23 December 2010

Young Raiders souls saved by football bureaucracy

| johnboy
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The SMH has the tangled tale how the Canberra Raiders’ youth squad are being spared development into professional footballers (fast coming even with sex workers for what parents don’t want their kids to grow up and become) by bickering between the NSW Rugby League and the Canberra Raiders over their Queensland development track.

In a decision that has left Raiders chief Don Furner fuming, the NSWRL last week barred Canberra juniors from playing in next year’s Harold Matthews and SG Ball competitions. They did so because of the Raiders’ reluctance to take part in an exclusive joint venture with St George Illawarra to send their players to Shellharbour in the NSW Cup.

The Raiders had insisted on sending a portion of their playing talent to Souths Logan in the Queensland Cup but the NSWRL, which does not want to be seen to be propping up a Queensland competition, rejected that proposal. And because of a recent move to ban any club’s players from the junior competitions if there is no representation in the NSW Cup, up to 60 young Raiders have been left stranded.

With a bit of luck the young’uns will now become excellent human beings instead of excellent footballers, but they’re already a long way along the path to the dark side.

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I thought we were within a couple of strokes of coming into a whole new world where the independent commission was to run the game. Is this all a storm in a tea cup?

Ahhh, now I understand.

Sounds pretty petty to me. I have always thought that the Sydney RL establishment seemed to hold something against the ACT. They have a friendly rivalry with Qld, but seem to like to stick it to Canberra. But that is just the impression that I get from outside the sport.

p1 no the senior raiders who don’t make the first grade team go to play in the QLD cup. The NSWRL want them to play in a local competition and the Raiders don’t want to they want to keep sending these guys to QLD. As punishment for not doing as they are told they NSWRL has refused to allow the U16 and U18 raiders teams entry into the competition in the NSW league.

I’ve read this story a few times in different places, and am still not sure I understand it.

NSWRL won’t let young raiders play in one of their comps unless young raiders play in a different one of their comps? Is that correct?

Has anyone in NSWRL realised that the ACT is not part of NSW? Why can’t we choose to ‘prop up’ a QLD comp?

I love the way Rugby League puts so much time into “bagging” other codes, yet can’t see that they are self destructing!

Comparing footballers to sex workers? That’s a terrible insult to sex workers everywhere!

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