joejoe
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Save Our Sides - Protest Rally
The first of many protest rallies has been organised for Sunday the 5th of February to raise concern on the state of Rugby League in South West Sydney.
People from Liverpool, the Macarthur and Southern Highlands, have been ignored for too long by both Rugby League administrators and more recently the Wests Tigers back room men.
The situations we have at hand has gotten to a stage that if we dont act soon, we will lose much support of our great game of Rugby League. We will lose it to other, better run football codes that have a strategic long term approach to winning the hearts and minds of this thriving area.
What is needed isnt hard to achieve and we have many talented people from our own area to achieve it. We just need Rugby League to develop a long term roadmap for the area, and then act on it!
These are the basic demands we have:
- We DEMAND a professionally run Senior Competition for the Campbelltown and Liverpool district.
- We DEMAND that Rugby League clubs can play and train at a Home Ground of their own choosing.
- We DEMAND the region retains its own NSW Cup, SG Ball and Harold Matthews representative sides.
- We DEMAND that Campbelltown Stadium gets more than 4 NRL games a year.
We have had enough! For years we have only ever gotten lip service, we now want action. Action we can see! Results we can see!
The march will begin at Campbelltown Council at 10am and proceed down the road to Campbelltown Stadium and the Leagues Club.
The Campbelltown Liverpool Senior Competition
For years the senior competition of Campbelltown and Liverpool has gone from one drama to another. Teams have constantly left the competition to play in bordering competitions that are better run, managed and organised.
This is damaging Rugby League at a grass roots level. Players have to travel further to games whilst the area misses out on hosting local derbies between neighbouring suburbs.
The current administrative structure of the local competition has made it very hard for progressive clubs to introduce change, and those that have are often severely punished for trying.
The Campbelltown Liverpool competition requires a total overhaul on how it is managed and the clubs require better representation so the game can continue to move forward.
Clubs Choice in where they Train and Play
Clubs that abandoned the Campbelltown and Liverpool Competitions in search of a better standard competition (both on and off the field) have had their right to play and train on their own home grounds taken away from them as punishment by the NSW Rugby League.
This decision has made it very difficult and expensive for these clubs that are just trying to do what is best for its players and their future.
Players now have to travel much greater distances to train and the clubs have lost most of their home ground advantage by these restrictions of choice.
This one is simple to solve however. Just allow clubs the right to train and play on any ground they desire that meets all the requirements.
Retain our Own Representative Sides
The merger between Balmain and Western Suburbs in 1999 has a clause written in its constitution that both Western Suburbs Magpies and Balmain Tigers will retain their identity at ALL levels except the NRL where they will play as the Wests Tigers.
The reason for this clause was to ensure that both areas continued to provide the junior development stepping stones for local players to represent their own area and then hopefully make it to the NRL.
Since then the Western Suburbs Magpies have continued to be the local areas representative team in the NSW Rugby League competition. They look after Under 16s Harold Matthews, Under 18s S.G. Ball and an Opens NSW Cup sides and have helped to develop a multitude of local kids into NRL players.
Now the people behind the scenes of the Wests Tigers want to disband the Western Suburbs Magpies in favour of a single Wests Tigers side that will be based from Concord in the inner city.
This means local parents will have to drive their kids all the way into the busy city to Concord Oval for training 3 times a week and every second week for game day. An area of our size and population needs its own representative sides at a state level.
Talented sporting children are often talented at many sports so if it is just easier for them to play a different code, that is what they will do.
The NSW Cup is an open age reserve grade competition for the NRL. The Wests Tigers want to disband the Western Suburbs Magpies NSW Cup team and again replace it with a Wests Tigers team that will be based out of the inner city at Concord.
They claim having one NSW Cup team will make their NRL team stronger yet FACTS show that they won a Premiership when having access to two NSW Cup teams in 2005.
We believe the real issue is that the Balmain Tigers have found themselves in financial difficulty and can no longer fund a NSW Cup side, and it is well known that the power brokers behind Wests Tigers have favoured the Balmain pushed, inner city relocation of the joint venture.
These same people do not want to see Western Suburbs survive whilst Balmain drops out of the NSW Cup. Otherwise the simple solution is to continue having the Magpies operate out of Campbelltown, and the Wests Tigers send all players not required for NRL duty back to them.
INSTEAD, Wests Tigers now funds the Balmain Tigers NSW Cup side, and gives them ALL NRL contracted players not required for NRL duty including . local Magpies juniors!
This is no longer a JOINT VENTURE as was promised in 1999. It is the inner city take over of the Wests Tigers leaving the South West Sydney heartland with nothing.
The Wests Tigers now not only take the cream from our junior base, but have put steps in place to ensure the Magpies can no longer be competitive. This not only includes taking our local junior players and giving them to Balmain Tigers, but now refusing to even provide basic support of the club such as providing Gatorade and Strapping for our players injuries.
The joint venture is broken! Wests Tigers have become another inner city club!
They should be embracing the area and its huge junior base by providing more opportunities for players, not less!
More than 4 NRL games a year at Campbelltown Stadium
It doesnt take long to look around the Liverpool, Camden and Campbelltown regions to realise that the number of households and population is increasing at an exponential rate.
The majority of this growth is from people with young families. These families will have choices to make as to what codes of football their children will play in, and one of the most effective weapons to winning these children over is exposing them 1st hand to a local NRL side played out of a local stadium.
Now I understand that we are in a tricky situation being in a joint venture with Balmain but I guess I was once considered spoilt with 12 home matches a year at Campbelltown Stadium back when we had our own NRL team.
When the joint venture was formed the games were split 50 : 50 with Campbelltown and Leichhardt Oval. Now whilst 6 games a year wasnt perfect, at the time it was acceptable.
Since then we have had the number of games at Campbelltown Stadium reduced to 3 a year by Wests Tigers management claiming they could make more money playing away from their traditional grounds.
As of 2010 they increased the number of games to 4 a year being played at Campbelltown. The remaining 8 games are being played in the inner city at Leichhardt Oval and the Sydney football Stadium.
Anyone from out of Sydneys South West understands the time and effort to get to these inner city grounds is extreme at best. With no train line running directly to these grounds, public transport provides a poor alternative to dealing with Sydney traffic.
Now the Wests Tigers originally claimed the reason why more games werent played at Campbelltown Stadium was the ground lighting wasnt adequate and the ground lacked a big screen tv.
Since then the ground has new lighting and a big screen fitted. It has also upgraded its corporate facilities and installed more seating, yet we still only get 4 games.
Campbelltown Stadiums average crowd in 2010 was 15,305 and in 2011 it was 15,973. Both very respectable figures for a team based in the Sydney region.
So why does the inner city get 8 home games a year from the Wests Tigers, when this large populace growth area, that should be the focus of the NRL only gets 4?
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SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION BY CLICKING HERE...
Please sign our online petition and get your friends to do so too. We need people power to stop what is happening to the Magpies!!!
