Iain , how do you define ' playing ' a sport , is it half a dozen lessons at school done by a community officer , or kids playing proper semi competitive mathces either for schools or amatuer clubs ?

That's not just a question for us, but for all sports. As I well recall from my days at UK Sport, all sports are very good at claiming often fantastic participation numbers. But if you narrow the definition to playing competitive matches for clubs, then the numbers drop dramatically. If I recall correctly, British Cycling used to claim every person who ever rode a bike, at any time during the year, for any reason, as a participant in their "sport". Likewise Swimming would claim that granny's slow length in the local pool during pensioner hour was her taking part in their sport.

In terms of young people playing RL in London and the South, then by the loose definition, you're looking at thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands (average secondary school size in London is over 1,000 kids, so get one hundred of them to organise a couple of festivals or training sessions, and you've got big numbers). Make the criteria that they have to play matches in a competition, such as the Carnegie Champion Schools, and that will shrink to probably less than a thousand, playing two to three times a year. Tighten the criteria even further, in terms of players playing competitive matches regularly for one of the age group teams at their local club, and you've got a couple of hundred.

However, I guarantee you that similar diminishing numbers would apply even if you were discussing Wakefield or Wigan. The numbers of participants in all sports, in all parts of the country, are always to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt.

The RFU got a reduction around the same a couple of months back.
Be interesting to see the results of the switch to summer. Absolutely massive gamble by the RFL and i don't think they've put enough thought into it. Amateur clubs don't have the facilties SL clubs have, they can't water down pitches. Most amateur RL clubs facilties are very poor (especially compared to union amateur). Also hundreds of amateur teams (my old club included) lose their pitches to cricket in the summer. Where are thse clubs going to play. What will we do if we don't have rain for a couple of weeks and the grounds are rock solid.

I fear it is a massive gamble switching to summer and the game could lose many participants

I think there is a problem in the way the figures are calculated, it appears that Sport England take a figure of those playing regularly as those who play at least once a week. Now I know plenty of people who, due to work & family commitments, don't play once a week but would still describe themselves as regularly playing rugby league since they might play every other week and still end up playing a significant number of games for an amateur club yet wouldn't be included in the "playing regularly" figures for Sport England.

It's also interesting to note that Rugby Union have also sufferred a similarly sized funding cut from Sport England. I wonder if it is simply a way to reduce funding from Sport England to all/most sports so as to cut the cost of Sport England to the government.

It's also interesting to note that we aren't far behind Union in terms of funding from Sport England, they received under £30m for 4 years and the RFL received £24.5m. Obviously the extra £5.5m would come in very handy though.

I can't agree there, I think it is a big step forward in terms of increasing participation, especially at junior/youth level. Yes there are issues over hard grounds in summer, but there were issues over hard grounds in winter, plus the pitches shouldn't get as ripped up when playing in summer compared to winter so should be easier to maintain.
It's also important to note that no clubs are being forced into playing in summer, there will still be a winter competition.
There are probably more issues for open age teams than for youth teams, but at youth level I think we will see a big increase in the amount of kids playing RL. I know that we often get about 2-3 times as many kids in the summer than we do in winter and it's far easier to teach kids & keep their concentration in warm weather than when it's freezing cold and they can't pick a ball up properly.

don't agree. we're seeing numbers up at the minute at my club side having started playing summer this year. I anticipate a few transition issues but we've union lads who are loving RL and a few will stick with league over union come the interim season I think.

Also, from those who have experienced switching to summer (london league in the main) they report that they've not had games called off for hard pitches. given we lost weeks worth of games this winter just gone and whole months of games the year before due to frozen AND waterlogged pitches I personally expect less disrupton at our club in the summer season.

of course, it all comes down to individual clubs and their own circumstances. However, the RFL ahve put a huge amount of planning and thought into the switch for a number of years now. just don't believe whats written in the League Express on the matter!

I assume you're referring to the regular article towards the back of League Express! It's always good for a laugh that and usually amounts to
[iThe RFL are wrong and I am right. Why? Because I know some people who aren't keen on it despite the huge RFL survey proving the opposite is true but I'm going to ignore & discredit that because I know a fellow octogenarian club secretary who still thinks a try is worth 3 points and he doesn't want to move to summer. Too much faffing around for t'committee and might have to put me summer holidays back a week. [/i

BARLA needs to switch to summer and the problem is solved.

When I started playing amateur rugby in hull there were 4 divisions on a saturday afternoon and 2 divisions on a sunday morning. Approximately 80 to 90 teams. Next season ther will be 20 teams playing spread over 2 small divisions. There is no grass root development or investment of any sort going on and I can only see it getting worse.

it's not an article on amateur rugby anymore. it's just rubbish.

No the problem is the RFL and how they calculate their figures and then publish them to the media. Sport England do at least put a detailed definition on their figures the RFL rarely do. For the last 5 years RL has been the fastest growing sport in Greater London yet during that period in GL adult participation has declined according to SE. The figures from the RFL 4 years ago look highly dubious now (not the only sporting body to do this).




Not sure if the criteria has changed but a full contact training session would be count as an instance of playing RL. By any reasonable definition playing twice a month during a given season would not be counted as playing regularly. Sport England collect figures for play twice a month once a month and once quarterly.

Concerning the funding I believe the RFL committed to increasing participation, no sport has seen a bigger drop consistently as RL (though the decline is slowing down now) you could argue A 52% reduction in active participation resulting in a 4% reduction in funding is very favourable.

but is that because there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with the baseline data as almost every sport has seen very big drops over the same period? I looked at the data last week (pure curiosity) and it seemed bizarre that lots of sports had seen big drops reasonably similar in % terms - if I saw data like that in my work, without being able to investigate, i'd suspect a data error.