With Roger Harrison and Finney on the board you can bet it wasn’t a decision taken lightly. Those two will be gutted for sure.
With Roger Harrison and Finney on the board you can bet it wasn’t a decision taken lightly. Those two will be gutted for sure.
Indeed.
It is certainly becoming more and more obvious that there is a chasm between clubs with external financial backing and those without. Having supported this club since 1950 I cannot remember a time, other than the SL era, when we had any real financial clout, and I cannot see any likelihood of us ever being in that position in my lifetime.
There must come a point in the near future when clubs like Widnes return to the original concept and accept that this is the role that it needs to adopt.
As I have said in an earlier post that the games called 'rugby' will be forced to change massively. If for no other reason this is the time to watch the game before it's gone!
I'm 50/50 on this. Its obviously a worrying sign and yet another reminder of how far we've fallen in such a short space of time.
On the flip side however, who was the last player to come through the ranks and us get the best out of said player before they bugger off. Player after player has come through + either they just weren't good enough or any that showed potential were off after 1 or 2 seasons. Its completely unrealistic to expect a club in Widnes position to develop the next massive talent + that player stay with us for 5 or 6 years.
In the short term, hopefully its a good move to ease the expenditure, but I think long term, the board are going to have to come up with a plan to ensure we get back to where we want to be. Very wierd times, but considering the support we have and the extra funds from VIQI, there can be no excuses for us not to be competing at the top end in the next couple of seasons.
Years and years ago I worked with a nutter. He had a university degree and a good job with a decent wage and for most of the time he seemed normal.
We were sitting there one day and he said that everybody’s life would be better if we got rid of the most ‘useless’ (his exact word) 10% of the population. I asked him what would he do with the 10% and he basically said kill them. I followed up by asking him would that be a one-off or would he then move on the the new most useless 10% and he said yes he probably would. Like I say he was a nutter but the getting rid of the weakest over and over is what the RFL have been doing for years. It just so happens that we are now heading for the ‘useless’ classification. The thing about getting rid of the weak is that the strong eventually have nothing to make them look strong and then they too will disappear.
As I said in a separate thread the other day - expansion is killing the game at the elite level by spreading the limited pool of ‘strong’ players too thin and the ‘weak’ will end up giving the game up.
it really is time to jettison SL and turn the game into a semi-pro game again played by people who want to play the game rather than trying to scratch out a living from it.
Excellent post RV!
Having watched the game in the days before SL some of us can appreciate the point about a wide variance in teams. Most RL records were set when there were high scores and a wider spread of talent, but did we all walk away and say that Bevan, Gaydon, Vollenhoven, was no good because the opposition was weak? No, we enjoyed their pace and sidestep etc! And pre-TV crowds travelled and filled the poorer club tills.
The drive for higher and higher standards really is a TV marketing requirement rather than a RL fan's and as you say becomes self-defeating as we are seeing with our 'top four/six' hardly changing year on year.
If my predictions come good RU will see a downward trend, as will many impact sports.
As I say - Get out and support before its too late!!!
We had to abort the academy be it now or next year the club made a financial decision that was a must. We move on and build once the pandemic is over. How many championship clubs run an academy ? some SL sides do not run one and they all get by. Why do people think we will have a squad of loan players ?. We will sign players and then they become a Viking a lot of fuss over nothing. At least now the club will be spending all the money on the first team squad which after a long time will and always should be the main priority.
It really is time to jettison SL and turn the game into a semi-pro game again played by people who want to play the game rather than trying to scratch out a living from it.
100%. I'd love the Championship and the Leagues to break away from SL and return normal RL to a sustainable, P/T level. It's what I grew up watching and it was more honest, and dare I say better and more exciting than SL has ever been. I hate the way chasing the SL 'dream' seems to all-consume some clubs and fans, totally not worth it, on any level.
Let SL keep its money and its world ambitions and we'll get on with playing rugby. They'll fail, again, and come cap in hand at some point; they have a proven track record for not learning.
We, and the other clubs in the Championship could make next season a bumper one. If fans from the 'new' York, Fev etc get on board and travel it could transform them and the Championship and give everyone a taste of the game as it was!
Our travelling support is a shadow of what it was but it still swamps most at Championship level. Didn't we once do a 'cheap' ticket for away ST owners?It would have to be on a club to club basis to beat the cheats but it should be possible. That could help encourage the Yorkies!
Ultimately as some have alluded to, unless the academy is being externally funded to the extent it isn’t costing the club much, which it no longer is then sustaining an academy will simply mean having a weaker first-team squad.
I doubt the board wanted to lose the academy and I am sure some of them are gutted, but I suspect the financial hit caused by the Covid situation has left them with little or no choice.
We had to abort the academy be it now or next year the club made a financial decision that was a must. We move on and build once the pandemic is over. How many championship clubs run an academy ? some SL sides do not run one and they all get by. Why do people think we will have a squad of loan players ?. We will sign players and then they become a Viking a lot of fuss over nothing. At least now the club will be spending all the money on the first team squad which after a long time will and always should be the main priority.
Speechless.Widnes scrap the pathway to the first team for young up and coming lads and it's no big deal ! I'm not interested what other clubs do,they can please themselves. So now that we are just another second division club with no ambition, in future let's not mock and ridicule the so called expansion clubs for having no grassroots and no junior set up because we are just the same as them.
Its plain that next year will see Academies become too expensive for many clubs, and not just Championship status. Unless there is a money tree discovered we will not be able to sustain the required standard to satisfy the RFL/SL so, regretfully, we jumped before we were pushed. Finney is a heart and soul academy supporter and I have no doubt that he had to swallow hard to come to this conclusion.
But are there alternatives? Could we not work more closely with amateur clubs, joint training/coaching sessions maybe, to encourage the town's youth to relate to the club? We have, of necessity, become a community club. Make that our alternative to toeing the official line (at our expense!).
I think this all puts more pressure on 1st Team performances.
Being competitive in the Top 5 and, in time, contending for the GF will keep the overwhelming majority onside and engaged.
A couple of mid-table seasons allied to the scrapping of the pathway and the change in habits due to Covid could be a disaster for the club.
I am sure that I have read in the RL Press that there will n ot be any Dual Registrations in 2021. Loan players will probably the thing but it should be linited to a certain number.
<p style="text-align: left;">If we have no academy or reserves and pick up 6 or 7 injuries what will we do for getting 17 players on the field?</p>