across the north east before the funding was pulled. If you want to build a 'pyramid' you need a wide base first.

Takes money though and a long-term commitment to get it to the point where it becomes self-perpetuating. It can be done in new areas - look at eg Bedford Tigers, Cramlington Rockets or Heysham Atoms, but a pot of money for development offices, seed funding, running events/ festivals etc. would make a big difference. Simply cannot see the RFL being able to persuade pro clubs to give up money to do this though.

I think that would be very important, tbh I'd see them almost similarly like RU clubs with a 1st team in the pyramid proper and a junior club as part of that.

[Archie Gordon]

I think that the obvious problem is that you can't implant a new club anywhere. New clubs will appear where the volunteers appear. That might be in Selby, it might be in Bury St Edmunds.

This is true even if you went around offering new clubs a £10k start up fund. Without a volunteer base, the £10k would disappear in 18 months with nothing to show for it. 

[Eddie]

Who’s going to run and fund all these new clubs, and play for them? 

[Tommygilf]

13 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

I think that the obvious problem is that you can't implant a new club anywhere. New clubs will appear where the volunteers appear. That might be in Selby, it might be in Bury St Edmunds.

This is true even if you went around offering new clubs a £10k start up fund. Without a volunteer base, the £10k would disappear in 18 months with nothing to show for it. 

That's why we had development officers

[Archie Gordon]

1 minute ago, Tommygilf said:

That's why we had development officers

But I think you put development officers where the clubs/volunteers are. DOs accelerate existing activity.

[48C North Stand]

An issue is perception to the rest of the sporting nation. You can create and fund 50 new teams. But if this results in 47 going to the wall due to a lack of interest or participation or ongoing funding then the perception is likely to continue to be a niche sport in terminal decline. 

RL is a sport with close historical ties to northern working class heavy industry areas. Like the marching brass bands founded by the miners, RL now finds itself a parentless child. If it is to thrive, this link with the past needs to be cherished but relinquished iin order to open up the game to new markets. 

[JonM]

25 minutes ago, Archie Gordon said:

I think that the obvious problem is that you can't implant a new club anywhere. New clubs will appear where the volunteers appear. That might be in Selby, it might be in Bury St Edmunds.

This is true even if you went around offering new clubs a £10k start up fund. Without a volunteer base, the £10k would disappear in 18 months with nothing to show for it. 

What you can do though, is to provide help and support to volunteers long enough for things to become self sustaining. One of my old bandmates is now a girls RU coach. She never played herself, never did any sport in fact, but her daughter went to a taster session, wanted to play and the development officer was able to get enough parents involved to get girls teams going at an existing club and a smaller number of them to do coaching courses, take care of membership/ DBS stuff and so on.

We had a world cup game in Middlesbrough - several thousand interested locals there. Would've been easy to say, "Hey Kids, if you want to play, come to this place at such and such a time" and try to get some teams going - if there was someone was being paid to do that. If the RFL had a strategy to employ development officers, recruit volunteers and create new clubs/ make existing ones more sustainable, it can be done. 

My running coach travels about an hour each way to run two girls RL teams. They have no local opposition, so have to travel at least an hour for games. The one advantage to trying to do this in the M62 rather than say Bury St Edmunds (whose RU club is a good example of exactly this approach tbh) is that you have availability of local fixtures in a way you don't elsewhere. Although equally, some of those existing amateur clubs aren't exactly the friendly welcoming places that would encourage people to get more involved  And I guess you might say that the same conditions of having local opposition already there are true in London, or at least were at one point.

 

Edited September 27 by JonM

[Fly-By-TheWire]

Thought this would be a handy roadworks awareness thread, from the title.

[JonM]

There's an argument for a "women and wheelchairs first" strategy I suppose - there's far less competition from existing soccer and RU clubs?  Widnes's womens and wheelchair teams have a fixture list that includes Leamington Spa and Hereford, for example.

[Harry Stottle]

1 hour ago, Tommygilf said:

Shocker perhaps and I promise I'm not trolling, but if we are to go for more of this as a strategy, not implanting clubs in the South of England etc, then I think we need to be bold about what our vision is. I enjoy looking at things from a perspective opposite to what I normally would have, but then trying to make it work. Partly this was prompted by the Lancaster thread, partly also by Goole's inclusion in League 1 next year.

Michael Carter said a few years back that in his opinion RL should be looking to be the number 2 sport in the North of England, but what does that look like in practice? Where does funding and attention go?

For me, I'd almost disregard any town that has a team in already, at least from a central POV. The RFL don't need to be worrying about Dewsbury, Leigh or Hull, they've got existing professional clubs already to do that.

Where do we look at and how do we bring them in then?

Well to take the first point, let's go along the M62 (in its broadest sense perhaps the North of England) and make sure each town has an RL club (at least as an aspiration). Goole is a great example, to look at some others: Brighouse, Stockport, Cleckheaton/Liversedge, Selby, Scunthorpe, Bramley/West Leeds, Bingley, Durham, Harrogate, Scarborough, Bury, Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley, Preston, Manchester, Southport, Blackpool, Otley, Lancaster, Chester, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Carlisle, Darlington, Middlesbrough etc - you get the picture. To be truly strong in the North of England, we need presence in these sorts of places. That's before we look a little further south to Chesterfield, Stoke, Crewe, Nottingham, Derby, Mansfield. One thing about a lot of these teams is that they have had teams in the past, they've just not been sustainable at the level demanded by the sport at the time because we didn't have a level appropriate to them.

That brings me to the second aspect of the above point; how do we include them? This is where I think the entire sport below the fully professional level needs a rethink. I'd go as far to consider "Open" competition way down the pyramid, regionalisation (and an acceptance of open payments at the  regionalised levels). Regionalisation cuts down costs, important given the small following many clubs would have, but being open makes clubs attractive to many not just enthusiasts. The NCL would still be an amateur preserve, but I would accept that there needs to be a level, below Championship/League 1, where clubs that aspire to those upper national levels can compete on a similar basis to them. I've no doubt that like football, there would be transitional aspects within the pyramid with some semi pros, some just expenses, and some amateur.

Thoughts?

As you probably know from my previous comments, I would use and utilise all of the available resources on concentrating on what we have and make the heartlands the best version of what it can be at both professional and all community levels, if we can succeed in doing that then it puts us in a much stronger position both financially and organisationally to venture out in spreading the game as you suggest and also further afield.

[Eddie]

55 minutes ago, Fly-By-TheWire said:

Thought this would be a handy roadworks awareness thread, from the title.

I thought it was going to be a thread about the pros and cons of each M62 service station. 

[Just Browny]

I don't see any harm in acknowledging that there are certain advantages from newer clubs being located relatively close to the heartlands. Player availability, and travel times to and from existing clubs, are important considerations in League One and the Championship. I have no problem with Goole because (1) someone wants to start a club there and (2) if you live in Goole, you have to go 20+ miles to the nearest club so there is a bit of a geographical gap to fill there.

I can't get on board with the principle of saying we should have a club in Brighouse, Cleckheaton or Liversedge before we look to say Derby or Chesterfield though. There are existing amateur clubs in those places and if there was appetite for a pro club someone would have made one by now. There's not because people can go and watch Huddersfield, Bradford, Batley or Dewsbury if they wish to.

[Eddie]

31 minutes ago, JonM said:

There's an argument for a "women and wheelchairs first" strategy I suppose - there's far less competition from existing soccer and RU clubs?  Widnes's womens and wheelchair teams have a fixture list that includes Leamington Spa and Hereford, for example.

That’s because people in Hereford and Leamington have started teams though, nothing to do with any strategy. 

[Gerrumonside ref]

I read a very interesting article on the exponential growth of boys and girls ‘flag American Football’ in the UK in 2024.

One thing organisers were saying is that schools in particular were adopting it as an alternative to traditional contact sports and it wasn’t gender specific.

It got me thinking that growing ‘flag rugby league’ equivalents might enjoy a similar reception from schools and act as as a gateway to either trying full contact 13 a side or even just developing the fans/volunteers of the future.

Using the bordering towns and districts in the heartlands would seem the next logical step.

One thing the ‘flag American Football’ phenomenon was emphasising was a simple playbook that the kids all learned and taking turns passing and running/receiving allowing enthusiastic kids of all shapes and sizes to play.

There’s definitely a successful formula working that we might be able to adapt for our own purposes more than we do already.

 

Edited September 27 by Gerrumonside ref

[JonM]

12 minutes ago, Eddie said:

That’s because people in Hereford and Leamington have started teams though, nothing to do with any strategy. 

I don't think anyone is arguing that the RFL has any strategy. The discussion is 'if the RFL was actually trying to expand the sport rather than rearranging deckchairs and hoping something turns up, how should they do so?' and Tommy was playing devil's advocate for the people that keep cropping up saying we should concentrate on the 'heartland' and set up pro clubs in Cleckmondthorpe or wherever.

Point about women and wheelchair RL is that you're starting from a low base. If a team from Liverpool enters the womens league, they're playing teams of a similar standard, from places you can find on the map. If "Liverpool" enter the northwest counties mens league, they're playing teams from districts in small towns. A u-11 boy in the northwest can easily find a local soccer or even rugby union team to play for, that's not so obviously the case for girls, so there's more of an opportunity for RL to provide something.

[Sports Prophet]

I think there is much credit to the theory @Tommygilf, but I don’t think in this day and age strict amateurism has a place, let alone being enforceably policed at a grassroots level, so I would just throw the whole pyramid open. 

There is a lot to be said for bunkering down in uncertain times to capitalise on your strengths which are still well short of achieving peak performance.

[Griff]

I'm surprised you missed out Barnsley from your OP, Tommy.  I've always thought it a bit weird that the Northern Union/Soccer boundary roughly followed the modern South Yorks/West Yorks council territory boundary.

Wherever you plonk a new team down, whether it be close to or far from the M62, you'll always need a deep-pocketed backer and enthusiastic volunteers to get it off the ground.  The requirements don't change much with location, though recruiting can be easier if you live near the player pool.

Thanks for spelling Middlesbrough correctly, by the way.