Quote ="Roy Haggerty"
2) BARLA issuing threats to sanction northern clubs who played in expansion competitions against clubs from new areas - effectively trying to strangle summer rugby, but with the additional consequence of making it more difficult for expansion competitions to gain critical mass. Like it or not, the spread of RL into new areas is only going to happen in summer. When BARLA oppose summer rugby, they are effectively making the spread of the game more difficult. It's not even like the RFL are saying everyone has to move to summer - they merely suggest clubs should have a choice. BARLA, on the other hand, have actively worked against clubs even having a choice.
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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.
They can be such idiots.
