http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport..._start_professional_rugby_league_in_Scotland/
A businessman has pledged to fund a Scottish based rugby league franchise to the tune of £25,000 a year if a consortium can be formed to run a new team in a business like fashion.
The potential investor, a Scot who wants to remain anonymous at this stage, told HeraldSport that he has a long-standing love of the sport and has been inspired by the national team’s performance.
However in the wake of Scottish interest in the sport’s oldest tournament, the Challenge Cup, ending with a heavy defeat for national champions
Aberdeen Warriors at the hands of Pilkington Recs in the opening round, he recognises that if the 13 man game is to flourish it needs to put down stronger roots.
“The Four Nations draw with New Zealand was probably the best result ever in rugby league,” he enthused.
“It would be the equivalent of the 10th ranked team in the world getting a result against the All Blacks. The Kiwis bitched and moaned about the venue afterwards, but with a bit more coherence it shows what
Scotland in rugby league can be. It was incredible to see them playing to that level and they can still take it to another level.”
While Scotland Rugby League, the game’s governing body, is focused on this year’s World Cup in Australia and a bid to build on that Four Nations performance as well as the surprise run to the 2013 World Cup quarter-finals, there are serious concerns about the future.
Only last week the BBC announced that it would provide the best ever platform for the international game to promote itself by promising live coverage of every match when the World Cup returns to the UK in 2021. However, while that astonishing result against the world number one New Zealanders elevated the national team to fourth place in the world rankings, some commentators have claimed there is a serious threat to Scottish participation in that tournament.
The assertion is that Scotland does not currently fulfil the criteria that would entitle it to field a team in international competition because of the failure to establish a properly competitive domestic set-up, as exemplified by Aberdeen having earned Saturday’s Challenge Cup place on the back of a string of wins over last season’s only meaningful Scottish rivals, the Forfar-based Strathmore Silverbacks.
Putting a more meaningful competition in place would be accelerated by having a professional set-up for players to aspire to, however, which makes this offer a potential game changer.
“I would be prepared to put in 25 grand a year, but it’s about putting roots down. You need the right business plan and the right people,” said the would-be investor.
“I’m ready to contribute to that but I don’t want to lead it and there should be a more senior investor than me.”
In terms of where the team should be located he suggested that geography and a tradition of having sent players to rugby league would make the Borders a strong contender, but acknowledged that solid groundwork has been done in Aberdeen which suggests it might have the right combination of a big population and the capacity to further develop a support structure within its schools and community.
“The Borders is not too far from Cumbria which makes travel easier, but Aberdeen’s got an airport and oil money. It may have taken a dip but there’s nothing to rule that out of coming back again. They’ve now got some history up there,” he noted.
Future developments also offer the tantalising prospect of liaison with Aberdeen FC, who recently submitted a planning application for their proposed new home at Kingsford. That, in turn, invites comparison with the ambitious project being launched this season as Toronto Wolfpack join the lowest division of England’s professional rugby league set-up. Heavily supported they have recruited former Great Britain and Wigan Warriors head coach Brian Noble as their director of rugby, along with a formidable playing squad and are paying for all their opponents’ trips to Canada as they seek to race to the
Premiership in minimum time.
However the Scottish investor urges a steadier, more organic development, suggesting a more relevant parallel with a club that neighbours, but is based outside rugby league’s M62 corridor heartland, would be with Coventry Bears. They were originally formed by a group of students in the nineties but have gradually worked their way through the amateur National Conference Leagues and will now be among those hosting Toronto in National League One at their 4000 capacity Butts Arena, having been admitted to the professional competition two years ago.
“Ideally you would work towards having a ground that had a 500 seat stand in the first instance with the ability to have another 500 standing,” he said.
“The key is finding the right place to launch yourself. The RFL would give you seventy grand which helps to attract decent talent and you make up the rest with sponsorship etc.
“You are aiming for turnover of £250,000 and what you would look for is a manager, a coach and an office manager to set things up.”
