Match 28: London Broncos (Away - Qualifiers)
fevnut's musings
Decision making in Rugby
League
Recently, we have read a number of articles arguing that
professional rugby league players need a representative body both to look after
their interests and also, most importantly, that can give a voice for players
in the decision making processes of the Rugby Football League.
We totally agree. It is a sad fact that the GMB section for
rugby league players has never been sufficiently able to take this role and the
now defunct League XIII was flawed by only purporting to represent Super League
players.
But it also seems to us that there is a paramount need to find a
route by which the voice of fans can also be heard in the corridors of
Red Hall. Professional rugby league could not exist without the committed supporters
who make a huge contribution to the sport. And, the fact is, that apart from
during the appalling merger proposals of 1995, we have the distinct impression
that fans are more unhappy with the decision making of the RFL than at any time
we can recall.
Way back in the late 1990s the government was concerned about
the state of football, and in particular the appalling racism and the manner in
which Premiership clubs were pricing working class supporters out of the sport.
It set up a Football Task Force. fevnut was a member of the Task Force (representing
local government) and an old university friend was also a member representing
the Football Supporters Federation. His contribution on behalf of fans was hugely
valuable. The Football Association is nowhere near perfect but at least it
ensures that the voice of supporters is heard with an automatic place for the
Chair of the FSF on the FA Council.
We would like to propose that the RFL sets up a system to ensure
that there is an input into decision making from both players and supporters.
Maybe one way of doing this would be to set up consultative forums. We believe
that there is already a consultative voice for club Chairs. Alongside this
there could be a forum for players with an elected representative from each club
and a Fans forum with an elected representative of the season ticket holders
from each club. It would be important to ensure that player and fans representatives
are elected with ballot papers sent out directly to those entitled to vote from
Red Hall, it being important to ensure that representatives are truly
representative and not puppets of club owners and chairs.
*************************************************
Reserves
Maybe one of the issues that could be considered by the forums
would be the question of clubs fielding reserve teams. We have written before
about how important re-instating reserve teams is but the fact is that few
clubs are fielding reserve sides. More claim they would like to but the lack of
fixtures is a huge disincentive. The Super League clubs argue that it can’t be
done on cost basis but Gareth Walker’s excellent article on how Keighley
Cougars are doing it really exposes the nonsense of the cost argument. You can
read Gareth’s article here:
*************************************************
Last Saturday
Yes, it was depressing to be beaten heavily by Leigh Centurions,
but Fev were definitely more competitive than the score line suggests. It doesn’t
help that we started the match so poorly, something that has been a recurring
nightmare this season. In so many matches we have conceded first, even in
matches that we have ended up winning easily. What we found really exciting
about the Fev performance was the speed of handling and passing along the line.
It is years since I can remember such exciting rugby. Sadly it was great in the
latter part of the first half but the handling rather fell apart after half
time. Now we are really looking forward to next season when John Duffy has had
a whole pre-season to work on our attacking play.
No comments:
Post a Comment