Support for bid to build pro team in 13-man game north of Border
RUGBY League Scotland’s top official has welcomed the prospect of a major investor seeking to help set up a professional team in Scotland and will meet him this month to discuss plans.
Keith Hogg, the organisation’s chairman, confirmed that the businessman, who has chosen to remain anonymous but whose plans were revealed in HeraldSport yesterday, is an individual known within the sport and who has credibility.
His offer is to invest £25,000 per year as part of a consortium that would create Scottish representation in the professional game and Hogg insists that has to be examined seriously.
“I’m meeting with him at the end of February,” he said. “It’s a completely realistic objective to have a Championship team in Scotland at some level. It’s something we’d all like, but it is dependent upon having the right people involved and it needs to fit within the overall plan.”
Expansion of rugby league beyond its heartlands has been a recurring theme for decades, with occasional successes like Perpignan-based Catalan Dragons set against umpteen failed initiatives, most obviously in Wales where repeated attempts to build teams in a part of the world that has provided a steady supply of players to England’s leading clubs have foundered.
That has been blamed on the sport’s governing body, the Rugby Football League, but the arrival on the scene this season of Toronto Wolfpack, a heavilyfunded team based in the Canadian city, has stimulated renewed enthusiasm for a more ambitious outlook.
Attention is growing in Scotland, on the back of the national team which, coached by Steve McCormack, is performing at a level that would have been unimaginable on the international scene until relatively recently.
In Scotland, however, the domestic game has all but died since the Rugby Football League made its decision to withdraw funding for development officers in Scotland immediately after the team reached the World Cup quarter-finals in 2013 against New Zealand. Hogg said Scotland RL’s priority is consequently to put better grassroots structures in place following the appointment of a new development of f ic er last y e a r, f u nde d by SportScotland.
“I’ve said before that our priority is the clubs, is youth, is schools,” he said. “We’re getting better at finding ways for people to develop in the sport.”
He acknowledged the existence of a professional team would provide a focal point in terms of creating a route from introductory level to a potential career in the sport.
“If there’s a Championship level club in Scotland then that’s only a good thing because it gives people real ambition at whatever level that may be,” said Hogg.
“So it’s completely feasible, but we’ll require some investment from some people and it is great that an individual who is known to certain people is prepared to make that sort of commitment. It’s absolutely fantastic, but it’s going to need a lot of planning.
“We’re looking to establish the sport of rugby league in the right places with well-r un clubs with proper foundations.”
Hogg admitted immediately after the Four Nations Championship in November that the time had come for Scotland Rugby League to look at how it is running the game, to the point that his own position was among those being looked at in what is an ongoing review.