The North-West - Sleeping Giant of English Rugby?

As I sit in my mother-in-laws home in Cheshire after a long and thoroughly enjoyable Christmas break, I find myself reflecting on last month and looking to the second half of what has so far been an action packed season.

The team I co-coach won the Hertfordshire U18 Schools Cup. A dramatic win against St Albans Boys (11-3) ended a very successful regular season for the St Columba's College 1st XV, a team that is still in the Daily Mail Vase, so watch this space.

My knee is getting stronger, I can now run on it for limited periods of time, but more on that in a specific blog later on.

My club Tabard are still unbeaten in London 2 North-West and looking strong. In all, apart from myself not playing things are coming up roses.

Looking forward though and having just watched the highlights of the Sale game at the weekend, I can't help but wonder at the state of rugby in the North-West. When doing my teaching qualification I played for a team in South Manchester, Altrincham Kersal. This would prove to be one of the most enjoyable seasons I'd ever played and I loved the variety of fixtures and edginess the Northern teams brought week in, week out. I once remember playing away in front of roughly 800 people at Westoe in one of the hardest games I've ever played in. It took me four days to get back to feeling normal.

It leads me to think how can a region with such passion, such grit and so many wonderful clubs, fail to provide one that can compete with the best in England, nay Europe?

Andy Powell: One of many good signings, so
why the poor league performance?

Sale should be a powerhouse of the English game. They are the premier club in a colossally deep pool of talent, so what precisely is going wrong?

The stats simply do not add up. Rugby Union in the North-West in terms of participation is second only to football so why oh why have the North-West ever had a dominant, or at the very least, consistently top-half side.

The first thing to get out of the way is the notion that a successful amateur game is somehow a precursor to elite success. If this was the case England would be top three in most sports across the world. It does however beg the question that a region so rich in strong junior 'semi-pro' type clubs doesn't seem to transfer to a more successful professional side.

Firstly, it may surprise some to learn that there are no teams from the North-West in the Championship. There are plenty from the North-East, Doncaster, Rotherham, Newcastle and Leeds collectively making up a third of the entire league. The North-West though, not a one.

Looking below that, Preston Grasshoppers, Sedgley Park, Macclesfield, Stockport, Caldy are all clubs well known beyond their localities and have all made their impact on the game in the last few years. But there are three teams there that have not been mentioned which 15 years ago would have probably been the first on the list. Orrell, once the top side in the North-West, fell through the leagues after poor business management. A club that had players as excellent as Dewi Morris and Austin Healey as well as a rich history, almost ceased to exist. Waterloo were a shining beacon of the oval shaped ball game in a hotbed of football and they are once again proving successful but they were another who during the amateur era were probably up there. Finally  Manchester Rugby Club. Their demise has been recorded by most rugby circulars but for what is one of the oldest rugby clubs in the world to fall so dramatically from grace after a financial pulllout was heartbreaking to say the least. These clubs all still exist, but have all attributed to the Sale monopoly in the region.

And this brings me to my conclusion. Steve Diamond once said he wanted to be a northern 'Super Club'. I'd say this is precisely what they do not need. A monopoly breeds complacency and what Sale need is a good old dose of market forces and some competition. A second successful club in the region would not only make Sale work harder for fans (the North-West is a huge sports market, how else can St Helens, Wigan, Man Utd, City, Liverpool and Everton all sell out on a weekend whilst being within 30 miles of each other) but also playing resources making both player development more aggressive as well as external recruitment more competitive.

However, to have such a push would mean a massive financial (and emotional) investment and there have been too many teams in the region who have had their fingers burnt by aspirations of grandeur before and new teams would be reluctant to take such a gamble themselves. On top of this, looking at where the main pretenders to second NW team throne are at the moment in the league structures, this seems a long way off. So what will it take for this sleeping giant to finally wake up? Its hard to say, but as long as there is only one team at the top of the hill and the rest firmly with with their feet at sea level, there will be little incentive for those at the top to work any harder than they already do.