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Sydney Subbies 2022

Pfitzy

George Gregan (70)
Hearing rumours Petersham will be very lucky to field a Colts team in 2022 - any truth to this?

Should it be true, they aren't much different to the Div 4 Rams!?

I don't envy Subbies - a real square peg and round hole situation. I'm not sure what the solution is but I do feel Lindfield, UNSW & Newport are the ones who lose out the most. To field 4-5 grades and a colts is commendable, just a shame they may not be able to play.

Last year Petersham had a combo deal with Sydney Uni didn't they? Think UNSW and Randwick might share a bit of talent as well for U21.

Colts looks like a hard slog from what I've seen, and what other clubs have said.

Getting kids back from the school system might need to be looked at. I know a few clubs out this way (including us) have colts age players who wanted to try something other than league.
 

WoodyWoodsman

Sydney Middleton (9)
Wouldn’t that be a thing…. No Colts for Petersham and Knox OB's lower grades numbers in serious question.

Then in Division 2, fourth grade is a shambles. Colts question marks over Valley, Blacktown, Harlequins.....

The division 4 draw not yet complete....
 

Waterloo_Ned

Herbert Moran (7)
Wouldn’t that be a thing…. No Colts for Petersham and Knox OB's lower grades numbers in serious question.

Then in Division 2, fourth grade is a shambles. Colts question marks over Valley, Blacktown, Harlequins.....

The division 4 draw not yet complete....

I read on Facebook Blacktown have three grades and colts so I think your information is wrong.
 

WoodyWoodsman

Sydney Middleton (9)
Such an exaggerated point in my opinion. So 1-2 clubs cop 2 weeks off from rugby at some point. This is far more plausible than having Lindfield turn up with 5 grades to play a Blacktown side with 2 grades. Would be interesting to see how many teams Blacktown are sending to Forest today?
One week ago, you said this...... now you are saying 3 grades and colts. A great turnaround in 5 days!
 

En Gage

Frank Nicholson (4)
Absolute disgrace that Subbies have hung Epping out to dry because they were honest about numbers. If other div 2 teams start to forfeit as is sure to happen then heads should roll.
 

Waterloo_Ned

Herbert Moran (7)
Absolute disgrace that Subbies have hung Epping out to dry because they were honest about numbers. If other div 2 teams start to forfeit as is sure to happen then heads should roll.

The Subbies Board need to stand down over some of their decisions the last few years. Personally I am shocked there has not been more media attention towards it calling for the committee to stand down. The inconsistencies in their treatment of clubs like Barker, Lindfield and Knox, compared to their treatment of Beecroft, Epping, Redfield and Balmain over the years is laughable.
 

WoodyWoodsman

Sydney Middleton (9)
Keen to hear your thoughts on that.

Beecroft dropped 3 Divisions and won everything available the year that happened. Now they're back with Colts and 3 Grades.
It’s about the haves and have nots.

Beecroft dropped three grades but Knox didn’t have to do the same.
The name of the game is rugby and that should be first and foremost. The understanding of an individual club’s intricacies are not considered.
Someone with Epping knowledge might be able to answer this:
Didn’t Epping bail Subbies out a few years back by entering two teams in the Radford Cup to ensure a competition would go ahead?
Didn’t Epping stay up in Division 2 a couple of years back despite running last to save Subbies relegate two clubs, even though the rebuild would hav helped?
Is Epping now running 1/2 grade in Division 4, two grades in Halligans or someone else’s slot in Div 2, and colts in Radford Cup?
 

En Gage

Frank Nicholson (4)
Keen to hear your thoughts on that.

Beecroft dropped 3 Divisions and won everything available the year that happened. Now they're back with Colts and 3 Grades.
The difference is that my mail says that Epping have all teams required to stay in Div 2 (and were closer than most when they gave subbies an honest update earlier in the year) and now will risk losing them due to subbies incompetence. Willing to bet that they will end up in a better position than quite a few div 2 teams numbers wise in 20 22. I guess the moral to the story is to be a private school old boys team or lie through your teeth if you want to get anywhere with subbies
 

WoodyWoodsman

Sydney Middleton (9)
Division premiers tip?

Div 1 - Drummoyne
Div 2 - Newport
Div 4 - Harbour
Div 5 - Brothers
Woody’s take:
The Kentwell Cup is headed up the M4 to Lapstone Oval. The Mountains Goats electric backline will take some stopping.
The Barraclough Cup settles on the Northern Beaches in the clubhouse at Porter Reserve.
The McLean Cup finds it way to Epping Hotel to be drunk out of.
The Jeffrey Cup is headed down to the shore with the boys from the Sea Lice.
 

Mangoman

Allen Oxlade (6)
With the amount of clubs that wont be fielding the full compliment of grades, is it time to look at a proper restructure where competitions are more geographically based rather than asking someone to travel from the Blue Mountains across to Waverley, or from Wakehurst to Burraneer? We ask our players to front up $300+ in fees and apparel each year then add to that the KMs and time racked up getting to and from the games. It's a lot to ask to get your average punter to want to commit to this from a money and a time perspective.

We cant fix the monetary side, but we can surely have a look at our competition structure to make it more locally based.

The idea...

3 areas - Northern Suburbs, Inner City/South and North/North West. Grades/Divisions are broken up from there.

Obviously a Kentwell/Burke/Barraclough side will be much better drilled and outclass a lesser side from Meldrum/Jeffrey so it would be up to clubs to nominate their divisions and up to Subbies to police it to a certain extent. The draw back here is that there will be instances of "CLUB X 1s" playing "CLUB X 2s" etc and game times and locations being a little haphazard however the positive that there is considerably less travel and the fact that this system allows the casual club to play against teams who are on the same level (eg 3rds/4ths/5ths) as opposed to having Harbour beating the crap out of a pub level team in Div 4.

This is the mockup I came up with and shows we can get 4 grades in each geographical division and GENERALLY have less travel and a more even spread game in hopes of attracting more players. Clearly far from a dream in the eyes of a competition administrator however I think the positives outweigh the negatives in the long run for the longevity and growth of rugby in Sydney.

Inner City/South
1sts (3pm)2nds (1.30pm)3rds (12pm)4ths (10.30am)
881212
Colleagues (1)Colleagues (3)Colleagues (4)Colleagues (6)
Colleagues (2)Colleagues (5)
Canterbury (1)Canterbury (2)
Drummoyne (1)Drummoyne (2)Drummoyne (3)Drummoyne (4)
Drummoyne (5)
Harlequins (1)Harlequins (2)Harlequins (3)
Petersham (1)Petersham (2)Petersham (3)Petersham (4)
Petersham (5)
UNSW (1)UNSW (2)UNSW (3)UNSW (4)
Waverley (1)Waverley (3)Waverley (4)Waverley (5)
Waverley (2)
HarbourNorth CronullaBalmainComb. Forces
BurraneerDukes
IrishKings
MenaiOatley

Northern Suburbs
1sts (3pm)2nds (1.30pm)3rds (12pm)4ths (10.30am)
8121012
Hunters Hill (1)Hunters Hill (3)Hunters Hill (4)Hunters Hill (5)
Hunters Hill (2)
Forest (1)Forest (2)Forest (3)Forest (4)
Forest (5)
Knox (1)Knox (2)Knox (3)Knox (4)
Lindfield (1)Lindfield (2)Lindfield (3)Lindfield (4)
Mosman (1)Mosman (3)Mosman (4)Mosman (5)
Mosman (2)Mosman (6)
Newport (1)Newport (2)Newport (3)Newport (4)
Barker (1)Barker (2)
Chatswood (1)Chatswood (2)
Redfield (1)Redfield (2)
Mac. Uni (1)Mac. Uni (2)
Saints (1)Saints (2)
Savers (1)Savers (2)
Wakehurst
Brothers

Inner West/West
1sts (3pm)2nds (1.30pm)3rds (12pm)4ths (10.30am)
8121210
Blue Mountains (1)Blue Mountains (2)Blue Mountains (3)Blue Mountains (4)
Blue Mountains (5)
St Pats (1)St Pats (2)St Pats (3)
St Pats (4)
St Pats (5)
Hills (1)Hills (2)Hills (3)Hills (4)
Beecroft (1)Beecroft (2)Beecroft (3)
Briars (1)Briars (2)Briars (3)
Raptors (1)Raptors (2)Raptors (3)
Hawkes. Valley (1)Hawkes. Valley (2)Hawkes. Valley (3)
Iggies (1)Iggies (2)Iggies (3)
Epping (1)Epping (2)Epping (4)
Epping (3)
Hawkes. Ag (1)Hawkes. Ag (2)
Renegades (1)Renegades (2)Renegades (3)
Blacktown (1)Blacktown (2)Blacktown (3)
Merrylands

Radical change I know, still keen to hear thoughts......
 

Mangoman

Allen Oxlade (6)
Also before I'm crucified for it, all of this is done at 1am and going (mainly) off last season's annual report for positions. I'm also not across every and all teams in Subbies land. My bad if I've missed the mark with where some teams "belong".
 

Ref_Ted

Sydney Middleton (9)
Also before I'm crucified for it, all of this is done at 1am and going (mainly) off last season's annual report for positions. I'm also not across every and all teams in Subbies land. My bad if I've missed the mark with where some teams "belong".
Has merit. Not sure if I would keep a non geographical competitive division at the top, or a div 2 to premiership div 1 like the old days.
A geographical structure could help in marketing the game in each region with the competitions better focused in surrounding communities.
Kentwell Cup could become a Grade 1 trophy following an end of year play-off across the divisions.
All in all, worth thinking through.
One point to consider in these things is understanding how the structure would handle expansion and contraction or considerable growth if successful.
 

WorkingClassRugger

David Codey (61)
Has merit. Not sure if I would keep a non geographical competitive division at the top, or a div 2 to premiership div 1 like the old days.
A geographical structure could help in marketing the game in each region with the competitions better focused in surrounding communities.
Kentwell Cup could become a Grade 1 trophy following an end of year play-off across the divisions.
All in all, worth thinking through.
One point to consider in these things is understanding how the structure would handle expansion and contraction or considerable growth if successful.

I actually think it could be quite interesting and being broken into zones could offer some interesting opportunities. In theory you could look to link up with both the Hunter and Illawarra comps and run a sort of Club Championship with the top 2 teams from the three Sydney zones meeting the winning teams from that competition to determine an overall Champion. I actually think that would be pretty interesting. Engaging with the broader community.

As for growth (let's focus on that instead of contraction) as new clubs emerged you could split each zone into pools. Say each zone see's 1st Grade growth from 8 to 12 teams they could be split into two pools of 6. Home and away in pool plus a game against each of the 6 from the other pool for 16 games.
 

Mangoman

Allen Oxlade (6)
Has merit. Not sure if I would keep a non geographical competitive division at the top, or a div 2 to premiership div 1 like the old days.
A geographical structure could help in marketing the game in each region with the competitions better focused in surrounding communities.
Kentwell Cup could become a Grade 1 trophy following an end of year play-off across the divisions.
All in all, worth thinking through.
One point to consider in these things is understanding how the structure would handle expansion and contraction or considerable growth if successful.
The reason I did all this was because I get the feeling like if it was more localised, clubs like Maccabi, Clovelly, Engadine, Dundas Valley, Fairvale etc. (smaller clubs, based in predominantly League areas where games are all played within approx. 20 mins of your home ground) wouldn't have completely folded.

Clubs like Campbelltown and Hornsby would have left for other competitions where they aren't forced to field certain amounts of grades and playing across 3/4 of Sydney each Saturday.

Clubs like Brothers, Kings, Oatley etc. wouldn't struggle to find players. All 3 of those clubs fielded 4 or more senior grades in 2015, now all 3 have 1 senior grade.

Just food for thought...rugby is the only major sport that is run across the entire Sydney basin at an amateur level. Most other sports play localised competitions and are far more successful as a result (i.e. league play within districts no larger than a 20 min drive from the home field, soccer play within associations again usually no more than a 20 min drive from the home field).
 

WoodyWoodsman

Sydney Middleton (9)
Woody Woodsman is a big advocate for change in Subbies structure.
I still believe that Kentwell Cup should remain the showpiece of Subbies Rugby and the top clubs should remain as Division 1.
I think below that, the idea has a lot of merit. In junior rugby, teams play a number of games and are then graded. I think a similar model could work in Subbies.
 

En Gage

Frank Nicholson (4)
So let me get this straight- looking at the draw, there are only 5 teams playing in the div 2 4th grade comp, one of which is Epping who have, through subbies "wisdom", been graded in div 4. They are also making up the numbers in 3rd grade, and from what I can see there is no radford comp for the colts team they busted their arses getting together. Short sighted thinking- Well done Subbies- slow clap. Why undermine the only club in the area, especially with Eastwood's imminent move to Castle Hill?
 
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