The Rugby League Conference (RLC) (also known as the Co-operative Rugby League Conference as a result of sponsorship from The Co-operative Group), was a series of regionally based divisions of amateur rugby league teams spread throughout England, Scotland and Wales.
The RLC was founded as the 10-team Southern Conference League in 1997, with teams from the southern midlands and the south east, but has subsequently, rebranded and expanded both geographically and numerically to include around 90 teams stretched across almost the whole of Great Britain from Aberdeen in northern Scotland down to Plymouth on the south coast of England.
The aim of the RLC was initially to provide regular fixtures for new clubs based outside the 'heartland' of rugby league, although as the playing standards increased, it also accepted teams from the 'heartlands'. The hope is that, at least some of these clubs, would eventually progress to become semi-professional clubs that could one day join the 'traditional' clubs in Championship 1; to date only London Skolars have done so but Hemel Stags will join in 2013 and Coventry Bears in 2014.
With the top heartlands amateur league, the National Conference League voting to move to a summer season, the 2012 season saw a re-alignment of the amateur game and the Rugby League Conference was replaced with a series of regional leagues.
Read more about Rugby League Conference: History, Representative Fixtures, Former Divisions Within The RLC, Successor Leagues, Women's Rugby League Conference
Famous quotes containing the words league and/or conference:
“He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven no harm shall touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death, and in war from the power of the sword. You shall be hidden from the scourge of the tongue, and shall not fear destruction when it comes. At destruction and famine you shall laugh, and shall not fear the wild animals of the earth. For you shall be in league with the stones of the field, and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 5:19-23.
“The peace conference must not adjourn without the establishment of some ordered system of international government, backed by power enough to give authority to its decrees. ... Unless a league something like this results at our peace conference, we shall merely drop back into armed hostility and international anarchy. The war will have been fought in vain ...”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)