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.

Yes but the very fact that they couldn't get out a team at that time of year suggests that having a whole team of BARLA players isn't a good idea in a league that overlaps with BARLA. If clubs like Bramley have some BARLA players but can still get a team out in the overlap it's not a problem, but to expect clubs where every player prioritises BARLA to field a team in the cross-over is plain stupid. I reckon Liverpool, Carlisle and maybe East Lancashire were legitimate in not raising a team, but clearly Underbank were taking advantage of the lack of rules to wait til they got their best team out. Ultimately they need to stop BARLA/winter players who don't prioritise the summer club from playing in the RLC or they need to shorten the season to fit entirely in the off season, which you wouldn't like. Ultimately it's difficult though as Braley, Nottingham Hemel and as far as I can tell Warrington Wizards and Gateshead Storm need the longer season, but the other clubs would be just as well off playing in the RLC Premier. Unfortunately until enough good NCL/BARLA clubs agree to switch en masse entirely we'll be stuck with this problem.

you can't stop amateur players from playing the game, BARLA have tried and failed. well not strictly true the will allow you to be dual registered with the armed forces, police, students and other bodies, and themselves but not with the summer game.



s!



Liverpool have held their hand up and said they should have made their first few games on a Sunday as we do every year and as i have said to you else where.



Carlisle, say the season started too early. and East lancs are the perennial weak link in our competition.

correct! what is BARLA there for? to develop the game? or to maintain itself? the letter at the start of the thread shows exactly what their reason for being is...

ok, development funds get channelled to the RFL, and not BARLA, but could yyou trust them to use it appropriately? i'd say not

Why?



If people want to play all year round why can't they? If people wanted to play 2 games in a day why should anyone stop them?

and they, (as does their club), have the right to pick which game they play, in whichever competition, if there is a clash, (subject to the normal rules of that competition - i.e. concede more than two games, you are not considered for promotion)

Because it harms the clubs they play against to have to call off games due to players having another priority, backing up on the same weekend is not exactly ideal and overplaying players sees more burn out etc. Ultimately that's their choice but doesn't stop the game having a responsibility.



As for BARLA banning RLC players, it actually makes sense for them as they don't want clubs scratching at the end of the season, and they have to run competitions

Surely that is the whole point I'm making that if you have winter players there will be problems during the overlap. Maybe if that's the case they should shorten the season and look at ideally getting teams into the Northern Rail Cup, but if as is likely that's not possible then they could look at a Northern Rail Trophy type tournament with a group of maybe 4 teams playing home and away before the season with a final later as the curtain raiser to the NRC or something.



Also when the RLCP South gets to a standard to be the RLCN (South), which will happen eventually as it's already closer to RLCN standard than it is to RLCP standard (Bedford would have a good chance of winning the RLCP Midlands this year but got hit for 100 by South London, Nottingham won the RLCP midlands last year and instantly are near the top of RLCN), a competition like this would allow Hemel to retain fixtures against all the big northern sides, while replacing ones against East Lancashire etc with higher or equivalent standard local ones.

or shorten the winter season...

Why should they? Their clubs manage with a longer season fine and they're the only one to allow players a full season. Of course I'd rather this winter season be under the RFL than BARLA, but they shouldn't have to take games off everyone for the minority that want to play summer as well



The RLC National is the one that brought this situation on itself by coming up with the ludicrous idea of a 5 month season, which is about the worst idea you could have. A 7-8 month season is long enough that players will play just for you and not need two clubs and a 3-4 month season is short enough that winter players can play both for you and their winter club without the two interfering. A 5 month season and you have players playing two overlapping seasons and you end up with the utter joke that was the first three weeks of the RLCN this season.



Of course I'd like to see a RLCN (or better still Championship 2) with a full season, but half the current clubs probably wouldn't be able to cope, so may be difficult, although for some clubs the longer season would make it more appealing for players to commit just to that club.

what? by having season that allows us to play out grand final with the championship cubs?



we had a full season. the rfl took that away from us by fooking about with the challenge cup. and not allowing us to play in the nrc.

It shows how far our sport has come in the professional era when we all appear to have great confidence in the way our sport is administered at the highest level. Yes it's not perfect but there is some great work being done that gets buried by the usual terrorists.

I don't have great confidence in the way the sport is administered, it's a mixed bag. There are positive steps forward but then these are marred by amateurish behaviour. BARLA is the architect of its own downfall because of its insular and self-interested attitude, if it had genuinely been interested in widespread amateur development at all levels and in all areas it would have been better for the whole of rugby league.

In fifteen years of dealing with Barla and enduring far too many tedious meetings I'm struggling to think of any case where Barla blazers actually made a decision that would encourage or enable anyone to play the game. Practically every situation I can recall has been about stopping players/clubs playing and restricting players freedom of choice.



I've also found that many of the officials are committee men/women who have a love for their organisation and its political struggles. Some have very (and too obvious) biases to their own club/town/league or their own Barla "careers". Most have never played and I've not met one who appears to have a genuine enthusiasm for and love of the game.



Barla was needed...but the situation is "evolve or die" and they keep looking backwards.

Actually sorry I'll give you that the RFL caused the problem by poor planning of the league, just it was clear the season started 3 weeks early for some clubs, so they'll need to shorten the league and find another competition for Bramley etc (obviously NRC would be ideal), although knowing the RFL they'll do the former and not the latter. It does noone any favours though to have 5 effective walkovers in the first 3 weeks, though if they deducted points and awarded the match, and expelled teams for scratching thrice in a season, then teams like Underbank would be less likely to take the , as the current system rewards what they did. Of course the real ideal situation would be to find better run teams to replace the poorly run teams, but that will be difficult as the current league has a poor reputation among both good NCL/BARLA clubs and RLC Premier sides, whihc is a shame as there's a lot of well run clubs as well, so it would have to be an en masse change to a championship 2 or something, but not sure how that could work. Not likely now but with the NCL running summer pilots, it is likely that some strong clubs will want a decent summer league at some point in the future

I wouldn't let the RFL run a bath.



However BARLA wouldn't have a clue where the bath was in the first place.

Yeah perhaps I should have said improved confidence. I think the jury is still out on Wood but Lewis I think has been good for our game.

And why would BARLA want to do that?

They can be such idiots.

Aren't BARLA GB playing Samoa on Monday?