Quote ="Shifty Cat"Maybe it won't if that did happen, but in my experience when I played my junior RL, I only went because my dad took me up initially to see if I enjoyed it but i knew deep down he was desperate for me to love the game(Trinity) like he did, I remember before I played he wanted to take me to a game at Belle Vue, but i was 6, watching anything was almost impossible at that age. So many of my mates dads were just the same as mine, so luckily we all ended up playing together.. He also only really pushed me to go & keep going , rather than push me towards junior football or Sandal RU, because he supported Trinity and had played the game himself and wanted the same for me, as his dad had pushed him in the 50's and his dad before . I bet loads of Pro RL players would tell a similar story if asked how they started playing.
IMO Not much has changed in the past 30 years as far as how a kid generally finds himself playing RL rather than RU or Football, it's almost as if RL is hardwired into our DNA and we're doing the same as our parents did in one way or another. All my mates that are Trinity fans, nearly all of them once their kids hit 6--8 have taken them down to Stanley, Eastmoor, Crigglestone etc to see if they enjoy it - same as friends in Leeds or Cas, so many take their kids to Community clubs. The kids that end up loving it & play week in week out and develop a passion for the game, just about all want to play for Trinity, plus their favorite player's either Tom Johnstone or Dave Fifita. For some reason it's so different to football even at that age, where usually they want to play for Liverpool or Man City nowadays & god knows who their favorite players are.
IMO Take away the City/Town club and gradually fewer & fewer parents will be interested in taking their kids to play, there won't be that same passion and aspirations that got many a dad off the sofa to take them, plus if the worst did happen, a whole generation of RL fans and parents are suddenly going to resent the hell out of RL. Of course some will always go because it's a good sport and they want their kids doing something, playing a team game etc; but if any of that becomes remotely true, how badly would the junior game be hit, in whichever area it happens to be.
Then again I could be completely wrong and you can make a different argument & we should chance it, and things may improve slightly.'"
You're absolutely right that this is, at the moment, how many people get into the game. It's how I got into the game.
But we can't ignore some alarming trends. Attendances are largely trending downwards, media presence is trending downwards, the games relevance amongst the public is trending downwards and participation is trending downwards. By simply relying on enthusuastic dads, we're going to continue that trend because those trends show that, generation by generation, we're not replacing the supporters and players that we lose.
There are a host of reasons why that is happening and if you were to write them a list in order of priority, expansion clubs would be way, way down that list.
More pertinent reasons are factors like:
[list
- Demographic changes - the make up of our towns and cities is now very different.
- Societal changes - People move around more, they commute longer. They spend time and money on things that didn't even exist not that long ago.
- Parental concerns about player safety - do you think that the current narrative around head injuries is encouraging parents to take their kids to the local RL club?
- Poor facilities - the club I played at as a kid doesn't look to have had a penny spent on it in the last 30 years. I'm part of a group who play tag rugby and even now, it's hard to find decent floodlit facilities.
- Competition from other leisure activities.
- The declining profile of RL.
- Declining birth rates - people are having fewer kids, that means fewer players.
[/list:u
Getting rid of expansion clubs doesn't address any of those issues, but those are the issues that RL (and every sport) has to tackle. There are sports that are increasing participation levels whilst working in the exact same environment that RL is working in.
Given the way things are trending (and have been for a long time), the idea that heartland clubs should be protected because "dads take their kids to the local club" looks a weaker and weaker argument.
