Leeds Carnegie rebrand themselves as "Yorkshire Carnegie"

[ratsapprentice]

We have county rugby but it's amateur as far as I know.

Yorkshire is the only historic county that's really big enough to sustain itself independently with players at a professional level... aside from Lancashire (With a little help from Cumbria) and maybe Cornwall (just about).

 

[Peat]

We have county rugby but it's amateur as far as I know.

Yorkshire is the only historic county that's really big enough to sustain itself independently with players at a professional level... aside from Lancashire (With a little help from Cumbria) and maybe Cornwall (just about).

Cornwall has a mere half a million and its biggest city is around 20k. Not big enough to source a professional team, no population centres really big enough to sustain one.

Lancashire by contrast is about one and a half and if you included Greater Manchester and Liverpool, that would skyrocket.

The historic boundaries of Surrey would probably do quite well for themselves.

The reality is you will only get moves like this where clubs vote for them, which will only really happen in historic hotbeds without a naturally strong champion.

 

[ratsapprentice]

Yeah, but Cornwall does produce a lot of players relative to it's size... perhaps I'm overplaying it a little.
What it does have is an identity strong enough to potentially retain it's top players if they have a top flight team.

This is actually already happening to an extent in Cornwall/Devon with the Pirates and Plymouth feeding the Chiefs.

If Geech is successful I can see Cornwall/Devon, Lancashire/Cumbria and Worcester/West-Midlands "county/regional" systems being implemented voluntarily.