League north structure

[young_trig]

I agree with Gazman, it is a chicken Egg situation. Start Junior leagues locally for lacrosse, football does it, rugby does it. It takes time and effort, or we can get adults to take up the sport late, I can guarantee that they wont compete against existing clubs and I wouldnt expect them to do so. If its social lacrosse then thats fine.

There we go again. I really don't get your insistence that clubs can't play competitive lacrosse unless they have a junior section. I agree that it is unlikely that we will be challenging the top of Prem 1 anytime soon, but we can still compete and take the sport seriously.

I'll say it again, there are lacrosse players all over the north who wish to play competitive lacrosse but need to do so local to them and not for a club over 60 miles away. Therefore there is a real need to give these players an outlet and allow them to play. I am massively offended that you think these clubs, including my own, are only in it for the social aspect. We have competed year on year since we started 5 years ago and have always been either promoted or finished in the top 3 (i admit that it is a tough ask to repeat this year). We train every week and take our team seriously and we take great pride in trying to promote our club and give the best we can every time we go on the pitch. Just because we don't have a junior section doesn't men that we shouldn't be shown any respect. The whole point of the leagues is that some teams are not as good as the rest so they sit in a lower division. However, that lower division still plays competitive lacrosse against each other. To say they don't is insulting.

We simply don't have the manpower to start a junior section yet, it takes a lot of dedicated people. In the meantime we are dedicated to growing our senior team and providing a club outlet for graduates, students, and any seniors wanting to try out the sport (with the aim to eventually provide an A team for them to play on). As Gaz and Whopead have said, junior development only really works if you can arrange enough local lacrosse for the juniors to compete. Stockport, and the other Greater Manchester Clubs all benefited from the fact that as you develop your junior team, there are other local clubs doing the same and therefore providing competitive lacrosse on their doorsteps. We don't have any local competition and therefore we are up against it from the start.

Teams like Sheffield Uni do not have a junior section and yet they have managed to compete with the top flight for many years. Nottingham in the past have also managed it. These clubs relied to some extent of recruiting experienced players who were studying locally but this model has worked for Sheffield for a long time now. Why can't the other clubs without a junior section work on a similar model and try to recruit experienced players? Stockport cannot put all their success down to homegrown junior talent. You still recruit from other clubs getting players like McAllister, Baxter and Reynolds and these players will have a massive influence on the squad.

I summary, I really agree with you that developing juniors is important, but it is not manadatory in order for clubs to still offer and play competitive lacrosse. To suggest otherwise is insulting. Good day to you sir.

[Moaning Git]

Trig he is not being insulting he is speaking from his experience. However he is not as familiar with the issues of a new club, especially of one outside manchester as you are, so you are both correct.

The issue is one of planning and allocation of resources. the ELA does not have the funding to provide all the services people want to see. They have concentrated their growth strategy on the Unis where they have been phenomenally successful in recording participation growth. The issue is that there has not, in the North at least, been the knock on expansion in club lacrosse. Junior Lacrosse has been basically left to the individual clubs to pursue, so Stockport, Timperley, Brooklands etc big clubs with reources to invest have run programmes to various degrees of success. This is far more dificult for smaller or newly established clubs.

The setting up of a national Youth Committee is aimed at directing some thought on promoting the Junior and Youth game as part of an intgrated strategy.

Placing the responsibility for Juniors and Schools North under the league North Umbrella gives the opportunity for clubs to cooperate in develping a coordinated junior development programme.... but it would be nice to see the clubs start working together on other matters first.

There is a lot of talk about the ELA should do this that or the other, so additionalresources will be needed. With that in mind would clubs be willing to pay a £5 per player levy as part of their ELA subs in order to fund dvelopment programmes?

[the pom]

Trig he is not being insulting he is speaking from his experience. However he is not as familiar with the issues of a new club, especially of one outside manchester as you are, so you are both correct.

The issue is one of planning and allocation of resources. the ELA does not have the funding to provide all the services people want to see. They have concentrated their growth strategy on the Unis where they have been phenomenally successful in recording participation growth. The issue is that there has not, in the North at least, been the knock on expansion in club lacrosse. Junior Lacrosse has been basically left to the individual clubs to pursue, so Stockport, Timperley, Brooklands etc big clubs with reources to invest have run programmes to various degrees of success. This is far more dificult for smaller or newly established clubs.

The setting up of a national Youth Committee is aimed at directing some thought on promoting the Junior and Youth game as part of an intgrated strategy.

Placing the responsibility for Juniors and Schools North under the league North Umbrella gives the opportunity for clubs to cooperate in develping a coordinated junior development programme.... but it would be nice to see the clubs start working together on other matters first.

There is a lot of talk about the ELA should do this that or the other, so additionalresources will be needed. With that in mind would clubs be willing to pay a £5 per player levy as part of their ELA subs in order to fund dvelopment programmes?

as long as it was ring fenced and spent and on junior develoment then yes i would be happy to spend another 5 quid, more if you knew it was not just vanishing in to the ELA

i think most would.

[wimmerlax]

I certainly would be up for spending a little more to encourage youth development, so many potentially great players are lost to other sports, mainly due to a lack of development of youth leagues and coaching... we are lucky to have great tournements like the ted donnet, but bigger events and events to encourage players to aim for U19 international sides or even a U19 county competition would be nice to see.

[the pom]

i was thinking a bit younger say 5 and upwards to 16

[wimmerlax]

Those guys too I started when i was 20 so not much knowledge of anything before that, just see alot of kids at our club who would have been awesome if they'd had the support/drive to carry on with the sport

[dalglish]

I agree with Gazman, it is a chicken Egg situation. Start Junior leagues locally for lacrosse, football does it, rugby does it. It takes time and effort, or we can get adults to take up the sport late, I can guarantee that they wont compete against existing clubs and I wouldnt expect them to do so. If its social lacrosse then thats fine.

There we go again. I really don't get your insistence that clubs can't play competitive lacrosse unless they have a junior section. I agree that it is unlikely that we will be challenging the top of Prem 1 anytime soon, but we can still compete and take the sport seriously.

I'll say it again, there are lacrosse players all over the north who wish to play competitive lacrosse but need to do so local to them and not for a club over 60 miles away. Therefore there is a real need to give these players an outlet and allow them to play. I am massively offended that you think these clubs, including my own, are only in it for the social aspect. We have competed year on year since we started 5 years ago and have always been either promoted or finished in the top 3 (i admit that it is a tough ask to repeat this year). We train every week and take our team seriously and we take great pride in trying to promote our club and give the best we can every time we go on the pitch. Just because we don't have a junior section doesn't men that we shouldn't be shown any respect. The whole point of the leagues is that some teams are not as good as the rest so they sit in a lower division. However, that lower division still plays competitive lacrosse against each other. To say they don't is insulting.

We simply don't have the manpower to start a junior section yet, it takes a lot of dedicated people. In the meantime we are dedicated to growing our senior team and providing a club outlet for graduates, students, and any seniors wanting to try out the sport (with the aim to eventually provide an A team for them to play on). As Gaz and Whopead have said, junior development only really works if you can arrange enough local lacrosse for the juniors to compete. Stockport, and the other Greater Manchester Clubs all benefited from the fact that as you develop your junior team, there are other local clubs doing the same and therefore providing competitive lacrosse on their doorsteps. We don't have any local competition and therefore we are up against it from the start.

Teams like Sheffield Uni do not have a junior section and yet they have managed to compete with the top flight for many years. Nottingham in the past have also managed it. These clubs relied to some extent of recruiting experienced players who were studying locally but this model has worked for Sheffield for a long time now. Why can't the other clubs without a junior section work on a similar model and try to recruit experienced players? Stockport cannot put all their success down to homegrown junior talent. You still recruit from other clubs getting players like McAllister, Baxter and Reynolds and these players will have a massive influence on the squad.

I summary, I really agree with you that developing juniors is important, but it is not manadatory in order for clubs to still offer and play competitive lacrosse. To suggest otherwise is insulting. Good day to you sir.

Trig you are easily insulted I have to say, as Mr Git said there was no intention to disrespect the work you and others do, not at all. I wanted to be constructive, if I failed then so be it,
As I said I have never played but have been involved for many years, it‘s good that you can attract senior players to start playing lacrosse, Stockport can’t do that, yes we do attract good players like those mentioned but they come to us. Over 90% of all players signed on are from within the club, the success is down to the structure of the club built over many years, the hardest part is maintaining that as Mr Git can vouch for.
To have competitive games surely means that the teams are of a similar standard, this is what was meant by my comments, identifying the various standards within the game in order for those clubs to play the game where the result is never a foregone conclusion, by the sound of it you appear to have found your level after 5 years. I can only speak for my club but from our standpoint the games were more competitive before, I'm sure, in fact I know Rochdale would rather be playing Cheadle and Stockport A teams and the league format as was 2 years ago.
Are there as many experienced players all over the north wanting to play as you say then come and join Stockport and we will start C teams or even D. My guess would be that a player with experience got it young, may have drifted away for some reason but would also know where to go if he wanted to start playing again.
And lastly I have never said it was mandatory to have a junior section, but it would help. Is it the job of the ELA to get juniors playing the game?
Yes It is a chicken and egg question.

[Waggy]

Rochdale were and still are supportive of the new structure, we have no aspirations for anyone other than our A team to play Stockport & Cheadle A teams, our target is for the first team to play teams in Prem 1 and will work hard to achieve this again. We do understand there are issues in Prem 2 and would like to play more games in a season, but that was also the case when we were in Prem 1, however these are small compared with the problems of the old structure. We now get a B team out regularly to play what it's players regarded as social lacrosse and no longer feel the need to support our lower teams when we have no first team game.

I thank dalglish for pointing out the views of my club, but unfortunately they are incorrect!

Linking to a post on another area of the forums it is possible to play a game, take lots out of it, show respect to your opponents and not score more than 20 goals!

[dalglish]

Fortunately they are not my views, just relaying what I have been told, I never doubted the aspirations of Rochdale to get back in Prem 1 however are you seriously saying you would rather be playing in the current structure rather than the old.

With regards to competitive sport, respect by not scoring more than 20 goals and being able to get something from a game then I agree to disagree. We will be having rule changes before we know it, bringing in free clears after 5 goal margins. I clearly have a different view of what competitive sport is all about.

[UKLacrosse]

Personally I would guess that the number of players who have seen any benefit from the restructure is minimal.
Most are playing less competitive games than before. The fact is that the restructure is NOT better than the previous one, though some can argue that it will benefit the future of the game. I worry about the damage to the game before that time arrives. The structure still accommodates the transfer of better players to lower teams, so when higher teams are not playing, some players get games on lower teams ... last season it was rife when so many games were being cancelled due to the weather. The failure of the league to deal with that issue has just as high an impact on promotion and relegation than the old system of A-Teams holding back 1st Teams. However, we now know that the development aspiration was based upon 'new' teams entering the league. Anyone with any thought would have realised that a lot of those potential 'new' teams would be coming from the growth in the game at university. With BUCS in its infancy, it would have seemed appropriate to let that develop first, to see how many of those players would be interested in playing in NEMLA as well as BUCS. A lot has been said about how well SEMLA dealt with these issues by adopting a flexible approach to new teams, promotion and relegation, but that is exactly what NEMLA have seemingly failed to do.

[Waggy]

Fortunately they are not my views, just relaying what I have been told, I never doubted the aspirations of Rochdale to get back in Prem 1 however are you seriously saying you would rather be playing in the current structure rather than the old.

With regards to competitive sport, respect by not scoring more than 20 goals and being able to get something from a game then I agree to disagree. We will be having rule changes before we know it, bringing in free clears after 5 goal margins. I clearly have a different view of what competitive sport is all about.

The club supported and still supports the restructure, we believe that a competition for first teams and then other team is best way in the long term to see the development of the game. The NEMLA Leagues run well and provide what clubs what for reserve teams. the Premier Divisions have a problem in the middle with the gap between top and bottom of prem 2 being too wide. the positives talk about by the small clubs are clear the most important of which being regular games. I know that ideas are being talked about to look at the problem in prem 2.

Still, it's interested to hear that you are able to relay the views of Rochdale, you must be speaking to a lot of the players that I don't talk to?

[dalglish]

Where do you think Rochdale will find the most competitive games, which division ?

[gazmanofhull]

Can the pom, UKLacrosse and dalglish please tell me why the previous structure worked in their opinion?

Because I can assure you as a member of a new club it did not. Ourselves and Newcastle found that the only clubs who regularly travelled to either of us was each other in the old structure whilst both clubs travelled to EVERYONE!

Why should we have been forking out the Affiliation & League Fees we were for half a competition!

And what is ACTUALLY wrong with the current structure. There is a difference in class between the top and bottom of Premier 2. But last season the club that finished 2nd in that division lost to the club that finished 7th!

The format of first teams in one structure and ABC teams in another is the long-term requirement for the game IMHO. For the short term it will have teething problems - number of clubs, standard of lacrosse - but in-time these will disappear.

Changing it back would be of no benefit to the game

[davidmcculloch81]

There's only one solution to this:

*prepares chanting voice*

"BREAKAWAY LEAGUE...BREAKAWAY LEAGUE...BREAKAWAY LEAGUE"

[dalglish]

Gazman

The issue of Clubs who fail to travel or fulfil fixtures should have been tackled by the league as it makes a mockery of the game. I came into the discussion based on trying to address the non competive games, levelling out the standards which I don't believe has been achieved. We then moved onto other areas about Juniors, players moving clubs, forming new teams all of which nobody has come through with a strategy. We go down one route and then find this effects something else and there is always a reason why it can't be done.
Too far to travel
No Junior Section
Not enough volunteers
No Referees
Can't play in the summer because clubs share with Cricket
Clubs don't have a coach, lack of coaches.

What exactly is it we are trying to sort, what are the aspirations of new clubs, is it for "social " purposes, winning trophies. What ambitions do clubs have. Do clubs set a target each season. Are you happy getting a drubbing, do you look at why, does anyone anylise the result or do we accept it no matter what and hope next week will be better.
I know what my clubs ambitions are and it is just as hard trying to stay at the level we are. Stockport players would not admit it but I would guess that there is a fear in losing.
You see eveyone has a different agenda, but surely its all about being the best you can be. Last week Sheffield Uni lost to Stockport but despite the score the game was competitive.
I respect every club and volunteers,I understand what it takes to keep clubs going but every club surely must have a plan whether it is to start additional teams, a junior section, even find additional like minded volunteers who enjoy watching and can make a difference. I admire the work Rochdale do with the Flags weekends, Wilmslow with the BNC's, Bath 8s, all of these don't just happen, how many people though say "Thank You"
Until there is a national plan we will all go on our merry way doing what's best for us.

[UKLacrosse]

Can the pom, UKLacrosse and dalglish please tell me why the previous structure worked in their opinion?

Because I can assure you as a member of a new club it did not. Ourselves and Newcastle found that the only clubs who regularly travelled to either of us was each other in the old structure whilst both clubs travelled to EVERYONE!

Why should we have been forking out the Affiliation & League Fees we were for half a competition!

And what is ACTUALLY wrong with the current structure. There is a difference in class between the top and bottom of Premier 2. But last season the club that finished 2nd in that division lost to the club that finished 7th!

The format of first teams in one structure and ABC teams in another is the long-term requirement for the game IMHO. For the short term it will have teething problems - number of clubs, standard of lacrosse - but in-time these will disappear.

Changing it back would be of no benefit to the game

Gaz, no one disgarees that the old system/ structure was a real handicap for new clubs entering the league. That should and could have been dealt with differently by the league if only NEMLA had applied sense and flexibility. In my opinion that could have been by fast-tracking new clubs up the leagues away from the 'social, less committed' end of the league. They did it in the past. What we now have are less competitive leagues e.g. many players in the top A-Teams are capable of playing Premiership 1, but are now getting less competitive games than they did when they played old D2. Is that going to improve their playing standard, or maintain their level of play ... I doubt it? Premiership 2 hardly prepares a relegated team from Premiership 1, to play Premiership 1 the next season, if they manage to gain promotion. Of course in the short term these issues could have been overcome by migration of players to weaker or new clubs, but it was never going to be on a scale that would have any real effect.

I would claim yet again, that far more players have been adversely affected by the restructure, than have gained from it! Yes, we must look to the future and adapt but .... 'short term teething problems' .... how short term? .... 'but in time these will disappear' .... how long a time? Meanwhile, the standard of play is suffering.

[UKLacrosse]

There's only one solution to this:

*prepares chanting voice*

"BREAKAWAY LEAGUE...BREAKAWAY LEAGUE...BREAKAWAY LEAGUE"

Don't laugh too loudly ..... football did it!

[gazmanofhull]

[quote="UKLacrosse]Premiership 2 hardly prepares a relegated team from Premiership 1, to play Premiership 1 the next season, if they manage to gain promotion.[/quote]

That isn't necessarily true. The teams promoted in the current structure from Premier 2 are:
Sheffield Steelers - Relegated back.
B&E - Survived for a mid-table finish IIRC.
Mellor - Currently 3rd in Premier 1.
Poynton - Currently 4th in Premer 1.

Granted it is too soon to really comment on Mellor & Poynton, but they are not exactly doing badly for a season against lesser opposition.

As for promotion from Premier 3:
Newcastle - Survived
Liverpool - Relegated back - Lost some VERY significant players so who knows what would have happened if they had not lost them.
Leeds - Currently 4th
Ashton - Currently 8th, but we all know they did not want to go up.

Again, too soon to judge Leeds as they are only 3 games in, but I would expect them to survive. Whilst at the top end Brooklands, Rochdale & Steelers are all getting away and are well set for a three horse race back to Premier 1.

As for ways to deal with new clubs to avoid them playing social sides what are the ways. The only ones I can think of are:

1) The NEMLA Management Committee sit down and decide where to place a team they know nothing about.
2) The existing NEMLA clubs vote on where to place a new clubs based on assumptions.
3) Make the new entrant audition with games against the champions of each division until they lose, then place them based on that.

If you take option 1, how do they judge a club they know nothing about.
If you take option 2, clubs will vote based on how that new clubs and its placement will affect them. Do they want that new club, based over 100miles away in the same division as their C team who won't make the trip. Or do they want that new team boasting a host of quality, exciting players in the same division as their B team and risk them getting thumped.
If you take option 3, you have to rely on each divisions champion being bothered about putting out a strong side in a game that does not affect them.

Dalglish, this year our committee sat down and set out some aims as we do every season:
1) Match or better our league finish of last season (3rd). Progress to the semi-finals (minimum expectation) of the cup.
2) Increase membership with the aim of recruiting for specific positions

As a club we are in it to win what we can. We train as much as we can - we dont actually stop as we train all summer - we use games like the one versus Stoke to work on plays for future games. We play pre-season friendlies when we can and off-field probably take it a little too sriously by having an appointed club physio who isn't some student learning, but is currently employed at the first team sports therapist for the Hull FC Super League team.

[dalglish]

Good on yer Gazman. what your'e doing is exactly what my ideas would be. This attitude will only improve your club. Hope all this effort pays dividends for you.

[webby]

NB - Gaz - Newcastle have their own team Physio, orthopaedic surgeon, urologist, GP, nurse, accountant and more.

After the last couple games (Rochdale 16-0, Sheffield 23-1) as a club we discussed what went wrong, what we need to do and how to do it. We then go into training and work on drills to address these issues. Our problem is trying to balance training between coaching new players and coaching seasoned veterans. Finding a level that suits both is tough, and more often than not it's the more experienced players that suffer.

The players we have brought in from BUCS have improved 10fold playing against Poynton, Brooklands, Mellor, Rochdale and Sheffield than they have against other BUCS teams (apart from the top teams eg Leeds Met/Dham/Sheff/Hallam/Lboro etc).

I can see the argument about competitive games, but it depends on what you define as
"competitive" - I personally preferred playing in the above matches and getting a drubbing than playing against Liverpool last year not feeling personally challenged.