A new regulation from the Ministry of Sport requests all the youth to be in Olympic disciplines until 2012

I cannot see that ANYTHING the RFL have done has in ANY WAY made this situation happen.

These surveys are absolute rubbish.

Does anybody on here believe that between July and October last year, 1 in 7 peole stopped playing rugby league? In just 3 months?

Was that when they did the visa checks for aussies playing here? :P

No, but that's not the point.

It doesn't matter whether we believe them or not.

The point is will Sport England use them as the basis of their next funding package allocations to all of the various sports ? If so, then we can probably expect less money from them. They may not be true but they may form the basis of somebody's calculations of funding allocations somewhere. That is the inherent danger in the survey results.

Did a good job that Richard Lewis, converted us into a Minority of a Minority Sport, got us funding from Sport England and now regretting it by under valuing the sport further.

according to the survey more people play netball, hockey and participate in sailing than play league

I'm new to amateur RL and I've recently started training with a team in the Leeds area. It amazes me why some amateur RL is still being played in Winter! Why hasn't RL been coverted top to bottom? Surely playing and training in better weather would increase participation and possibly the overall skill of the youngsters coming through? We couldn't with train with ball in hand for 3 weeks during the bad weather/xmas and games are constantly being called off due to frosty pitches.

As I say, I'm new to amateur RL, and I'm not sure how it is set up/governed. It just seems daft to me.

Participation levels are down because the matches are always being called off due to the state of the pitches. Even if you want to play you bloody can't.

I've thought that for years mate.

It's a good point, but being a gentleman of larger carriage, I wouldn't relish the idea of playing on rock hard pitches in the summer.
Either quite a lot of games would have to be called off due to the pitches in summer too or there would be quite a lot of injuries.