On Super League Licenses

On Tuesday the Rugby Football League announced which clubs would be getting licenses for the next three years of Super League. The application process was theoretically open to any European rugby league club believing they have the resources to operate at the levels required by the competition. With nineteen applications for a maximum fourteen spots, including twelve from clubs already in the competition, it was always going to be controversial and so it proved.

For years rugby league has struggled to shake off its “Northern England” regional tag, and all its associated stereotypes. The problems have been many, internal and external.

A historic feud with the Rugby Football Union and by extension the establishment who never forgave the Northern Union clubs their impertinence over broken time payments (the actual arguments over professionalism and [sh]amateurism are far more complex than popular perception and too labyrinthine to do justice in this post) restricted its reach into higher education (and by proxy denied the benefits that comes from a higher socio-demographic fan base), it barred it from the armed forces and other areas of the public sector through which British games were spread across the world, and the threat of draconian punishment was an effective deterrent to rugby union players considering dabbling with the forbidden code.

Internally the infamous parochialism of some rugby league supporters, and the self-interest of some administrators have done just as much to try and keep the code a closed shop of former industrial towns along the M62 corridor; a local sport for local people!

But in the last twelve years massive strides forward have been made, the advent of Super League saw the top flight go full-time professional (previously only a few bigger clubs having that luxury, with most “professional” players holding down day jobs). The stranglehold of the M62 corridor was broken by the inclusion of London Broncos and the now defunct Paris club, whilst SL may still be dominated by clubs in the so called heartlands they many of them are now nervously glancing over their shoulders.

Much to the chagrin of BARLA, the traditional guardians of amateur rugby league, a grass roots revolution has quietly taken place under the umbrella of the Rugby League Conference, amateur competitions now operate across England, with small but growing competitions in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

At a junior development level the number of school kids playing rugby league has never been higher, recent estimates suggest that over fourteen thousand kids in Greater London have played the game at school.

The Student Rugby League scene set-up in the late 1960’s with a handful of members now boasts over seventy institutions, and when combined with the social mobility that gave many bright working class kids from rugby league hotbeds access to higher education, more and more rugby league fans are getting into the positions to make calls on which sports corporate sponsorship budgets get spent.

Even traditional rivalries with rugby union no longer sway as they once did with clubs such as Harlequins and Leeds operating dual code partnerships and players moving freely either way. There are still antagonists on either side, but they are the fringes in sports now dominated by commercial logic.

It is against this backdrop that the RFL had to make the decision on which clubs to provide licenses, in the end they chose the twelve existing members of Super League plus Salford City Reds, the club relegated at the end of last season (currently top of National League One), and Celtic Crusaders, the fledgling Bridgend based outfit who have risen dramatically through the leagues over the last three years.

The decision to admit Crusaders triggered a backlash of petulance from the fans of those clubs who missed out, including a particularly embarrassing dummy spit from the CEO of one failed club. In Wales too the reaction was mixed, many rejoiced at the success of the Crusaders, but some paranoid rugby union supporters perceived imaginary threats from the RFL’s bold move. The RFL may be taking advantage of a gap in the market created by the WRU mishandling of the Celtic Warriors affair, but it has no designs to try and displace the position of rugby union in Welsh hearts, a move that would be both futile and foolish. The Welsh Valleys have been a rich seam for rugby league players in the past and that along with their expansion credentials gives Crusaders unique potential.

Much of the whingeing emanating from the traditional clubs who missed out is disingenuous, it’s not because they can’t see they aren’t up to scratch in many of the areas that determined licenses, but because they know they aren’t up to scratch and see the shortcut to Super League closed. The old system of promotion and relegation held the hope that they could “go for broke” by meeting the minimum technical requirement and pumping all their money into a team of journeymen who might get them promotion. That hope has now gone now and they face the prospect of building a license bid for 2012 which addresses all the areas and many fear they’re just not up to it.

The parochial element within rugby league, often referred derisively too as “flat cappers” fail to understand that if rugby league is to survive and indeed prosper in the market for professional sports it needs expansion beyond the “heartlands” to provide the footprint required by the sports partners, particularly Sky Sports. Without the investment of Sky Sports, and the other partners they bring to the table, Super League could not be fully professional, the standard of the competition would fall as the better players switch codes, and most damagingly the revival of the international game would be killed in its tracks.

Expansion has to be central to the RFL’s strategy if the game is to prosper, tradition and heritage are all well and good, but rugby league has always been a sport driven by pragmatism and long may it continue.


P.S.

I’d like to give my best wishes to Paul Brown, who stood down as CEO of Harlequins RL last week on health grounds. I’ve known Browny for several years, from the brief time I spent with the South London Storm, the amateur club he helped to develop into one of London’s strongest. One of the nicest blokes you could ever hope to meet and deeply passionate about rugby league, he leaves Harlequins RL with a vital Super League license.