Quote ="Inflatable_Armadillo"Firstly, stop stalking me...
I know that I am your intellectual superior and that I challenge you and, that you like arguing with me because I present well structured debates but come on....
'" Stop presenting such ridiculous arguments to try and big up Wakefield because their fans kiss your and ill stop picking you up on it.
Quote I have to say that this is probably your weakest argument yet and I am suspect a hint of trolling creeping in now... but I will give you the benefit of the doubt!
I think you are totally wrong and this is the way to grow the game at all levels outside of the heartlands. '"
Thats because it suits. It suits for you to put arbitrary lengths of time needed to build to SL level because it protects Wakefield for that length of time. It suits you to argue that the time taken to build to SL needs to be a long and winding road because it means it is a long time before a club, any club is able to join.
Quote Firstly, you missed the main point. That the key to sustainability is to build from the bottom up and not the top down, so I am talking about this initiative leading to more amateur clubs and players, who in turn feed and support the existing conference club. The longer term ambition would be then that when the club did start to move into the national leagues (2015 is their target) that they at least had a healthy local feeder network upon which to recruit players. So the team was mainly made up of local lads with a desire to play the game. It is not until this club, and the amateur pyramid that supports it, is well and truly established in the lower levels of the Championship should you ever, ever think of looking to make the leap to Championship and then SL.'"
And it is something that has never, ever happened. No club in the history of the game has made that journey up the pyramid. Only one club in over 90 years has changed from amateur conference side to semi-pro, London Skolars. They have spent 9 years since joining mostly bumming around the bottom of NL2, infront of miniscule crowds. We have given this 'sustainable expansion solution' over 100 years to work, and have 0 success stories. What does that tell you?
Quote Where you are now making yourself look a total idiot is talking about how this might "hopefully leading some of them to be able to get a career in the game"... where exactly... err, Leeds, Bradford, Wigan, Warrington... because they don't have a local club to play at do they!'"
Im guessing you didnt read the statement all the way through. Or even much at all really, otherwise you would have read
Quote With support from The RFL and Leeds Rhinos, the Academy will aim to provide a route through to the professional game for talented Rugby players from across the region. '"
Quote Perversely, if you then just set-up a high level club in Bristol too early of without doing many years and years of work at the amateur level, what actually happens is that you have team full of Northern Lads who in the main are rejects of loan players from other SL clubs and Aussie/NZ/French journey-men who are also just not quite good enough to play in their own top flight leagues. So while you might have a club playing in Bristol, the chances of anyone playing in the club who are from Bristol is slim... unless of course you have a good amateur set up and schools playing the game...'"
Or you set up a club, bring in top quality players, use the high visibility and professional pathways of an SL club to increase participation at amateur level, coaching the best of these through your SL academy and introduce them to SL rugby.
The we simply help and set up the amateur game everywhere, because it is the right thing to do, because offering as many people the opportunity to play RL in and of itself is the right thing to do. Maybe we take a mature and intelligent approach and understand that the amateur and professional games are pretty bloody different, and we can treat them independently.
Quote This is the unsustainable bit, you need to put in this work first and the reason expansion has not worked to date is because this hasn't been done and what we see is the RFL trying to build the game from the top down. We generally don't build buildings from the top down, because to do so is counter productive, unstable and expensive... we build them from the bottom up!'"
they are completely independent, it is nonsensical self-fulfilling idiocy that makes you want to argue for this. It is purely the threat to a club in SL that makes you believe your own non-logic.
If Bristol come in to SL or the championships it wont be because of plans like this. If they come in to SL or the championship it wont be because of the strength of the amateur game. It will be because somebody with enough money wants to do it. How we best spread the amateur game is a totally different question, requiring totally different answers, because they have totally different aims, to how we make the game attractive enough at the top level to people with the necessary funds.
There has never, in 100 years, been a club who has gone through the development process you have put forward, even though it has been available to anybody capable of doing so. What does that tell you?
'"
and Exeter (Semi finalists twice in three years). There's definitely a few capable of making it in the pro game, at least to Championship standard.
