The RFL in their wisdom have withdrawn all funding from the Celtic nations with effect from yesterday. This comes on top of them making the majority of their development officers redundant last year. https://www.facebook.com/scotlandrl/pos ... 1373306817

The RFL in their wisdom have withdrawn all funding from the Celtic nations with effect from yesterday. This comes on top of them making the majority of their development officers redundant last year. https://www.facebook.com/scotlandrl/pos ... 1373306817

Well it isn't really their job.
Good on them for doing it when no one else had the money to step up, but you would hope the RLIF would get some money from this WC - get some money from South Africa to get teams to the next WC, maybe get a sponsor, and splash a few dollars around developing nations.

It's not their job? The only reason the RFL is not the governing body of the game throughout the British Isles now is because it has decided not to be.

It was happy to make money off the Great Britain name for 50-odd years. And you can bet it'll be happy to cash in on it again in the future if it decides an Ashes series will save the RFL bank account yet again. If the RFL has decided it doesn't run the game in the Celtic nations and owes them nothing then GB is dead unless they are going to split any Ashes or Lions tour profits with them in the future.

Of course the question is, would any other country want the RFL running them when it is obviously a basket case?

PS: Why would you do this in the middle of the World Cup? FMD.

Isn't the issue about funding from Sport England et al? I thought they'd cut RL's grants by over £10 million from 2013? The attempts at expansion into the Celtic nations and splitting GB was all about getting additional funding for each country wasn't it? So, there will inevtiably be a contraction in development efforts or at least in chucking money at it.

Strange that Scotland RL and the trade press, which has known about this for weeks since the Sport England funding cuts, should suddenly decide to make a story out of it on the day Scotland appear in a WC quarter final they had no chance of winning.

Something had to give under the Sport England cuts. Central funding for development areas is one of the things that got cut.

as much as it pains me to agree with ECT^^^^^^^^^^^^^this^^^^^^^^^^^^ is spot on!

When the development officers got cut in the midlands the Under 16s league shrunk from 9 to 4 teams and the Under 18 league folded. Having said that the introduction of a professional academy in the midlands is partly responsible and it is better to have players playing a proper rugby league structure than having RU players get a run out in summer. Furthermore one club (North Derbyshire Chargers) fielding a team in Yorkshire and recruited from other clubs in the region, having a good go of things.

The Welsh and Irish leagues are pretty fragile as things are but probably should scrape through, Scotland is slightly more stable IMO.

Looks like several cut backs though with French clubs ditched from the Challenge Cup and the possible scrapping of the Northern Rail Cup. Also it seems likely the Challenge Cup will have fewer entrants as they had to start qualifying now last season (but maybe that's just because of the world cup) and amateurs not told if they're in.

The Conference League South introduced last year appears to be losing the one sole representative from the greater south east area, but probably not a bad thing if the London Premier can be considered a parallel league (there are lots of strong enough clubs in the South East but 4 out of 5 withdrew their bids last year when the RFL withdrew proposed travel subsidies). The Under 19s academy is probably being cut back to 10 teams but this should hopefully strengthen the amateur game and the quality of the academy league

I suspect non-heartland expansion will increasingly be carried out through Championship 1 clubs with an academy structure propped up by 2 elite amateur divisions (one for Midlands/South West/South Wales and one for London/East/South East) with less emphasis on cramming as many teams as possible into a 10 game RU off season (whilst letting that level of the game continue). Good news in this respect is that Valley Cougars have been accepted from Wales into the Conference League South.

The RLEF won a grant from the EU, the 'Celtic nations' will get a proportion of that, plus the RLEFs own funding and funding from the RLIF. There was an article on their website not so log ago.

The RFL haven't left them and high and dry. It's not their job to develop other nations.

www.rlef.eu.com/news/article/716 ... pean-union

www.rlef.eu.com/news/article/716 ... pean-union

[urlhttp://www.therfl.co.uk/the-rfl/about_the_rfl[/url

Thanks for that. Nothing in there about a responsibility to develop the game outside of England, just that the RFL are the governing body and 'govern' in those countries at all levels. This thread is about grassroots development, right? See the link kn the RLEF and the funds specifically for development at grassroots.

Seeing as next season Wigan will have the Wales and Scotland coaches both on the books, there's still a way to help develop the nations.