Rugby League Gets ?29.4million From Sport England!

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Cash boost for athletics and cycling

Athletics and cycling have emerged with the biggest funding increases from Sport England's pot of ?480million announced on Tuesday.

The ?480million is being split among 46 sports over the next four years, including all Olympic and Paralympic sports. Sport England's aim is to increase grassroots sport and for one million people to be playing more sport by the London 2012 Olympics.

All sports have been awarded increases but athletics' cash has more than tripled from ?6.5million to ?20.4million, while cycling's money has almost doubled from ?12.4million to ?24.3million.

By contrast cricket will only get a 3% increase - ?1million - to ?37.8million, however the England and Wales Cricket Board remains the governing body receiving the most cash.

Among the other big sports, the Football Association's funding is up to ?25.6million (from ?17.8m in 2005-09), tennis gets ?26.8million (up from ?22.8m), rugby union ?30.7million (from ?25.1m), rugby league ?29.4million (from ?18.5m).

The Football Foundation also receives a further ?60million for its schemes.

Andy Burnham, secretary of state for culture, media and sport, said the London Games provided the perfect chance to inspire people to take up sport.

Burnham said: "Ahead of 2012, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get more people participating regularly in sport. This will be a tough challenge, but with this huge investment in the broadest range of sports, we believe it can be done."

Some 14 sports, including fencing, handball, wheelchair basketball and taekwondo are receiving funding to develop their grassroots for the first time.

The announcements come after each sport put forward a plan to spend any investment and bid for funds.

Source: Google News

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More from the Sport England website.

"Rugby League not only plans to increase its adult male appeal through informal alternatives such as tag rugby and the Masters of League for the over-35s, but also to expand beyond its traditional heartlands. The RFL plans to increase female participation across all nine regions, through a mix of coaching and competition opportunities – and at a faster rate than male participation."

This is some of the best news possible! Rugby league really needs this type of injection of funds and support from the British government. They can't simply depend on Sky money.

They obviously are light years behind Aussie development structures, so it's great that they now have extra money to invest, hopefully in school competitions, universities and development officiers.

We now need to make it a paramount priority to get the same sort of elite recognition in New Zealand and get a decent slice of their SPARC allocations. It has to be part of our strategic plan and any time and effort expended in the pursiot would be more then repaid with the Sparc money.

Well done to the RFL who have over the past 8 years, brought rugby league out of the swamp. It's been a pleasure to watch and Richard Lewis and the RFL should be congratulated.

It's so pleasing to see rugby league on nearly an equal funding foot as rugby union. Especially considering we are primarily a northern game.

[Assassin]

Your right about pushing into NZ, at the moment NZ host just the single team but you look at the quality of their rugby union and even rugby league world cup sides and you know they have a lot of tallent over there that could be expanded on.