The Richmond Roughriders announced on Thursday afternoon that they would be joining the National Arena League (NAL) as an expansion franchise in 2018.
LWOS spoke to team Owner and General Manager Gregg Fornario and he says the team is already ready to compete.
Richmond Owner Gregg Fornario says Roughriders are ready to compete
During the 2017 season, the Roughriders played their inaugural year in Arena Pro Football (APF) against teams that were considered lesser competition than anyone in the NAL.
“Without a doubt [there’s a competition gap],” Fornario said. “100% there are a lot better teams and competition in the NAL.”
The teams the Roughriders faced weren’t at all the competition that the team was looking for.
“The teams that we played, that [ultimately] were considered bad teams, we beat by 80 or 90,” Fornario said. “We didn’t beat them by 20 or 30, we were winning by 80 or 90 and we weren’t playing our whole team.”
About midway through the 2017 APF season, Fornario knew that the higher-competition NAL was where the Roughriders belonged.
After all, that’s what the fans in Richmond were used to seeing.
“Our big reason for making a jump like this was that we entered a territory that had arena football there for multiple years,” Fornario said. “That city was used to their team playing on that [high] level. They played against the Lehigh Valley Steelhawks and Columbus Lions.”
Fornario continued and said the move was something that fans wanted to see.
“They’ve had rivalries against these teams,” Fornario said. “The fans definitely wanted us to be on that level. We were definitely looking to get on that same level that they once had before.”
Competing at the Higher Level
The real question now becomes, can Richmond compete?
That shouldn’t be too big of an issue for the Roughriders, though, as Fornario has been building the roster for this situation ever since the APF season had started.
“Last year we recruited like we were playing in a top-league,” Fornario said. “We got D-1 [players] across the board, I picked up some veterans from other leagues and other teams.”
Of course, there is always the plethora of talent that is stationed in Jacksonville, that stares down over the rest of the NAL in the Sharks.
That hasn’t phased Fornario one bit, though.
“I feel without a doubt that if I put the Roughriders into the NAL with my exact roster that we would compete,” Fornario said. “But that’s not who I am. I know stepping up to a higher league, we are going to fill the gaps not just to compete, but we want to win.”
