The Calderdale catchment area is more than big enough to support a SL side.

I was here then!

rhetoric is a wonderful thing! Grandparents will still have a club within 20miles to take their grand kids to, there are hundreds of towns without a SL team that still have great school and jnr clubs, many clubs have come back from relegation stronger over the last century, Widnes just the latest in a long line, players and staff have always lost jobs when clubs got relegated, just as players and staff get employed when a club is promoted. Sorry but are you advocating that there should never be P&R of any kind?, clubs and players have always been self interested since we started earning money from the game over 100 hundred years ago and fans have always misbehaved ( I have heard the stories from the 60's!).

If your going to quit following a game then at least think of an original reason why!

I couldn't disagree more!

Let em carry on clan. The argument that super league quality players will find their way to super league whether they are near a super league club or not kinda negates all the rhetoric we have to put up with to justify the shenanigans at crusaders and quins somewhat eh?

So by that standard are you saying we don't need Quins or the Crusaders as players will come through anyway?

While I understand the point of the last two posts , I do disagree , the better geographical spread of the game we have , the more chance we have of producing more RL players of a higher standard

But that does not say that the best 20 RL players of the next generation might not all be born within 20 miles of each other , and they could quite concievably all be from Wakefield and be first drawn to the game as Wakefield fans , and also they could be lost to the game as a result of Wakefields loss of SL status

There is no quantifyable way of being sure either way

Obviously not, you seem to have spectacularly missed a point that even Starbug was capable of understanding quite easily. If Quins and Crusaders didn't exist, the young players coming through at those clubs would instead by playing RU or some other sport, they almost certainly would not be playing RL. If Wakefield didn't exist, the likes of Ellis, Westwood and Mason would almost definitely still be playing RL, and would just have been signed by other clubs such as Cas or Leeds. Obviously that's not to say clubs like Wakefield should ignore youth development, but running off a list of players that have come through the ranks at Wakefield and pretending that they would otherwise not be playing is just desperate and stupid, especially when half the players listed by 'The Clan' can equally claim to be products of other clubs. The argument would be different if West Yorkshire wasn't such a crowded market.

Conversely, the desire for grass roots RL in the Wakefield area will wane, once the chance of playing at the highest level, for the club they have supported as a kid is denied.

Whereas, both in London & Wales, Rugby Union is King and all the best players will undoubtedly follow that path, both due to tradition & financial reward.

Therefore the best rugby players in the expansion areas will have been cherry picked by the Union mob & the remainder will drift into R.L.

That’s not the case in Yorkshire, where the only aspiration in Union is to play for the yo-yo Leeds outfit.

The same argument would be equally as valid for any RL club, anywhere. It's nothing special to Wakefield and in fact fits less with a club like Wakefield which already has a very saturated RL market with 2 SL clubs and 3 Championship club in the district, another 3 SL clubs and 3 lower leagues clubs in the county. What is missed by Wakefield is more likely to be picked up and interest kept up by the 10 other pro or semi-pro RL clubs based around them, than Quins or Crusaders, where players/interest missed by these clubs are by and large lost to the game.


You would be surprised at the huge amount of RU professionals who come from RL heartlands, Mike Tindall, Chris Ashton, Toby Flood, Mark Cueto and Ben Foden, Jonny Wilkinson, Danny Care and Charlie Hodgson all from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria.

Similarly RL players can come from areas outside of the heartlands, but the structure needs to be there. RU needs Sale, Leeds, Newcastle like RL needs Quins and Crusaders.

Hang on a minute , if your going to use part of my post , use all of it , it is quite conceivable that there are and will be many youngsters attracted to RL because of Wakefield who have and will go on to become top players , so yes having a larger geographical spread is desirable , but it in itself doesn't mean that those areas will produce top RL talent , the argument isn't conclusive either way and cannot be proven either way

The argument is self evident, those areas which play RL will produce more RL players than those areas which dont play RL. If we are to increase the amount of players we produce (only one half of the issue, but a larger crop is likely to result in a better cream) then we need to increase the areas which play RL.

The only way to do that is by having a larger geographical spread.


Theres a certain contradiction in your argument that accepts that having a club in an area surrounded by other RL clubs attracts fans and players to the game, but then also states having a club in an area not surrounded by other RL clubs isnt necessarily going to attract fans and players to the game, it just doesnt make sense