I do wonder what the majority of you are going to talk about next season without Harrogate int he league?
I’m not sure to be honest, Huddersfield’s and Ionians spending habits might take up some weekly posts early doors.
But with good mini and junior sections, second teams (and even 3rd teams, imagine that), combined with a playable pitch it will be difficult to keep that going for to long.
We might have to revert to the good old fashioned, talking about our sides performances on the pitch.
I would say I's run other senior teams rather than a second team - don't think they even train together, but do have three senior sides out
Don't really know what's happened to Gates twos over the last five years, as it was always a very strong set of lads.
I think one thing is that good 2's players when you're in nat 2/3 can go play first team rugby a league or two lower and a good standard.
We also lose 90-95% of colts to uni and then the majority of them don't come back to live in hgate. We have also lost a lot of first team players to other clubs over the years.
Just at Leeds they have the following players that have played for Gate - Brady, Irvine, Dennis, Yorke, Dixon, Keith, Rubicheck & Jukes.
Ioinans signed Minikin, Irivne, Dennis, Peace, Thompson and Yates
Otley last year signed Baxter, J Coser, Wickham & Jackson
DMP signed Harrison & Yates (who has now signed for Ealing)
We've even lost players to non paying Ilkley over the years - N Smith, Spencer, Rowntree x2 and Cummings (this season)
Some lads went to the Pythons - Audsley Beck, Parish, Cutino plus a load of lads that were ex juniors or played a decent amount of 2's
Players move around and move clubs all the time - The difference is that you don't hear us coming on forums and crying about it - wish them well and get on with it.