Wikipedia:WikiProject Rugby league/Resources/SARL vs rugby union

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Dave Southern wrote:

"I would have serious reservations as to the basis of fact behind a lot of the comments made in the article that appeared in OR magazine. Lets put things into context RL was much smaller than a minor sport so lets not kid ourselves that RU was out to get them. Would the NRL feel threatened by the horse shoe pitchers association of Aus (different sport but you get the idea).

I think the RU bogey man type of story fits in well to camouflage lack of progress and bad management. Do you think that WWF is going to give a hoot about your amateur wrestling Fed in Aus when they bring there road show into town. No and neither do I people who look for excuses usually have them selves to blame.

I would not say that the RU were entirely helpful but they certainly did not get up to the sort of trick that are stated in my time anyway. Again don't get carried away with the TV idea of league featuring heavily, OK so it was shown for a while (I used to get the tapes in and edit with Mike Bardsley) It was never prime time rather a filler and it wasn't pushed off TV I think the ARL tape supply was intermittent. Nothing to do with RU at all.

The quote in my mind is a work of somebodys fertile imagination. I was on the Gauteng Sports Council at around this time and RL was making little or no progress in areas of development what they wanted to do which we as a body opposed was to franchise the game out to wealthy people who could afford to pay for it? Not a good idea in a country that sits somewhere between third and first world. The crazy thing was my team that I established in 1991 Johannesburg Nomad(s) (Warriors) was one of the so called licences up for sale???

Barry haslam and his guys hardly had enough money to hire a car let alone a stadium forget the notion that these guys were big businessmen looking to make things happen. They were small time guys with an interest in the game who didn't have the resource or ideas to take it forward. When we showed them how successful something like Mini League could be in the areas of mass population ie townships they simply chose to ignore it and pretended that they were too busy to invest time in those type of areas.

Municipalities are indeed local government one time white dominated but post 94 elections predominantly non white dominated no argument there if you had the will to develop you could do with ease.

Dave"