WAY back in the day, when amateur Rugby League was almost entirely run and administered by enthusiastic volunteers, such folk seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of not only clubs in their area, but of local players.
I’m thinking in particular of Doreen and Dave Kenny, who dealt with registrations for the CMS Yorkshire League at a time when that competition housed up to ten divisions (as did the North West Counties and Pennine Leagues).
I was, in the mid-to-late 1990s, the secretary of Methley Monarchs, a newly-formed club on the outskirts of Castleford.
We were based at the Unicorn – Kelvin Skerrett’s pub – and Kelvin’s dad Ernie was our chairman. We also had highly experienced men such as Keith Pickering on board.
We weren’t a bad side. Ernie, for example, had been heavily involved with the crack Leeds outfit Bisons and several veterans had joined us.
Nevertheless we were a new and, in terms of playing standards, fairly mixed team. The Yorkshire League put us in the bottom division but after three or four games opted (as was the league’s habit) to adjust their sections.
That meant, for us at Methley, the Monarchs were elevated a couple of tiers.
We weren’t happy, in fact Ernie – a man with very deep knowledge of the game – was blazing and accompanied me to the Scarborough pub in Castleford (a place I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in paying homage to former Rugby Leaguer editor Steve Brady) where a number of appeals, including our own, were to be heard by the league’s management.
We failed and Ernie was even more angry. The thing was, though, that the Kennys and the rest of the Yorkshire League committee were absolutely correct, at least as far as their assessment of our own qualities was concerned.
We snared the title in our higher division and did the same the following year (I’ll skate over what happened next!).
Anyway, all this came to mind when Haresfinch got in touch last week over the Rugby Football League’s insistence that, following the National Community Rugby League initiative, the St Helens outfit must play in the North West Conference rather than stay – as Haresfinch wish – in what appears to be the less demanding North West Men’s League.
I’m not sure, as I pen this, whether my anecdote regarding the CMS Yorkshire League supports the RFL, or backs Haresfinch.
I think, on balance, it supports the latter, as their very survival is, they say, behind their request to drop down. The RFL are not quite offering to offer that flexibility, not at this stage anyway.
The situation is complicated by the fact that – as I mentioned the other week – the RFL had allowed a team not a million miles away from Haresfinch (Ince Rose Bridge in fact) to drop from the National Conference League Premier Division into the North West Conference, although that dispensation seems to have been granted because relegated Lock Lane were happy to stay in the top flight (to be known as the National Premier – we’re in a bit of a tangled period right now).
Oulton Raiders, similarly, are now to be included in the National Division One.
Harefinch’s problem is that because of the RFL’s stance (some say intransigence) their open-age team might fold, given that they’ve had to recruit several young players following a number of retirements and transfers.
They were, in truth, happy as they were in the North West Men’s League but the RFL’s restructuring has pulled the carpet from under their feet.
Their plight, shared by others, I suspect (we’ll find out more on that in the coming weeks) is none of their doing.
And the saga brings to mind the statement by one-time RFL employee David Gent, who also had visionary plans for restructuring and who – like Martin Coyd MBE, who is driving the NCRL, I had a lot of time for – that “there may be casualties”.
Those casualties (and I hope that there are none) stem from what amounts to a “like it or lump it” approach.
I feel for the administrators and coaches at clubs such as Haresfinch who are only too aware (as I was when I was also involved in running clubs) that it can be all very well earning promotions, or telling players that league operators insist that your team operates at a higher level.
The fact is that some lads, waking up on a Saturday morning with a drubbing in prospect, will often think “stuff this” and stay under the covers. And it’s the club administrators who, not being in ivory towers, have to deal with the reality.
It’s all very confusing and will, I fear, become more so. Indeed, what are we to make of the fact that Woodhouse Warriors, who lost to Mirfield Spartans in Saturday’s Betfred Challenge Cup first-round tie, have been allocated a berth in the Yorkshire Men’s League’s Entry League (a section, really, for new or rebuilding sides that are ‘testing the water’) this summer?
As I told Warriors secretary Diane Calvert, that information really gasted my flabber. We’re in weird times.
Hopefully it’s not too late for the RFL to reconsider regarding Haresfinch and others (after all, a key tenet of their drive, I think, is that teams and players find their right levels). Otherwise our sport could hit real trouble.
Perhaps it would have been better to have set the ‘pyramid initiative’ for 2027 so that everyone would have had plenty of time in which to know what they were aiming for in terms of targeting promotions.
Meanwhile, it was distressing to learn on Friday that the RAF were unable to raise a team for Saturday’s Challenge Cup tie at Heworth.
The RAF had a side assembled and ready to play seven days earlier, only for the pitch at York to fail a late fitness test, so no one can be blamed.
It’s another potential issue when matches are scheduled for January although (as we all know) pitches can be just as solid and dangerous in summer.
Also very saddening is the fact the Featherstone Rovers have not been allowed to play in the Betfred Championship this year.
Their women’s team, though, is continuing, and I’m glad to hear that the Millennium Stadium will, as things stand anyway, still host such as BARLA and Women’s Amateur Rugby League finals.
Hopefully the Women’s Student League, which resumes on Sunday after the Christmas break, will prosper and climax, as last year, at Featherstone.