But as i said , we are not in ' business ' competition with the Championship clubs , SL clubs are business rivals , it is in their interests to see us struggle

Far too often they speak with forked tongue when in discussions with Championship clubs , I wouldn't trust any of them

The RFL also have an agenda , they are massively SL biased ,

We are not in competition for SL places Joe ,the RFL would happily burn down the bridge right now , in fact I think they will

But NOT at the same rate or amount.

very true, but none are left to live or die by natural causes.

Some very valid comments, but a couple I want to take issue with;

- the RFL are not 'massively SL biased', but it is very complicated. First up, the SL is our flagship competition, and our strongest attack brand. The RFL doesn't really have an attack brand of its own. Whether it should is a different matter.

Second the SL clubs are far and away the strongest, and they know that, and they expect to get back what they bring in. Some have been lucky (Cas, Wakey) with timing, but some are 'big' clubs even when not performing (Leeds, Wigan, Warrington, Saints) some others are big-city clubs (Salford, Bradford, Hull, Hull KR) and some are expansion projects who bring more to the 'global' game (Crusaders, Quins and Les Cats). On the basis of the revenue brought in, these clubs massively outstrip the rest of the game put together.

The RFL's battle is to keep these big clubs engaged in the best interests of the sport, without milking them so hard that they cut the rest of the game adrift. Football failed in the same battle (the Football League lost control of the Premier League) and may even do the same at Continental Level (talk of a breakaway European League that pushed UEFA into delivering a minimum of 8 European Games to Champions League clubs). THe RFU have suffered similar challenges, though their club game was traditionally not as strong, and they score much more diverse revenue from Internationals and other Twickenham games.

The RFL (the individuals I've spoken to) categorically don't want to burn bridges. If they could support 2 full time pro divisions with P&R and an full pyramid into the semi-pro and amateur levels below, they would. But they can't force SL to share its revenue down the line, and the total revenue that comes into the game isn't sufficient to support that.

The crucial factor is: the RFL doesn't control the clubs. The clubs are independent businesses that put their own short term agenda first. If that means risking bakruptcy to sign an NRL halfback, they'll do it. We've seen it ourselves at Leigh in the Bell/Hart era.

Franchising is an attempt to give stability and a framework. I don't happen to agree with it personally, but it's definitely done with the best intentions. It most certainly wasn't done to pull up the drawbridge - in fact it was explicity done to stop the SL clubs pulling up the drawbridge by themselves.

The battle that the RFL has - and that we should be supporting - is to keep the independent, powerful SL clubs (Leeds, Wiggin et al) in line with the idea that the whole game has to be supported for their long term growth. Wigan RL is a better business of Leigh RL is very strong. Leigh RL are a better club is Miners and Easts are very strong. Miners and Easts are a better club if Golborne Parkside, Culcheth Eagles and Atherton are strong. And every single club is better if every kid aged 12 and upwards is getting 3 hours a week of quality RL coaching.

The bigger battle (of which I'm on the front line, if you like) is to persuade everyone, from Wigan RL to Parkside under 12's, that they will be bigger and better clubs if Bristol are in the SL and Exeter are in the Championship, and every kid from Penzance to Tewkesbury aged 12 and upwards is getting 3 hours a week of quality RL coaching.

i.e - back to the thread:

Promoting the (long term) interest of the game in the North
= promoting the game in the south west, north east, London and midlands.

That's a BIG sell. Flatcaps and whippets all round!

Franchising is soley in place to allow expansion , salary caps can prevent overspending , my problem with the RFL is simple really , they are a one trick pony , you dont market a BMW or a Jaguar in the same way you market a Skoda or a Proton , but that is what the RFL seem to be trying to do , whatever they do in SL , they seem to have a go at doing in the Championships , it doesn't work like that

Disagree - it's to stop teams crippling themselves in the chase for promotion/to avoid relegation. QV Wigan breaking the cap but staying up. It's also to allow stability to build business plans, recognising that players need contracts of more than one season at a time, but clubs who get relegated can get locked into wages they can't pay (qv football). We didn't have franchising when Broncos were leapfrogged into the top flight. Or PSG. Or Les Cats.




You might really be hitting the nail on the head here.

Individuals I've spoken to about this kind of thing know we don't have an attack brand apart from Super League. But the Super League brand is no damn use to championship clubs. Funnily enough its perfect for the SW, where SL is what gets the coverage, and where rugby means union.

, what they need is leadership in idea's and funding of ' troops ' that can be in the town centres , in the supermarkets , in the shopping malls , at the school fairs

It upsets me that money is wasted on ' gimmicks ' like Toulouses inclusion and the NRC 9 s , yes it's great being on the TV , but in reality it isn't , it costs money , and it doesn't always show the sport in a good light , low crowds , little away support , poor atmosphere

But with a bit more imagination it could be better , a support team going round to each town the week before giving out free tickets and making sure the night is well supported , help in getting away support to travel

The clubs get £ 4,000 to spend on the night , and what do most end up doing ? aimlessly giving away tickets to the first come first served , maybe employing a tribute band or singer

More than one way to skin a cat is the saying

At the moment we have one full time professional league, two semi pro leagues & the amateur game without a direct planned pathway into the semi prop level for the clubs. We need to have clear, planned promotion/ relegation to & from each of the levels of the game for all clubs ie Full to Part time to Amateur. However for clubs to get promoted they need to meet clear criteria eg turn-over, stadia, player base, crowd potential.

Within the professional leagues we have two London, two Welsh & two French teams with a protected status different from the other teams within the league. This doesnt work & only causes resentment, either all the teams have same status within each league or create a separate professional (full/Semi pro) for expansion/ development area teams.

I totally agree with all of this, except I don't know what possible alternatives there are. The gulf between f/t and p/t, in terms of turnover and revenue, is so great.

If anything, it would be straightforward to set up a complete pyramid below Super League. No need for 'amateur', let the clubs work out if/what they can afford to pay, and to who, like they do in soccer below the football league. No need, then, for BARLA. No need for winter rugby. Februrary to October for the whole sport (except, perhaps, the SRL).

Scorpions are all welsh. Tolouse could be all French and still compete. Skolars struggle, mixing local lads with exiles living in London (the city of 20 million people from 9 to 5, so not unrepresentative) and Leeds Met students. Different rules for Quins, Les Cats and Crusaders, but, I think, worth the compromise for the dimensions it brings to the game, long term.

You describe a perfect world, and one I'd aspire to. But it's just not possible at this stage in the gme's development.

The saying goes " You can please some of the people some of the time but you can't please all of the people all of the time " unfortunately the " some" are in SL

and, unfortunately, the SL is the drawcard that brings in the tv money, the sponsors, and most of the paying crowds.

Now - hear me out - if the RFL ran ALL the clubs...

...all the revenue could be split evenly
...we could have a 'draft' system for each new intake of u17's into adult rugby
...we could have 2 or 3 full time professional divisions with P&R (albeit the stars would get lower wages)
...the RFL could make the business case for expansion teams to bring in new/more money (eg, Coventry Bears, Dublin Royals... wherever..)
...the RFL could control import quotas in the spirit in which they were intended....


just a thought.

You seem to know what you are talking about so why the bl@@dy hell are you not in charge ! i have been reading your post and there are a lot of valid points its a pity the powers that be are not as intelligent

You're too kind...!

BUT..

The RFL is chock full with talented people who love the game and desperately want to do the right thing. You'll just have to trust me on that one



But the RFL...

- is actually lots of different businesses under one banner

(eg, a ticket seller, a sponsorship and tv rights seller, an events organiser, a writer and adminitrator of the laws of the game, a political negotiatior and lobby group, a grassroots development co-ordinator, an elite performace environment, a coach-education body, a competitions organiser, a selection and management process for representative teams ... etc etc...).

- and it's highest profile, flagship vehicle (the SL) involves 14 independent, bloody-minded, self-interested businesses that it has absolutely no control over (unless they get in serious financial strife, in which case the RFL gets blamed for bailing them out)

Well it beggers belief why the RFL continue to do so if as you say they have no control over SL. The trouble is that the SL clubs are bringing through their own young players and then look overseas for the rest {well the top clubs} so have no need for the champ clubs so in a sense don't care what happens to us and i am only talking about the big clubs,John Kear actually said that more money should be given to the champ clubs and help bring them through but that would mean less money for SL so that aint gonna happen is it .
Do the different bodies of the RFL actually sit down together and discuss matters or is it a case of bad communication.?

They have no control over the businesses that run the individual SL clubs... not quite the same thing.



The RFL Player Pathways are considered best practice in English sport, from u12-18. I've been in meetings with professionals from lots of sports in the deep south, and heard presenters talk about us in reverential terms. SL gets involved in signing players when they turn old enough, but the junior development and pathways in our sport are exemplary (and run by the RFL). Of course the pro clubs know what's going on at junior level....



I couldn't possibly comment

. Actually, it's better than I've known in almost every commercial organisation I've worked in. Which isn't to say it couldn't sometimes be better, but its an aspiration. There are crossfunctional teams and groups working on specific projects, but sometimes things are missed (as happens everywhere). The RFL has gone from 50+ staff, to 200+ staff and 100 community coaches, in about 2 years. Any organisation would find that a challenge... but they work very hard at it.

One major aspect that really does not help Leigh is the fact that within 10 miles there are several SL teams. Bearing in mind the fact that for a few quid more your'e gonna see top rank SL players, if you are a floating supporter who are you gonna pay to see?

That is the problem ,unless you are a lapsed supporter who would only come back to Leigh .The new support we are trying to attract will as you say look to SL for a game as they have the best players but not always necessarily the best games.A new fan of the sport may not bother with the fact they come from Leigh or the surrounding area and prefer to watch Wigan as they are doing well at the moment ,a fact of the 80s when they were winning everything and a lot of people jumped on the band wagon of their success .A friend of mine who is a Leigh fan and lives in Leigh has a neighbour who supports Wigan and calls Leigh ,hows that for loyalty to your town club ,but some people are like that ,they will only support a team that is successful all of the time

Which is the reason why personally I wouldn't have anything to do with any SL club

We are more in competition with them than any Championship club

Its a real shame that people seem to prefer supporting a team in S/L rather than their own rugby team because of varied reasons, mainly the glitz of being a popular club with the trappings of success.

Now you could argue that makes me a hypocrite because I support Man utd, but I started supporting them many years ago when I was a lad living up hag fowd and back in 1982/3 Man utd were not the champions year in year out as they have been of late.

My first season of watching ' utd ' was in the old second division , I remember ' Pancho ' s 1st goal for them

And 58,000 on against Sunderland for a league game

So I had about 18 years of grief from Liverpool fans before they finally saw real success , in fact it was just after I stopped going they started winning

.....and just when all the local small football clubs where rubbing their hands at the prospect of mass exudus of Utd fans supporting their local clubs.....bugger they start another club instead



Still think we can get support from SL fans as well as trying to get the town and surrounding areas supporting us.

I think you're all on to something important, here. For me, small clubs in the shaow of their big neigbours HAVE to become a focal point of the community, and have to work with the community to foster and be the flagship for civic pride. It's a challenge, perhaps greater than marketing a standard straight-up business brand. But I really do think there's an opportunity there.

I used to tinker around the fringes of the music industry, and that's very much gone that way... sure X-factor manufactured crap sell in the thousand, but there's a real demand for the authentic.. for real musicans, playing live shows in local venues of a couple of hundred.

To me, Leigh should be in every school with Leigh stuff. In every club, at every age group, with Leigh stuff. Should make a huge deal of the history of the club, and its growth along with the industry and culture of the town. We should have the town crest on the shirt, and in 50-foot graphics at LSV. Buy the Leigh Arms and turn it into a club sports bar, showing every SL and Championship and NRL game, and showing Fred Parky's entire back catalogue on other times, and selling Johnny Woods Ale and Dessie Special Brew made under branded licence by a local microbrewery. And, as Starbug has said, work with the Championship clubs to build a collaborative business brand with each non-SL club becoming an outlet.

I support Leigh because I grew up with it, because my mum supported Leigh, and her dad before her. That personal heritage is bound up with the club. In our godless, rootless world it is absolutely who I am and where I come from. I bet there's thousands of Leyth folk, of all ages, who are crying out for something to believe in.

An absolute joy to read wembley 71 !!!!







Marketing ideas for the ales ..."jonny woods ale , its got a kick that's guaranteed to hit the spot...every time!"

And how about a nice pint of "drummonds Yed" with a strap line of "you won't know what's hit you, or where you've been "

I love the town crest idea for lsv it needs some character and identity.

I think starbug should start going to Old Trafford again!

You would have to pay me to watch the rubbish served up in the premier league

I watched a sunday league match last week , now that was ' entertaining '