By STEVE MASCORD
COVENTRY Bears held their end-of-season presentation straight after a win that many around the place called their best ever, a 14-4 triumph over Hunslet on a wet and slippery Butts Park Arena on Saturday.
If you ever find yourself wondering whether rugby league is worthy of the time you invest in it, crash an end-of-season presentation and inhale what a club means to people.
The awards didn’t just include the young player of the year or the defensive player of the year but volunteer of the year, fan of the year and a presentation to a departing import’s wife.
There was a story of the London based player who worked on his university dissertation until 2am, drove to Coventry at 5am to meet the team bus, travelled to Cumbria and back to play a game, drove back to London and then finished off his dissertation.
Hard working staffer Conor Kelly told the gathering he was returning to Dublin and “will hopefully return with a visiting team some time soon” – a reference to Dublin Blues in League 1. (“Conor is involved in that ‘bid’, I guess you would say,” his boss and mentor would later tell me.)
And presiding over it all was owner Alan Robinson, the former Ireland international who is piloting the Bears into their third decade. We take a seat in the empty adjoining bar to discuss thing like the impact of the new structures on his club and reports that there will be a new “southern league one” from 2019.
“Beating a club like Hunslet, and earlier this year we defeated Keighley, we’re starting to get that respect,” he says, reflecting on the afternoon’s events.
“People are starting to view us in a different way.
“I think we really did turn a corner.”
Onto the structure changes. I understand that for League 1 clubs, guaranteed funding is going to decrease year on year and discretionary funding will go up. Clubs will be incentivised not to finish as high up the table as possible but to be sustainable, to produce players, to attract fans and to be run as efficient businesses.
Alan sort of confirms this without going into detail, but is certainly not bitter about a vote that went Super League’s way.
“Last week a lot of clubs voted to give Super League control in the game and there’s no doubt Super League need control in the game,” he begins.
“They’re the leading light, they’re like the NRL. The sport is in the spotlight with Super League.
“But when it comes to championship and League 1, I don’t think we got a lot fo value.
“The population of the West Midlands alone is larger than Yorkshire. We’ve got to think a little bit bigger in regards to the game and think outside the M62 corridor.
“We’ve got to focus on return on investment if we’re going to get that distribution. Over the next three years, distribution’s going to change. It’s going to become a return-on-investment model.
“Next season it will be spread quite evenly across the teams but after next year we need to be considering what we’re contributing to the player pool, what we’re doing in regard to supporters, what we’re doing in regard to data and the media.
“What gives me confidence is I think we’re already doing a lot of those things.
“And that’s something I don’t think a lot of the shall-we-say, traditional clubs have considered over the last few years.
“I’m not a wealthy benefactor, I’ve got to do things the long way, the hard way.”
Robinson does not take a wage himself and say the Bears’ squad is pretty much paid entirely out of the club’s RFL funding.
“We’re not a traditional club – it’s run by ourselves and my other half Debbie,” says Robinson. “She’s a business and economics specialist so we cut our cloth accordingly. We keep our costs to a minimum.
“We’re a fantastic investment opportunity. I own the club outright. There’ s no huge board of directors making decisions. People can look at us, the way we’re doing things, and say ‘we can do the same and be sustainable’.”
The Bears are part of the Coventry’s World Cup bid.
Finally, Gloucestershire All Golds creator Lionel Hurst said last week on social media that the RFL had contacted him regarding a new non-heartlands league. Robinson seems very, very cautious about this idea and makes it clear he is opposed to any promotion and relegation between such a competition and League 1.
Safe to say he will not be volunteering the Bears to exit League 1 and join this new comp.
“There’s been some talk that that league would have promotion and relegation from League 1 – to be honest, I think that’s a little bit ridiculous,” he said.
“We’ve got franchises in our own right, we’ve worked hard to get where we are. If teams want to sit below that, that’s a critical and very important thing for southern rugby league.
“Clubs like ourselves, Skolars, West Wales – we need a healthy pathway below League One to help grow our players and create a pathway into the game.
“With promotion and relegation … people will ask questions whether certain clubs are valid or not.”
With that, there is a kerfuffle at the other end of the clubhouse. The shivering boys have just come in from the nudie run.
