Nice initiative, now just need some clubs outside the north east of Sydney.
According to the operations manual, when the Union receives a request for affiliation from a new club (I.e. Penrith or Hornsby), all clubs are notified and are invited to make submissions re admission.Whats the go with Penrith this year?
Rockdale is apparently gone for 24 with the remnant going back to Southern Districts 4th grade apparently.And clubs of suitable size and intent to have Colts at that. Here's the map of Subbies clubs - all Divisions:
View attachment 18087
Here's a map of the Top 3 Divisions, all of whom have/should have Colts - you start to see where the league heartlands are pretty quickly, and where most of the U21 cohort is difficult to capture.
View attachment 18088
Touch Football has lost half of all participants since 2017I'm told by people involved in other sports that participation is similarly falling.
Touch Football has lost half of all participants since 2017
Rugby league and Rugby 7s is taking a solid tranche of female players out of the game, but not half of all participants though. Its a drop of about 200k players. Ovid can be blamed for some of that but certainly not all of it.What would be interesting is to understand if they're going to another sport or just quitting.
I was looking at some lower grade Premier Rugby sheets from 2023, and saw a fair few names that came up on Subbies sheets from 2022. So they're at least staying in the code.
To keep it simple I kept out the filler clubs such as convicts that were playing lower grades only in 23. There was a lot of that going on last year.Divs 5 & 6 will be interesting. You'll see a fair bit of attrition I'd say.
Here are the clubs I have down as finished up since 2007:
Oakhill Old Boys
Norwest
Killara West Pymble
Bankstown
Notre Dame Uni
St George
Liverpool
The Vales (Fairvale/Lansvale)
Roseville
Sydney Grammar Old Boys
Collaroy
Clovelly
Seaforth
ICMS
Dee Why
Engadine
Sydney Combined Forces
Hawkesbury Ag College
Menai - came back in a couple of times, won trophies, shut down.
Rockdale came back in 2023 and status for 2024 TBC.
The "maybes" who were still about in 2023 via merger or Halligan Cup:
Lane Cove
Brothers
Terrey Hills