Quote: Peckerwood "Only got to the first page, but I should point out Staffordshire University no longer runs a men's rugby league team. There are various reasons for this, and I think one of the contributing factors is no one knew what the sport was and the differences between League and Union. A lot of our intake last year were southerners or from outside the heartlands with no real commitment to the sport.
With that in mind, when we joined the Midlands and South Merit League we struggled to play teams due to adverse weather conditions last winter. This left players who barely knew anything about the sport disillusioned, and not just at our university. Because the same was happening in the other five teams, when it came to after Christmas universities who had A teams in the merit league had to pull them out to supply players for the first team BUCS fixtures.
I think our location was also a factor, with Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds universities (and I'm also talking about Man Met, MMU, Edge Hill, LJM, Leeds Met and Trinity & All Saints etc) gaining players from areas within the M62 corridor. I know for a fact in 2010/11 MMU budgeted for one team, but got enough players to end up with two teams. New students who have grew up in the heartlands, in my own opinion, are more inclined to attend universities closer to home. In addition the appeal for an excellent night-life from students nowadays affected us as we are based in Stoke. Hardly matches up to Manchester, Leeds or Liverpool.
In addition the attitude from our own Students Union was appalling. We were let down heavily by our Students Union before we made the decision to pull out of BUCS. Being based in Stoke, we were pactically forced to give up our home advantage (St Helens-esque) and play the majority of our home games in Stafford campus or at Longton Rugby Union ground, to accommodate the universities three rugby union sides. Not ideal when you are travelling almost the same distance as the away side for a home tie. Their committee training was appalling
I should point out that we had fantastic support from Heather Smith, Ash Howlett and Laura Whitehead at the RFL and tried to help flog the horse with me and a small committed group. Laura even brought the Challenge Cup to our campus (to my delight and excitement, I was like a kid at Christmas when she told me she had brought that with her) but hardly anyone batted an eyelid when they saw it at our clubs and activities freshers' fair at the start of the year. Had that been the FA Cup swarms of people would have gathered around it.'"
As somebody who played a season for the old North Staffordshire Polytechnic that’s really disappointing to hear
It was a great year with a lot of great memories – the best being a trip to France to play in the France vs. Great Britain 1988/89 Test match curtain raiser and meeting all the GB players after the game and in town later (Avignon I think)
Only down side was our opposition was supposed to be a local college and it turned out to be the French under 21 side or something and we got absolutely smashed... Good night though
