Some people connected with the Sunshine Coast Falcons rugby league team have had enough of the “Falcon bashing” from people around the game. Hopefully, they won’t see this column as another attack on their club, but rather a view of what I think the situation is with the Coast’s highest-level rugby league club at the moment.

The Falcons, and rightly so, want their senior and colts teams to include the best players the Coast has to offer, but unfortunately, and rightly so, the bulk of the best players on the Coast don’t want to play for them. The reason? Playing in the Maroochy RSL Cup offers them an experience which is, to them, superior to lining up for the Falcons – at the moment.

Winning a FOGs Cup game for the Falcons earns you $200. Winning a Maroochy RSL Cup game for a couple of the local clubs earns you a little bit less, but if you’re at one of the leading clubs, wins come more often than they do for the Falcons. At the Falcons, there’s nothing for a loss, although that may change.

And when you play for a local club you don’t have to train as often; you don’t have to travel to Brisbane, Ipswich or the Gold Coast for a game every fortnight, and you can stay with mates you’ve played with for years.

It’s hard to see why, if you’re a leading player, you would want to go to the FOGs Cup side. Now, if the Falcons were in the Queensland Cup, the best competition in the state, rather than a reserve-grade competition, then that might be different.

The challenge of playing against the best in Queensland, making the odd appearance on ABC TV on Saturday afternoon and hopefully getting an NRL scout to look at you might encourage a few more players to switch over.

The Falcons are going to struggle attracting any players to make the move until they pay much more or make it a more attractive option. For that to happen, they will somehow need to get more money in the bank from their major sponsor and associate sponsors. You can’t force players to join the Falcons.

Once they do join, you have to make what you have at the club worth staying for and then they won’t want to go back to their local sides like so many did in the previous off-season. Playing in the Queensland Cup won’t happen until the QRL lets the Falcons in.

Until then, and unless some more funding for players is found, I fear it’s going to be uphill all the way for the FOGs.