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Rugby League: Strong Welsh presence needed - Smith
Throughout rugby league's history, the sport has been enhanced by players who have "come north" from Wales.
Some of the sport's all-time greats – Jim Sullivan, Billy Boston and Lewis Jones to name just three – began their careers in Welsh rugby union, before being tempted by the lure of the 13-a-side code's cash.
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For years, league scouts were a familiar – and much reviled – sight in the Valleys, as they mounted raids for players who, openly at least, weren't allowed to make the living they deserved from their rugby talents.
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Most didn't want to go, of course. When Wigan came knocking on Boston's door, his mum asked for the most outrageous sum she could think of, 3,000, in an attempt to get rid of them. the raiding party from Central Park immediately asked young Billy to sign on the dotted line – that was probably the best money Wigan ever spent.
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Even into the 1980s and early 1990s, players like Jonathan Davies, Scott Quinnell and Scott Gibbs enhanced the rugby league code, with their skills, glamour and crowd-pulling power.
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The flood of Welsh players north dried up when union went openly professional in 1995, ironically league's centenary year.
Since then, player movement has largely been the other way. The final generation of top Welsh union players to cross the great divide – the likes of Davies, Quinnell and Gibbs – went back to earn an easier living in the twilight years of their career.
A handful of league players – most notably Iestyn Harris – have reversed the age-old trend, switching to union, tempted by big money and the prospect of Six Nations caps.
League has missed its Welsh influence. Northern clubs have found a rich seam of talent closed off to them and the international game has also suffered. Wales, semi-finalists in the 1995 and 2000 World Cups, failed to qualify in 2008.
Throughout its 115-year history, league has tried to establish a foothold in Wales. Indeed, league's first international – against the touring New Zealand All Golds – was played in Aberdare in 1908.
There are many social similarities between the union stronghold of south Wales and the industrial north of England, so league perhaps should have thrived, but old loyalties to the 15-a-side game have proved too strong.
Strangely though, since union went openly professional and there was no reason for Welsh players to turn to league, the handling code has actually strengthened its position in the principality.
The Welsh arm of the summer Conference is thriving – giving low-level union players an opportunity to taste the rival code – and there are now two professional league clubs in Wales, South Wales Scorpions playing in Co-op National One out of Neath and Super League Crusaders, newly relocated from Bridgend to Wrexham.
Sadly, as is often the way, what is a positive step for league has faced strong opposition from the code's so-called heartlands.
The RFL – so the argument goes – should be looking after its traditional clubs, before pandering to newcomers.
That argument, sadly, misses the point that a strong presence in Wales can only be a good thing for rugby league.
Great Britain's most recent international decline coincided with the time when union players began to pay tax on their rugby income.
A whole group of potential players was lost to the sport. The Welsh Conference, Scorpions and Crusaders are all opening up that market once more.
Without those developments, kids like Crusaders' outstanding full-back prospect Elliott Kear would be playing union, not league.
Crusaders' decision to sign former Wales and British Lions winger Gareth Thomas from Cardiff Blues doesn't make a lot of sense in rugby terms.
He's 35 – 36 in July – and has never played a minute of competitive league in his life. The chances of him making the grade as a Super League player are remote.
He may have the talent and the desire, but age is against him and if it came to a choice between playing Kear or Thomas, this reporter knows who he'd prefer to see on the field.
However, off the pitch, it's a major coup – and Crusaders reckon he'll put an extra 6,000 bums on seats when he makes his likely debut at home to Catalans Dragons, a game which would have been expected to attract their lowest crowd of the year, in just over a week's time.
Just as importantly, Thomas' code-switch will be closely watched by other players, unhappy with the direction that union is heading in Wales and anxious for a new challenge.
It's unlikely to begin a flood of similar switches, but there could be a handful more to follow.
That will be good for Crusaders in publicity terms and will increase their ratio of home-grown players – and of course it is deepening the pool of talent available to Wales coach Iestyn Harris.
At the moment, quick, tough athletes in Wales are likely to play rugby union – not so much as their game of choice, but because there's little alternative.
Gareth Thomas would probably have played league from a young age, had he been born in Leeds, Wigan or Featherstone. Developments in Wales are offering young sportsmen down there that opportunity.
The manner of Crusaders' switch to Wrexham was cause for concern, undermining as it did the whole licence system.
The club was, after all, granted a place in Super League based on the development work and the structures it had been putting in place in south Wales, more than 100 miles and several hours' drive from Wrexham.
But the fact that Crusaders' move north and the subsequent founding of a new club in the south has doubled rugby league's professional presence in Wales has been overlooked.
There is a need to protect the heartlands and it's not surprising that some long-established clubs feel as though they have been marginalised.
But clubs like Crusaders – and indeed Harlequins in the south of England – deserve support from the entire game for the obvious benefits they can bring.
Anyone with the sport's wider interests at heart should give them their backing.
*******
THE decision by referees' boss Stuart Cummings – or whoever it is who decides these things – to appoint Richard Silverwood, pictured left, to take charge of Sunday's clash between Huddersfield Giants and Leeds Rhinos is a clear case of mischief-making.
Silverwood was widely criticised, not just by the Leeds camp, for his "poor" handling of the Gillette World Club Challenge less than two weeks ago, when he appeared to let Melbourne Storm get away with as much wrestling in the tackle as they wanted.
Giants play a similar style of game, so it'll be interesting to see how Silverwood handles this one.
Cummings is making it clear that he'll decide who referees matches, not players, coaches or the media.
That is fair enough, but Inside Rugby League would like to suggest a better system. As the Super League referees are all professional, they should, in theory, be of an equal standard and, therefore, it shouldn't make any difference who takes charge of which game.
So why not have a draw every Monday to decide the following weekend's appointments?
Then there could be no accusations of certain clubs getting preferential treatment, as was the case a couple of years ago when St Helens coach Daniel Anderson blasted Ian Smith's handling of his side's matches – then didn't have to deal with that particular referee again that season.
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