Amateur Rugby League clubs will again have the chance to raise much-needed funds following the announcement by the Rugby Football League that the Community Raffle will again be taking place after last year’s success.
I’m sure that most if not all grassroots outfits, including schools, will fully buy into an initiative which I know from personal experience, when the raffle was launched a decade or so ago, is a real win-win affair, with 70 per cent of each £5 ticket being retained by the selling organisation and the other £1.50 being passed on to the central prize pot in addition to funding running costs.
Full details are listed elsewhere in today’s issue of League Express and I anticipate that the RFL will be inundated with applications for what, again, will be a digital operation.
I imagine that the go-ahead National Conference League’s Waterhead will be among them. The Warriors are enjoying a particularly heady spell just now, having won the BARLA National Cup nine days ago with a scintillating performance against Sharlston Rovers and, on Good Friday, beating Saddleworth Rangers in the Oldham ARL’s highly prestigious Standard Cup Final.
I was at the first game, at the Millennium Stadium, Post Office Road, Featherstone, but sadly couldn’t attend Friday’s match because of work commitments. It was a very enjoyable afternoon at Featherstone, even if the game was a little one-sided (although not, perhaps, as much as the 42-0 scoreline would suggest). Rovers, who are in something of a rebuilding phase under new player/coach Ady Mulcahy, applied a fair bit of pressure in the early stages, despite playing up the pronounced Post Office Road slope, and actually forced a couple of goal-line drop-outs, but were unable to turn that pressure into points. Waterhead, meanwhile, entertained the crowd with some superb football and their very many supporters in the main stand were understandably in party mood from the early stages, including those surrounding the press box (several of whom, including young lads who had helped the Warriors fulfil their NCL fixture with Bentley the previous day, were very helpful to me personally in helping identify their team’s scorers).
The atmosphere was extremely good natured, which is something I’m stressing as Waterhead may be in a spot of bother because, on the final whistle, two or three flares were lit in the stand and on the pitch, while I also understand that a perimeter advertising board was damaged through giddy fans beating on it as excitement grew.
The Warriors, I hear, quickly accepted responsibility for those of their supporters who perhaps overstepped the mark, which is creditable of them, but hardly surprising – this, after all, is the club that set something of a template for others a few weeks ago by organising support for Ukrainian refugees. BARLA bosses will, of course, have to apply whatever sanctions they see fit for what happened at Post Office Road. I hope they will try to go as easily as they can on Waterhead, though.
Meanwhile Sharlston, who a decade or so back were in the middle of a spell in which they were almost a fixture in the National Cup Final, were understandably despondent on the final whistle. The 2022 final possibly came a tad too early for the rebuilding Rovers but I did suggest to Mulcahy, when I interviewed him in the immediate aftermath, that they could very well be back again. What I perhaps should have mentioned to him is that there are precedents for such a notion. Sharlston had gone down to a record defeat in a National Cup Final but another side that lost heavily in a decider (Wath Brow Hornets, who went down cruelly in their own Cumbrian patch at the Copeland Stadium, by 30 points against Skirlaugh back in 1998-99) certainly used the experience as a platform for sustained success. I reckon that Rovers could, similarly, be on the beginning of a similarly upwards curve.
Talking of Wath Brow, I thoroughly enjoyed League Net’s coverage of their victory over Egremont Rangers in Saturday’s sole match in the National Conference League.
The game – which could have gone either way, despite underdogs Rangers having a man red-carded midway through the first half – was a cracker, the background scenery, as you might expect for a club on the edge of the Lake District, was stunning, and the commentary provided by Dave Parkinson and Allan Coleman was particularly informative,
Cracking stuff all round. Roll on the next offering, when Hunslet Club Parkside host West Hull on Saturday week.
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