I thought their motivation was the desire to offer fair compensation to their players for the time off work that was required by playing in Saturday matches.
The breakaway was caused by the northern clubs desire to pay players which was outlawed at the time in Rugby Union.
Not sure profits were at the forefront of their minds.

True but I got called negative for saying Doncaster should have to focus on Championship 1 (actually somewhat stronger words than that) but if Doncaster want stability it will be in Championship 1 and I'm sure people would prefer a stable club midtable in Championship 1 than a yo-yo club with financial problems (which of course gets to the question of why if P & R is so damaging it is retained at that end of the Championship

I agree with your understanding of what broken time payments were for, but you need to ask why a club itself would want to pay broken time money in order to get certain players to play for them? Paying broken time payments was a not an act of charity, it was a commercial decision for the benefit of the clubs who paid them.

nice try, but old bait

Apparently in Yorkshire the County RFU turned a blind eye to broken time payments and allowed the Yorkshire Senior League (yes there were RU leagues then) a say in running itself. However, the 12 clubs in it turned it into a closed shop and when in the 1894-95 season the clubs re-elected Wakefield Trinity and Hull over second tier champions Morley and runners-up Castleford yet again excluding the second tier clubs the RFU wanted to take the league over themselves and thus 11 of the 12 clubs (with the exception of Dewsbury) decided to plan to break away.

In Lancashire the (3 tier) league was run directly by the County RFU with test matches for promotion and relegation (bottom to play top and 2nd bottom to play 2nd) and thus this issue didn't arise. However, they were stricter on broken time payments and after Salford, Wigan and Leigh got expelled from the league for broken time payments 9 clubs decided to join the Yorkshire clubs in breaking away (ironically Salford weren't one of them) and the two Cheshire clubs of Runcorn and Stockport switched as well, possibly to play at a higher standard than they could in Cheshire but not certain.

Initially there were no plans to have lower divisions as it was assumed eventually the NRU would rejoin the RFU, although some expansion to allow separate Lancashire and Yorkshire leagues did occur in 1896. However, second level clubs, especially in Lancashire, who relied on big matches against the clubs that had broken away started to switch even though it initially meant just friendlies and Challenge Cup. While it took longer for Yorkshire clubs to switch en masse due to them not having been treated well by bigger clubs, the Lancashire clubs largely switched in 1897 and professional second and third competitions were formed (although the third one only lasted a season), and the RU leagues were scrapped. In 1898 a professional Yorkshire Second Competition was formed but this was as a continued RU league in Yorkshire (no idea when it eventually was scrapped).

There's a lot more information than this about the time though in Mike Latham's book The Rugby League Myth: Forgotten clubs of Lancashire, Cheshire and Furness

True , bad manners on my part



Serious issues being discussed , apologies

I find it somewhat ironic that you a supporter of a club with similar problems to the clubs in the championship makes light of discussion to try to rectify those problems

Maybe you also are following the RFLs idea's for growth and that is why your attendances are , lets say , in need of improvement

Then you obviously misunderstand the concept of irony as much as you misunderstand the problems that Quins RL face.

I don't buy into the whole faux-concerned obsession about attendances, because 1) it's strictly for cretins, 2) I think it's more important to focus on the overall management and stability of the club rather than just the one issue elevated well above it's status by cretins too stupid to see anything other than the most superficial observation.

The reason we the fans of clubs struggling outside SL seem obsessed with attendances is because they are and always will be our main source of income and therefore survival

If your club because it is based in London can continue to attract individual investors to provide the finances to pay its way then good for you

Unfortunatley that type of investor is becoming harder if not completely impossible to attract at the level we now find ourselves

This thread was about Doncaster and peoples hopes for its survival as a club , it will only survive ,continue and hopefully prosper if it can attract more 'paying on the gate ' fans

What they dont need is another ' local boy made good ' walking in telling everybody they should be in SL and they are going to get them there

The funny thing is you really believe it happened

The first part is true, so in the first year the Northern Union played the XV man game and lo it were sh*te.
They then decided that to be able to pay their players they needed to make the game something for the fans to enjoy in order to make money.
Hence RL being the sport to make money by entertaining the punters.
Paying players and profit-making go hand in hand.

Does It?

Yes.

Oh, I have not posted this yet, so, I am absolutely gutted for you Donny fans and hope that you find some way to reclaim your club. This is utterly unfair on all your supporters who are decent people and have stuck by the club through repeated turmoil.

It is neither fair or unfair , it is what happens when your business is unsustainable at the level it is at

Doncasters costs were too high for it,s income

So like any business if it/they want to continue in that business they have to find a way to make is sustainable

There are a few different ways to do this , the most logical is to reduce it's overheads to the bare minimum and then try to increase its regular income , the best way to achieve this is to attempt to increase it's supporter base

Thats the difficult part , but if they can achieve it , it is also the best long term investment they will ever make and will make the future of their club more secure

It's time to get rid of the likes of Doncaster and Rochdale. There's obviously no market whatsoever for teams such as these and they seem to be on their arris every season no matter what

Could have said much the same about HKR in the 90's.

No you couldn't but that was an entirely predicatble responce


How many times did we go bust in that period?

It certainly wasn't at LEAST once a season, once is bad management but when it happens under every single guise you take there are obviously unworkable problems.

Not a very fair comparrison.HKR were a real sleeping giant in the late nineties/early 000's and had a history of big crowds,top players representing them and silverware.Neither Doncaster or Rochdale could say likewise.

But that doesn't disguise the fact that both Donny and Rochdale have a core support as loyal as any other - in fact, with the amount of e they have to play their way through, they're certainly more dedicated than most - and as such they shouldn't be 'got rid of' and tossed aside, purely because they're a smaller club.

It's not the fact they are a smaller club, they quite clearly cannot sustain a professional rugby league club

no.

i would prefer some positive comments rather than teh doom and gloom you normally spout

That's where they've been going wrong then, as they should be trying to sustain a semi-professional rugby league club.

A little unkind, rochdale have produced a number of england players, had crowds of upto 19,000 and won the challenge cup.

Sorry history is not allowed on the VT



RL as a sport cannot afford to lose any of its member clubs , we are a weak enough sport club wise as it is

What is needed is a reality check by all parts of the sport from top to bottom , and as I have said previously ' reality ' is not as cool as positive ' spin '