wamberal
Phil Kearns (64)
Hopefully the Australian Rugby Foundation can actually send some funds directly to Western Sydney.. Which seems to be its scope
The Foundation is just a great idea.
Hopefully the Australian Rugby Foundation can actually send some funds directly to Western Sydney.. Which seems to be its scope
Some other one sided results from the world of Colts<snip>
From yesterday's round
Grade Randwick 304 - Penrith 34 (4 grades)
Colts Randwick 128 - Penrith 0 (2 grades as Penrith unable to field a 1st grade team)
How is this good for rugby?
Some other one sided results from the world of Colts
Wicks 200 vs Rats 5 (3 grades)
Wicks 187 vs 2Blues 48 (3 grades)
Woodies 163 vs Rats 10 (3 grades)
So doesn't this make it the perfect market to go for?
Thousands of kids who want to play a contact sport, parents (mothers) who are OK with contact sports. Surely we only need a very small % penetration into this market and we'd have a big impact on Penrith rugby??? Doesn't this just scream neglect by NSW/Sydney RUs?? (I'm sure Cattledog and the Penrith volunteers are doing it against all odds).
Who's advocating a merger? I can't recall reading it anywhere on this thread, and I certainly didn't suggest it.
EDIT: From yesterday's round
Grade Randwick 304 - Penrith 34 (4 grades)
Colts Randwick 128 - Penrith 0 (2 grades as Penrith unable to field a 1st grade team)
How is this good for rugby?
BTW, a young guy named George Harrison (nickname Beatle ) scored 6 tries for Wicks 2nd grade yesterday playing at #6.
I think Mike Cleary still holds the record for most tries in a game.
Is that correct and does anyone know how many he scored?
He scored seven. That was his last game of rugby before switching to the other code.
Randwick missed the semis that year. Eastwood had beaten them in the first round, in the mud, at Eastwood. They lost a heap of players to a tour of South Africa, so lost a lot more games that they would usually have won.
They took it out on us, big time, that day.
Thinking about it as a market does not help us much. Junior rugby has to be either school or community based, it cannot be parachuted into a "market" - it is not a product in the classic sense, it is a pastime which needs a lot of volunteers to make it work.
Penrith actually had a fair bit of money and attention poured into it, about a dozen or maybe more years ago - they actually had a very good first grade team, from memory they got up above the middle of the table. But it came to nothing, apparently.
Without the schools in a region like Penrith I would say we are stuffed.
The only option I can think of is for one of the established clubs to take a mentoring/resourcing role. Maybe that would mean that Penrith would be a feeder club, but in return they would have better resourcing to develop their grassroots
The strategy is not unique, the AFL have been doing it for years (throwing resources at the grass roots).
They can afford to throw a lazy $50 mill or whatever around though, can't they, on one new franchise.
We just do not have that sort of money. And if we did, Penrith would have to line up with all the other potential growth areas of the game.
On the other hand, maybe the new Foundation might put its hand in its pocket. But at the end of the day, it is the community that has to want the sport. We will never be able to buy community support.
Hopefully the Australian Rugby Foundation can actually send some funds directly to Western Sydney.. Which seems to be its scope
Still not going to be enough to save Penrith! need large scale development from the bottom up. This takes the kind of in put the aFL have been throwing around for more than 10 years. You need development officers who go into schools and run, coach, referee school competitions, you need more help to clubs in the region and you need some spine in the recruiting/player points to help Penrith stop bleeding players to more attractive offers.
Rugby would have gone a long way to helping Penrith if they had insisted Folau sign up with Penrith.
Rugby would have gone a long way to helping Penrith if they had insisted Folau sign up with Penrith.
I have talked elsewhere of the importance of everybody, every club, every franchise, understanding that as a sport we are under the pump, and we all have to work together cooperatively for the sake of the future.
I was absolutely ropable when Folau chose Sydney University as his club. But I do not blame either the ARU or Folau.
I blame that bunch of self-obsessed overblown schoolboys who wear blue and gold. If they had the slightest regard for the game as a whole, they would have offered Folau all the perks that they could, and then sent him off to Penrith. He will never play a game of club rugby anyway.