What are your views on this?


http://www.leighgenesis.com/



It sounds awful to me, but by not knowing the full story there may be a valid reason behind it so thats why I am asking.

My views,

1/ The Leigh RMI name is itself fairtly recent, the club having decamped from Horwich to Leigh and changed their name accordingly. Although I understand there were problems with the Grundy Hill (?) ground in Horwich I don't think moving a club from one town to another, eight miles away, is appropriate.

2/ This aside, the club retained the old 'Railway Mechanics' Institute tag, though ironically there isn't even a railway running through Leigh.

3/ 'Genesis' is essentially a brand to try to promote the club locally. First Ebbsfleet, now this. I think it's a very worrying trend, history and tradition being flushed down the toilet for thje sake of trying to attract a few more fans. I accept the role of corporate sponsorship within the game (eg shirt sponsors) but to my mind two things are sacred and should not be touched, one being the name of the stadium and the other, even more fundamentally, the name of the club.

I still dont know why changing the name, changing their badge will attract more fans? Surely selling the history of the club to the local people is more likely to get people interested?.

I'm not too keen on the name. Sounds a bit corporate to me. I can understand dropping the "RMI" as it's obsolete and relates to a time when the club represented another town (or, using most peoples' views on Wimbledon/MK Dons as a guideline, you could say that the "RMI" relates to a different club altogether), but "Genesis" doesn't really add anything meaningful or relevant to the name as far as I can see.

It has been joked on another forum that when the current owners get bored and leave, the club will rename itself "Leigh Exodus".

Most name changes of this nature, if they don't work as intended, don't last long anyway.

Horrible new badge. Looks very American.

Will they have to pay Phil Collins royalties? :lol:

Call me crazy, but I think it's a really good idea. The club were going nowhere with their attendances of 100 odd people (in a 12,000 capacity stadium). With the move to a new stadium they've cleverly coincided that with a bit of re-branding in order to try and attract some of the armchair fans in the area to actually go and watch some football.

I don't know if it will work or not but it's certainly worth a try. It's not as if they're moving from Wimbledon to Milton Keynes. They will still be the football club of Leigh, it's just a new name, badge, stadium and website. They now have a better website than most football league clubs thanks to PTV.

I hope it works out for them.

The move to a new stadium I can understand. Even as a lover of traditional grounds, Hilton Park was a real dump and one where you could literally pick up lumps of concrete as the terracing was so crumbly. I think this will help them attract a few more people along, and the new ground does have a bit of terracing at least.

In terms of the name, the RMI part is obselete so I can appreciate dropping it and becoming Leigh FC, just as the Dons part of MK Dons is now obselete.

That said, it's a very dangerous precedent to treat a club's name as simply a 'brand'. If someone did some market research in Barnet and found that we could double our attendances by calling ourselves Barnet Bees or suchlike, I couln't support that and this isn't any different.

It's took some getting used to. 'RMI' still had Horwich connections and why alot of the Leigh public couldn't connect too.

I was unsure of the name, but it's grown on me, our website and ground and playing staff for next season is top notch, our new chairman is professional, seems to have his head screwed on and his staff have been involved with Bolton and Blackburn in the past so i'd like to think they know what they're doing. We've got full time players in the Unibond and although I was expecting a name change I was expecting something as drastic.

The 'RMI' was something that kept us apart from the rest of the 'Utd's' 'Rovers' 'City's' 'Town's' etc without having any relevence to Leigh, with Genisis we can kept a unique name, it's grown on me and the people of Leigh especially seem to have taken to it which is the most important thing for me... we'll have doubters we'll have knockers but for me the hardcore of RMI supporters are excited about the future, the new beginning for the football team in Leigh - new stadium new start.

The thing for me that took the getting used to was changing our colours from Red and White, Leigh colours.

Hopefully you'll keep an eye out for us but all of the ex RMI fans are right behind Dom and his visions and we all believe in him and our club - our club hasn't changed we're still Leigh and we'll keep fighting and hopefully good times will come to us and the people of Leigh will now feel connected and get a bond that you do with your football team.

I think adding something new, Genisis and the complete revamp of the club rather than just going to 'Leigh FC' will create more interest and bring us more success personally.

Once a Leyther always a Leyther.

Out of interst is your manager Steve "Bleo" Bleasdale from the Big Ron Manger program. What do you make of him? That program was hilarious from start to finish except probably if you support Peterborough.

It had it all, Bleo screaming at this players "when it's a battle you f**king battle", his team having a punch up at the fianl whistle and then finally him resigning half an hour before kick off and Fry and Atkinson taking over for the rst of the season.

I watched it with great interest as he was RMI's/Genesis boss before then aswell. That's all it was a TV programme - made for entertainment. He is the highest quailfied manager/coach in non league which they don't hand out, he's a commited character as you saw on the programme but he has nous aswell and knows a good player when he sees one.

I think he's the right man for our job and he has made some crackin' signings and he's looking forward to moving into the new ground and hopefully taking us up within the next couple of seasons and having some success with a club, before Ron came in he did a good job at Peterborough and likewise at his last job he did well at Bangor.

I think on the programme it was much the players and Ron's fault as much as it was Bleo's and I felt sorry for him because he's a top fella and only wants the best for any club he's involved with.

It's been and gone and maybe he's tarred with the 'Big Ron' shyte too much for me but he's with us now and focusing on doing a good job with us.

LOL at my Sig - 'Cos RMI will never die' ... oops :lol:

All the best with it.