Netherlands Rugby League

[Chaserz]

As some of you might know, I am involved with the Rugby League development programme in the Netherlands. As of March 1, I will enter the board of directors, taking care of any (financial) administration, changing my position from co-developer.

I thought this would be a good moment to post a new thread about all developments in Rugby League in the Netherlands.

Position of the Netherlands in League
As we are basically starting from square one since we joined the RLEF last year as an 'observer member', although we are linked with the French in status.

Dedication issues
What is most troublesome in the Netherlands, is the lack of spirit and dedication. As with most European countries, the League vs Union war is ongoing. Despite many guys out here know about League, they cannot afford to play league due to a variety of reasons, ranging from no official help or board (rubbish), no dedicated league clubs, no competitions available (that's true since there are no full teams) and most of all, a tight schedule in conjunction with the Union competition.

In here, the Union season is typically from late August to late March. Most of our League players are in fact Union players, so the schedules more or less collide and overlap. As we have had a harsh winter again, with plenty of snowfall and frozen pitches, many union games have been postponed, effectively barring our tight schedule for late March-late August.

The chicken and egg problem

So we do have some troubles:

We cannot properly organize competitions if we do not have sufficient teams and players. The teams and players won't come if there are no matches to play, and if there is no proper infrastructure.

This has led to a development programme we have to comply with. We have to attend several training, coaching and ref courses in Europe, and show progress on recruiting members, as such. We also have to organize several of those courses ourselves, too.

Recruitment is always a bit troublesome, since rugby (both league and union) has no big meaning in the Netherlands (yet), it is simply overshadowed by the major sports of soccer, tennis, hockey and swimming (and in a lesser extent gymnastics and speed skating). It maybe explains why we have been given an even harder time, although that shouldn't stop us.

Point is that any player (or any affiliated ref/coach) is still too tightly connected with the union world usually. We do have to focus on separate league clubs, instead of being departments of existing union teams, but as said before, that will be challenging. This approach has been used over the last few years, and yielded about 30-35 players nationally, so that ain't much at all.

Current focus
Our current focus is to develop eligible teams in the west of the Netherlands. Right now, we have two teams, although again they are linked with the Union clubs: Dordrecht (my native city, just 20km south of Rotterdam, which in turn is 70km south of Amsterdam), and Capelle, adjacent to Rotterdam itself. In both cases we would like to see dedicated league clubs, rather than being dependent on union.

We have someone who is recruiting members in the province of Zeeland and in the West of the Brabant region, basically covering the entire south western half of the Netherlands (which ain't that big, but okay). So that's a first step, in creating a domestic competition with four teams with 9-a-sides, to be held in May and June.

Next, in July and August, the national team (which is odd, since they are not affiliated with league teams!) will play a few matches, including vs Oxford.

Some other remarks:

• We also approached Belgian and German players and teams, but I don't know what the result is yet.
  
• We have tried to set up a students competitions via any universities (both academic as applied sciences) throughout the country, without success so far.
  
• We have consulted various sports ambassadors in several city councils. They are willing to help us, but they need teams/clubs as an entity - which we do not have yet.
  
• We have successfully introduced league at several high schools in the region of Rotterdam, and it was well received by all students. Again, we have some issues in establishing league teams, but this approach seems to be promising for the long term.

So that wraps it up for now. I hope I have correctly portrayed the situation in the Netherlands, and we do have a lot to learn, so any suggestions are most welcome. At the moment it is still a bit of a touch and go, but hopefully we'll manage to get through it.

So far, I freely advertise and spread the word League exists everywhere, by wearing my Titans gear outside (note: I cannot wear the orange national jerseys outside since orange is a common colour here, people will think we play soccer in orange jerseys... People won't even notice you that way.... Fortunately, Azure Blue and Goldish yellow attracts a lot more attention in here, as I have experienced that multiple times by now - I recruited fellow mates in the gym that way ).