For 13 years, I’ve been involved with Yorkshire Rugby, and I feel the standard has slipped a level. Fewer people will always create a slip. The same issue exists across traditional sports like cricket and football local to us. There isn’t a local Scarborough league in football despite the eight divisions on Saturdays and Sundays when I was 16. Similarly, the cricket league has disbanded and is now incorporated within the YPYN.
Record numbers of people are golfing, cycling, involved in combat sports, and competing in triathlons. Society is changing, and traditional sports are fighting to stay relevant. The RFU has finally seen that the decline of schools rugby is affecting overall participation.
Clubs local to us are bucking the trend, and they’re all doing things differently. I can only speak for us. At Malt, we have no pull from the university or colleges (we’re trying to sort that this season).
We’re 100% self-sustaining, relying only on walk-ins or Colts graduates. In three first-team games this season, all but one player was a junior at Malt. We also have an unofficial “no poaching” rule across the age grades and senior levels. We don’t see the value in taking players from other clubs. I accept that our location probably influences this; other teams may have different needs.
We’ve gone through tough times, and I’m sure we’ll face them again. But currently, we have a good group of volunteer team managers and around 13–14 clubmen with 100+ appearances, who see the value of sticking around. In my opinion, four or five of them wouldn’t be out of place running a professional team in the future—they’ve just got to back themselves.
