Is there a plan?

For my sins, I work as an urban planner. Part of my job is working on a development plan for the district and looking if there is another land to deliver housing and jobs needs, based on all kinds of demographic projections. This got me thinking (here we go...) does rugby league have a plan? I know the RFL has a 2008-2013 Strategic Plan (which I can only find in Powerpoint form) and there's reference to a Super League strategy (which doesn't seem to be online). The type of planning local authorities do generally looks fifteen to twenty years down the line, so lets say 2031. Could rugby league plan for twenty years time?

Twenty years ago, John Major was the Prime Minister but surely not for long as Neil Kinnock was mounting a serious charge for no.10, 'Dizzy' by Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff was at the top of the charts and the world of sport was a different place. The Football League was about to enter a brave new world, as 22 clubs decided to breakaway in the pursuit for more money and to create a 'global brand', Leeds United and Manchester United were battling it out for the title, three non UK and Irish players between them (Cantona, Kanchelskis and Schmeichel); Rugby Union was still largely amateur, with the league system in its infancy played at small grounds with small crowds.

Rugby League was a winter sport. Wigan had won their second title in a row, dominating domestic honours with Widnes over the last few years. Most of the players in the league weren't fully professional. Fulham and a struggling Nottingham team were the only teams from outside of the main Rugby League counties. Promotion and relegation existed with three up and three down between the two divisions that operated in 1990/91.

• International rugby league still had full tours and the Great Britain v Australia series in 1990 attracted 54,000 to Wembley and capacity crowds at Elland Road and Old Trafford. International tours are a thing of the past now, but competitions like the 4 Nations have seen the international game develop elsewhere.
• The crowds twenty years ago were on their way back up after the slump of the '70s and '80s - but crowds have doubled at Warrington, Hull and Bradford, stayed broadly similar at Wigan, improved slightly at Leeds and reduced dramatically at Oldham.
• Clubs like Huddersfield have moved to new stadia and had a huge upsurge in off and on field performance.
• Twenty years ago, rugby league was banned in the armed forces and was not played widely played at Universities - this of course has now changed. The loss of amateurism from rugby union has helped the rugby league conference add new teams all over the country.
• Development of the game at grass roots has seen the earning coaching and refereeing qualifications across the country
  
• The RFL has moved to more upmarket headquarters and now doesn't lose lots of money
• Promotion and relegation no longer exists between the top and second division, but the top division is now fully professional with a salary cap in place.
• Twenty years ago, Great Britain / England couldn't even beat Australia in a decid... (oh wait)
  

So, on the whole, rugby league seems to be in much better shape than twenty years ago. But what about in twenty years time? Although the RFL usually get slated, the game seems to have been run a lot more professionally in the last few years, and hopefully the RFL can see things the licensing regime and the salary cap into the long term.

The grass-roots level expansion of the game seen in the last decade could really start to bare fruit with the second generation of players coming through a system of long established coaching and player pathways. Hopefully this will mean more domestic players coming into more semi-professional and professional clubs.

Other sports could be both a danger and a blessing to rugby league, if rugby union continues to have a financial advantage then top players could be tempted away and league could struggle to get a foothold in union strongholds. On the other hand, professional football ticket prices may spiral even more out of control and this might attract more followers from football heartlands into rugby league. The expansion of rugby league into the universities and more secondary schools, as well as nationally, would hopefully mean a rather different 'old boys network' at the top. Though this would probably take decades to break.

Things can change a lot in twenty years, as the above shows, but are these changes things that could be planned for? Planning for land, like I do in my job, needs to be done because land is a finite resource and we need to balance competing interests for the best way to use the land. The RFL should have a positive,bold, well-resourced plan which they will seldom deviate from to build on the good work that has gone into the development of rugby league over the last decade.


To the future!

Super League Twitter II

The first post on this blog (there hasn't exactly been many) was a rip off of blogs I've seen analysing how MLB / NFL teams use Twitter, so I did the same for Super League. My first post for some months now re-visits this data and I think there is some interesting findings.

2011 appeared to be the year that rugby league started to take Twitter more seriously, as well as Twitter perhaps becoming more mainstream. I must admit I thought Twitter became mainstream around the time I started using it, at the time of the 2010 General Election. Before that, I had a vague idea of what Twitter was, but I was afraid of use it.

2011 was the first time I remember Twitter being a main source for players to get their points across, Joey Barton is a prime example in the world of football; but Keith Senior's tirade when the licensing debacle was announced was big news. Rugby league also gets bigged up on Twitter by a wide range of 'celebrities', though mainly scouse footballers. 2011 is probably the first time I remember rugby league trending topics... Widnes, Keith Senior, Rangi Chase, Rob Burrow, Ganson and probably more.


The growth in the numbers of followers has been staggering, the worst performing club being Harlequins - almost doubling their followers. Wakefield had a 595% increase in followers, albeit starting from a low base. Leeds and Wigan both added over 5,000 followers and continue to be the most followed Super League clubs with over 8,000 each.

Comparing the number of tweets per week for the 2011 season (or between Feb 8th and Oct 26th) shows that usage amongst Super League clubs has increased massively except for Bradford. One statistic I haven't done is to compare Twitter followers to the club's respective average crowd - I would assume Bradford would be near the bottom of that too.

Overall, Hull KR has the most tweets per week but for 2011 that honour goes to St Helens.

The Exiles - not another flash in the pan?

The Exiles are coming. That is what the RFL advertising let us know in the build up to England's clash against the best of the Antipodean players who ply their trade in Super League. So, as of almost a week ago, the Exiles are here - but are they here to stay?

There was much debate after the Exiles side beat England as to whether or not it was a good concept and if it was one that was here to stay. This got me thinking of other quite short lived rugby league ideas - mainly from the summer era because I am not that old. And to be honest, I'm sure some were just not memorable enough for me at all.

Silk Cut Plate
Hull KR are the only rugby league club to have got their hands on the Silk Cut Plate, after their demolition of Hunslet in 1997 at Wembley. The Silk Cut Plate was played as a curtain raiser to the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley, for the teams knocked out in the earlier rounds of the Challenge Cup Tournament.

World Club Championship
Also in 1997, this was an exceptionally brave idea. The 12 teams of the European Super League played the ten of the Australian Super League, with group stages and a convulted draw, that saw Bradford lose all six of their group games but qualify for the next round. It did bring about some memorable nights for the likes of London, Leeds, Oldham and Sheffield, who beat Canberra, Adelaide, North Queensland and Perth respectively and it also brought with it Brisbane Broncos smashing Halifax in front of just over 3,000 at Thrum Hall. It also lost loads of money.

Treize Tournoi
This tournament took the top 3 clubs in France, plus the top 2 of the First Division and champions of the Second division in England. Lancashire Lynx nearly went all the way to win it, after putting Villenueve and St Esteve to the sword in the group stage. Wakefield, Featherstone and Limoux were the other teams taking part, culminating with the final in Toulouse. 1998 was the only year this ever took place, with Lancashire Lynx losing to Villeneuve.

County of Origin
Yorkshire v Lancashire matches in the summer era lasted from 2000 until 2003, having being resurrected after the first 90 or so years of the sport's existance. Lancashire triumphed in the first three, but Yorkshire had the last laugh putting more than 50 points past Lancashire at Odsal in 2003. Somewhat lacking in the intesity of the State of Origin games down under, who knows what may have happened to these games if they were given more of a chance. I guess the War of the Roses may not be the best way for a game desperate to break out of its mainly northern confines.

Trans-Pennine Cup
This tournament was played in the Northern Ford Premiership years of Rugby League outside Super League - when the season started at Christmas time and all the teams were in one division. This tournament was a pre-cursor to the Northern Rail Cup. I had to look at Wikipedia to tell me that: "The competition had no qualification rounds; only a final was played. The finalists were the highest placed team in the Northern Ford Premiership from either side of the Pennines (Yorkshire versus Lancashire/Cumbria), at an early stage of the season". The tournament lasted three seasons and I can barely remember it.

Sporting MPs

For some unknown reason, apart from my own strange sense of curiosity, I decided to take a look at who represents' the UK's top flight professional teams in Football, Rugby Union and Rugby League.

The thirteen UK clubs in Super League have ten Labour MPs, with the Liberal Democrats at Harlequins and Leeds and the Conservative at Warrington as the exceptions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Aviva Premiership twelve clubs has half of the clubs in Conservative seats (Exeter, Gloucester, London Irish, Northampton, Saracens and Wasps), with the Lib Dems at Harlequins, Leeds and also Bath and then three Labour MPs at Newcastle, Sale and Leicester.

The Premier League is all Labour, with the exception of Fulham and Chelsea, and to my surprise Wolverhampton who all have Tory MPs. Presumably there would be more Tory MPs further down the leagues, but I think that these will still be in the vast minority.

In terms of constituencies fielding BNP candidates, 11 out of the 13 Super League constituencies had a BNP candidate and one of those that didn't, East Hull, had a National Front candidate. Half of all the Premier League constituencies had a BNP candidate and five out of the 12 Aviva Premiership candidates. All this shows is that Rugby League areas are more likely to have the under-represented white working class voters that the BNP appear to target. Stoke City's constituency had the percentage highest BNP vote, with Bradford Bulls in second place.

What does this show? Not a lot really, perhaps I could say that it underlines the importance of Middle England which is not an actual geographical location and also that for the 80 or so constituencies that make up the Football League (only 17 in the Premier League), that there are about 450 who aren't counted in this. For every Stretford and Urmston (home of Manchester United), there is a Pudsey, Folkestone and Hythe, Brentwood and Ongar, Broxbourne and Cannock Chase. Football and Rugby League have their routes in traditional working class areas and this is reflected in the political make-up of these areas.

Would a new elite level rugby league competition work?

When the Super League was first mooted in 1990s, the idea of it was to raise standards in the sport, both on and off the field. There is evidence to show that this was successful, the number of people watching sport at the top level has increased vastly with around six clubs averaging crowds of five figures, many teams play in vastly improved stadia and the dominance of Wigan which preceded Super League gave way for more teams winning the league and cup competitions. However, Kyle Eastmond is the latest of a line of league players to go to rugby union (though these have been to varying degrees of success), people argue that the salary cap is stifling the ability of players to be able to earn to their full potential and also there are many critics that a Super League of 14 teams yields too many low quality and low intensity games, which fail to give England / Great Britain players (save the couple in the NRL) the edge over Australia and New Zealand.

My idea is like an extreme version of Super League, with a bit of ‘Super Rugby’ (sic), Indian Premier League and Major League Baseball thrown in. The elite European competition would be:

• Six regional teams in, for the sake of argument, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Wales, London, Midi-Pyrenees and Paris – with scope for future expansion.
• Super League would revert to only British teams and no longer be a closed shop, the French teams would play in the French league.
• The elite competition would draw it’s playing staff from the English and French competitions – a season of 10 games in the Elite League would allow players to play for their domestic teams, but only for a limited number of games – with the Elite competition gaining absolute priority.
• The domestic clubs would pay the wages of Elite players but would be compensated when players played for Elite clubs. Domestic clubs who developed players in their academy would also receive some payment.
• No salary cap would apply in the Elite League as such but a ‘luxury tax’ where teams paying over a certain threshold would have to pay a tax which would go back into grass roots.
• Luxury Tax threshold would be raised if a team had more local players
• The domestic league would be decided on a first past the post basis, with the Elite Grand Final being the major final at the end of the season. Challenge Cup Final would still be in August.
• Players would be drafted to each team by an Indian Premier League style auction, though after the first season there would be more encouragement for teams to retain players than in the IPL.
• Players who didn’t put themselves forward for selection would be penalised by missing out on significant salaries and ability to play in internationals.
• The quality of competition would hopefully attract a significant TV rights deal to pay for all of this!

What would it mean for Rugby League?

Ideally, such a league would represent a more marketable product for broadcasters and sponsors, it would be a ‘sexy’ product and it would encourage more new supporters into the fold and also encourage more children to take up playing the game. Conversely, it could be shunned by supporters who see these franchise teams as having little identity and difficult to support. Rugby League may be more susceptible to parochialism than the IPL and an elite competition would ultimately fail if there was no appetite for it from supporters. It may be less able than the IPL to command the amounts of money that would be acceptable for players to be flying from the North of England to the South of France to ply their trade five weeks a year. If such a competition failed, it would probably be very difficult for rugby league to recover.

For at least half of games, clubs would be without their star players. This happens in rugby union to some extent when internationals are played alongside club fixtures, but not to an extent of half the players going missing. There would be less prestige in the big club occasions and there could even be a danger that the domestic leagues are ‘cannibalised’ by a successful Elite competition, but so long as a club link remained, club supporters may turn out to see Elite players playing at a club near them.

Domestic rugby league would no longer be a ‘closed shop’ at the top level; promotion and relegation would hopefully allow more interest in the second tier domestic competition. There is a danger that clubs will go to the wall and bust a gut trying to stay in the top flight, but if the clubs spend high wages on star players, they would be guaranteed money back when that player is drafted to a regional team. This could do what the original Super League proposals failed to do and ensure that rugby league still has strong links to its heartland communities; the likes of Featherstone and Whitehaven could still play in the top level domestic competition on merit.

International rugby league would improve. Intense games week-in, week-out would give British and French players experience of playing in games of a high intensity. The development of star players and the promotion of a game to a wider audience, and hopefully a more credible international competition, may increase attendances and television audiences for the international game.

So would this ever happen?

The above 800 and odd words are amongst the most pointless things I’ve ever written, because I think this would never happen. The media corporations are unlikely to take rugby league that seriously to pay significant sums of money and the supporters would be unlikely to lend their support / money / time to a competition that was devoid of identity, or at the very least history.

Super League Expansion: Growing Pains

This weekend, the 14 teams of Super League, including teams from Wales, London and France have kicked off the 16th season of summer rugby league in Cardiff. When Super League kicked off in 1996, the competition included two ‘expansion’ teams, the newly formed Paris St Germain and London Broncos, who were fast-tracked into the top flight to take part in the inaugural Super League season. Paris St Germain was rushed into take part in Super League I in 1996, having being granted a place at the end of 1995.

A Newcastle United Rugby League outfit, part of John Hall’s attempt to start a multi-sports club on Tyneside, were tipped to be part of the Super League competition, as were a South Wales team, likely to be based in Cardiff. Toulouse were part of the initial line up of clubs to take part in the Super League competition, closer to the French Rugby League heartland than Paris St Germainand even Bordeaux were considered in the early part of Super League. Early architects of the Super League revolution, Jacques Fouroux (The man behind Paris St Germain RL) and Maurice Lindsey saw a long term prospect of teams in Dublin, Barcelona and Milan and I’m sure there were many more.

At the start of Super League III in 1998, Paris St Germain were no longer part of the Super League set up and London were the only team from outside the M62 corridor in the competition (Sheffield Eagles can’t really be counted, can they?). Franchise bids were invited for a new Super League team to enter the competition in 1999 and an extra round of games was taken on the road with matches played at Edinburgh, Gateshead, Swansea, Cardiff and Northampton. All of those places (though apparently Glasgow instead of Edinburgh) submitted bids to enter Super League and Gateshead were granted in a place in August 1998, with kick off coming in March 1999. It was intended for another franchise to be entered in the competition in 2000, with Dublin, Leicester and Birmingham / Walsall as potential locations.

Gateshead Thunder kicked off the 1999 season before 6,000 fans at the Thunderdome / Gateshead International Stadium, where they lost narrowly to the previous season’s grand finalists Leeds. Thunder went on to end the season with a 6th place (out of 14) finish, unluckily in the days when the play-off format only incorporated the top 5 teams. For a team so hastily put together, they had a very credible season, with some special moments such as beating champions Wigan, in a road game at Tynecastle, Edinburgh. Cheered on by their mascot ‘Captain Thunder’ the club averaged just shy of 4,000 in that season.

Gateshead Thunder went out of existence just 15 months after being granted the franchise and only 8 months after playing their first competitive game, taking a significant amount of money from the RFL to ‘merge’ with Hull Sharks and save the Hull club, with over a hundred years history, from oblivion. The Thunder were reported to have made losses of £700,000 in their first season, but this was a result of the club only taking half the amount of Sky money that other clubs received; having to assemble a team at short notice, which included many expensive Aussies; and having very little time to lay down the groundwork of marketing the product of Rugby League on Tyneside. Presumably, in the wake of the Gateshead experiment and the Sheffield-Huddersfield ‘merger’ at the same time, any plans for expanding Super League once more in a similar fashion were shelved.

It is probably quite unavailing to look ‘across the pond’ to major league sports competitions to draw comparisons with rugby league, the amounts of money are totally different for a start, but I shall make the comparison anyway. The NHL is the main North American sports league that I follow and during the 1990s this saw teams moving to the desert (Phoenix Coyotes) and the sunshine state (Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning), away from the traditional Canadian and American cities where you’d expect hockey to be played, i.e. cold places!. Some of these teams had relocated, i.e. Winnipeg Jets becoming Phoenix Coyotes, but some were new expansion teams. There was around an 18 month period between the franchise being announced and the puck being dropped for the first game for most of these teams. These expansion teams are all still playing today and have accrued 2 Stanley Cups between them (Anaheim and Tampa Bay).

It is hard to say if Gateshead, having winning the franchise bid in 1998, could have kicked off in 2000, or even 2001 and still being in Super League today – having had the benefit of time to grow and market their brand to the north east public and also having the benefit of the same Sky money as everyone else. It’s intriguing to think what happened to the prospective Super League franchise bidders at the end of the 1990s; did they just walk away from rugby league having seen the Gateshead, Sheffield and 2000 World Cup debacles?

Although the licensing system in Rugby League now places more stringent criteria on teams wishing to enter the elite competition, this still does not eradicate the short term issue, with a team only having six months to assemble a team for the elite competition. As Crusaders showed, this defeats the object of licensing for clubs to be run in a more sustainable manner. Catalans Dragons or UTC had around 18 months to prepare for their first season in 2006, and they have had much success, although they are relocated in the game’s French ‘heartland’. Indeed, the expansion for the NRL in Australia will give the new franchises a similar amount of time to prepare for elite competition.

I think that earlier forays into expanding rugby league at Gateshead and Paris will have only served to have put potential investors off, as they were rushed into the competition. If Rugby League grows and gets more successful and Football continues to be completely nonsensical in terms of how much money is being thrown at the game, investors might be taking a look at rugby league. The question is does the current regime provide them with the opportunity to put their money into the game and take the sport to new places and new audience?

Super League Twitter

The inspiration for this inaugral blog came from a couple of things: Firstly: This blog that identifies that NFL teams attract, on average, 427 followers per week on Twitter. Secondly: It occured to me yesterday how much I rely on Twitter for following my non-league football team of choice Farsley AFC, and how much of my Rugby League news and gossip I hear from Twitter.

Of course, Twitter is great for the number of different people: fans, journos and others who keep the Rugby League rumour mill doing good business. But I decided to take a look at the official Twitter feeds of Super League clubs. Catalans Dragons are the only Super League team yet to dip their toe into the twitter water.

The chart below shows how Super League clubs are doing out in the Twittersphere:

Leeds Rhinos were the first club on Twitter, shortly before Salford City Reds back in 2008. The Rhinos can also boast the most followers, though Wigan are not that far behind them. Wigan have the most followers per-week, with almost 30 - Warrinton and Leeds are the only other two clubs with figures in the 20s. Most active tweeters are Hull KR with an impressive 76 tweets a week! Huddersfield have only 1.6, but it might be the case that they joined Twitter and didn't do anything with it for a while. It is bad enough that Catalans appear to have no Twitter presence but it is a 'could do better' for the four teams accruing less than 10 followers a week.

It'll be interesting to see how clubs continue to use Twitter over the coming season. I think the Super League Licensing D-Day will be Twitter gold!