In my experience BARLA's biggest failing is their inability to resolve issues in a timely manner. Everything rumbles slowly on from one (monthly) meeting to the next with nothing much happening whilst they hope the matter simply goes away..due to boredom or missing the boat.
In a world of email and econferences they simply move too slowly.

Just out of curiosity really, but if the RFL did take over the amateur game and appointed full time staff to run each comp what would it take, one full time person per league?

NCL, NWC, Penine, Yorkshire, Hull, Yorkshire Youth, RLC - seven staff or thereabouts?

There's more leagues than that and the bigger ones may need more staff, although I suppose volunteers can do a lot of it

My experience of BARLA meetings is lots of hot air and very little actually done.

Having said that the people involved are passionate about the game and really do care.

I suppose that what they need is "guidance" and if that comes from the RFL rather than the main commitee of BARLA then it may be a good thing.

The one thing they don't want to do is alienate people.

I do believe the structure of the whole needs re-examining at ALL levels but I doubt if that will happen.

My personal view of the RFL, as a whole, is a curates egg

It's just plain common sense that players can't play for clubs in two competitions with overlapping seasons. Yet due to RLCN clubs being reliant on BARLA players there were 5 games called off in the first 3 weeks, due to clubs not having a team, which is a joke in the elite summer amateur league. Below that level, where BARLA players can play, very few non-heartland clubs play clubs with a single BARLA player in til the national playoffs (if teams turn up for them), so the only effect it has is on development clubs from Lancashire/Yorkshire (or Lincolnshire) who end up getting hammered by teams full of BARLA clubs. Hence we have clubs like South Humber Rabbitohs unable to join the RLC when they would be good enough elsewhere. Whether there would be enough clubs in that area without BARLA players I'm not 100% but it could probably be done. In fact the RLC thought about introducing a limit on BARLA players for these reasons.

As for non-heartland development only being possible in summer, well yes that is when clubs can draft in RU players. But the fact is that due to the RLCP only being able to offer a paltry 14 games Coventry lost half their team to Hemel and the other half pretty much all play RU in the winter to get enough rugby. The same will happen with every generation of juniors if the RLC mini-season is all they have to play in, and the best players that play RU will end up on semi-pro contracts and not allowed to play RL and since the players that stick with the Bears will all end up playing RU and RL, the club could have just as easily not run juniors and recruited RU players for the same end result.

Now of course I think the juniors are a good idea, even if it's only to let younger people play rugby league also, but it's hard to see the RLC allowing the benefits to be really gained from junior development. In fact by far the best team in the Midlands Premier, Gloucestershire Warriors, don't run any junior development and yet are consistently good.

Actually, it's something called personal choice. These are amateurs, who have the right to choose what to do themselves. BARLA told at least one Northwestern club which had qualified for the RLC finals that they could not move a BARLA fixture (which their opponents had agreed to) in order to accommodate the finals of the RLC. The club then said fine, they'd play a weakened side in the BARLA game to concentrate on the finals, but would complete both fictures. BARLA then told them if they did they would be ejected from the BARLA competition. This was a very clear attempt by BARLA to prevent any BARLA sides from offering their players the opportunity to play in the RLC. Just to say that in a different way, BARLA are now the only sporting organisation in the country which actively seeks to prevent players from playing in an amateur RL competition of their choice. Even the RFU doesn't place such restrictions on their players any more. Funnily enough, BARLA have no problem with players turning out for their BARLA side and a RU side on the same weekend, but have in the past found several reasons why those same players shouldn't play two games of RL. They are similarly pathetic with kids too, by preventing many kids from playing for the team of their choice through byzantine registration regulations. No mean feat for an organisation dedicated to strengthening the amateur game.

If you're genuinely trying to claim that BARLA have never tried to obstruct and damage the potential spread of the summer game, or the participation of BARLA clubs in RFL-run national competitions, then you've moved past your normal miserable denigration of all things RLC into the realms of delusion.

While BARLA might be far from perfect (and in fact they're nowadays pretty bad, some individual leagues are well run though), but to claim BARLA players in the RLCN is a good thing I'd have to strongly disagree as the first three weeks of the RLCN this year were a complete joke and it would help the RLC to not have too many BARLA players and to put them in separate BARLA summer leagues. Of course this doesn't mean there shouldn't be heartland RLC clubs it just means we shouldn't make believe that players can play two games at the same time, as they clearly can't.

Ultimately the game needs full season leagues and to try to force heartland clubs into the RLC model as you'd have happen would see a huge player exodus to RU as players get sick of a pathetically short season. Those leagues need to exist, I'd rather it be under the RFL, but the game couldn't survive without them. Whether these are summer or winter is up to the clubs to decide ideally both option would be there, but individual players should only play one or the other

as a southerner who only got to play RL via the RLC and summer rugby i'd just like to say if i ran an amateur team and had the choice of RFL or BARLA i'd go for the one that was serving my teams interests not their own.

The London ARL were founder members of BARLA and it was a constant disappointment how poorly we were regarded by the blazers.
However my experience of dealing with the employed staff was very good.
Organizing the Southern Counties Cup a decade ago,I asked BARLA to bear in mind traveling in the first round draw.
Little did I know that Swansea were drawn with Cardiff etc etc. Everyone involved was very satisfied.

However as far as I can see, they have no raison d'etre. The RFL have presided over perhaps the greatest growth in the sport since 1895.

BARLA have done nothing

I'm fairly certain the situations you talk about were down to the more poorly run clubs cancelling games. Or only wanting to play when they can put a winning team out.