So if the club are vindicated by being cleared and us taking up our 5th round tie against Batley you would still be unhappy at the club? Go figure



Am not for 1 minute defending anyone here but innocent until proven guilty in my book and we aint been proven guilty. Yet.

aye there is! But I would guess that's as likely as me being mistaken for Johnny Depp in the car park at Fev!!

Look - if you played Wire in the last round, got beaten and were out of the cup - you'd have accepted that and moved on. This isn't armageddon. The world isn't ending anytime soon.
you will probably get expelled from this years comp. C'est la vie, move on.
Yes you'll miss out on a big pay day - but if your draw in the cup was a harsher one - a la fev, you would have been out anyway and onl in the same position as you are now without all the sheeite!!!

Take it on the chin, 'front it out' for a couple of days then it'll all be history.
Some of the personel at your club need a serious looking at tho - can't quite understand how this has happened. The internal inquiry ought to be far more reaching than owt the RFL will do!

Stand firm - your club needs you more than owt now! Barrow next up!

I have been lucky enough to have seen fax since i was a 10, back in 1984; on the whole its been a good ride, but hell fire this is a schoolboy error, it will haunt the club for months / years to come.

I just cant fathom how anyone can be so stupid as to make a simple mistake; Someone in the club, put your hand up, explain the mistake, take appropriate actions against those who have damaged the club again.

SL? Never! why would they let an such a shoddy bunch into the top flight of the professional game;

I travel 1hr 30 mins to every home game, further to the away games. Maybe I may save a bit of petrol money until I have calmed down!!!!

Its not just the cup ffs, yes that is upsetting and financially painful, not just because of the gates, but the publicity for the club, the good feeling it would have generated had we got past Batley, but since we are trying to put together a strong case for involvement in SL it ruins our case, fme, if I was making the decision, I wouldnt let us in for one second, and they wont either!! Thats the cause of the ill feeling and hurt on the board, its not just about 1 CC game at all.

And Parsnip.. can you really see a situation where we are NOT to blame for this? Every position I put the pieces of the puzzle in the finger still points firmly at the shay! I understand your sentiment for sure, but we did it, we are not going to be apologising to anyone, the reverse is the case.

I know it looks bad and I reiterate that I am not defending anyone but in my opinion and I know there won't be much support for my opinion the club are innocent until the RFL prove otherwise and for that reason I will reserve my judgement until due course.

A position of class and decorum mr Raddish! I tip my hat to you

ok, I can see you're p!zzed off, but looking from outside in, I honestly think there's some over reaction here.

A balls up has occurred- big style. I don't think it is deliberate or 'cheating' per se, it's a balls up. One which will effect the 'feelgood' theme and the publicity for owt like this is never good - but it dies down. It did with Hull! Visagate went away with the crusaders and Salary cap breeches and points deductions have gone away! Fax have endured much worse than some dozy @rse at your club not being on the ball!

For me this years SL application is a non-starter for Fax anyway. Almost all the Championship clubs chairmen will privately acknowledge that Widnes are a shoe-in anyway.

It's a balls up - but get it into some perspective. Bigger sheeite has gone down at other clubs and it's not had the massive impact of earth imploding catalismic proportions some are suggesting on here!

But, should you wish to believe that all is doomed, it's your club I suppose. Up to you. Just offering insight from a neutral.

In which case it seems to me that this incident on its own would not be sufficient to have two directors resigning.................

Which is why we need answers as to what is going on at the club because it seems the Ostick situation is not the only thing going on.

Why what else is going on? Why don't you post it and get it off your chest and we can have another 10-11 pages of rumours/bullsh@t and nonsense..

It shouldn't be a case of letting us in. The team winning the Championship should be allowed up as is the case with any other 'real' sport. Franchise my A R S E.

Post what? We have had some response and reason over Clay's departure but absolute zip over Posner's. Am I being wrong to question this? Just because you think you're right to presume nothing else is happening doesn't necessarily mean that I'm wrong to think there is.

I also don't think Mr Halifax (HP) would resign over 'rumour, bs and nonsense' as you put it, do you? The CC affair seems like an oversight, which while embarrassing is not the end of the world. Has HP said anything about his reasons for resigning yet... I haven't seen anything.

The big concern I would have is not the fact and it is fact Ostick was not eligible to play but the fine of £100k should worry you more than being icked out of the cup.

Clearly someone and I think more than 1 person is at fault here for not figuring his eligibility.

Another thing although this does not suprise me is the ineptitude of the rfl, how long since this became knowledge of they taken to look at it, clearly caught with trousers down again.

As with most cock ups at clubs fans are the ones who suffer, just a a side issue when heard 2 directors left it seemed odd and this was before I heard about the current fiasco.

Good luck to the fax fans but I fear you will get screwed for this mess and the fine if the rfl stick by the rules in place will be £100k.

Based on reading snippets posted about rfl rules your best hope is that those involved say they knew nothing because if folk blame each other its squaky bum time.

The £100k fine of which £40k was suspended was because Hull could not be kicked out of the competition. So I believe the fine was this high due to the RFL not wishing Hull to profit from the fact that they remained in the tournament.

Halifax will not profit from a run in the challenge cup as they were away in the last round and gained no money from this round due to the game being cancelled. I would expect us to be fined no more than £5k at most or expect expulsion and forfeit of prize money from last round to be sufficient.

One must assume that the RFL will now backflush all teamsheets for all games played by ALL teams in the CC. I suspect we are not an isolated case!

I would expect that clubs are currently doing that themselves.

Put it this way, I'd rather be in your situation than my team's.

We're skint, have low attendences, have had 60 put past us 3 times this season, and only 1 point to show for the first half of the season.

You'll come back a better club for going through this.

See you in a fortnight.

Keep the faith.

Why would you hope for another club to be in the same ridiculous situation as yours. Do you not think its embarrassing enough for the sport that Halifax and the RFL have created such a amatuerish c*ck up of things as it is.

And I would be astonished if there were others making the same mistake. After all how many incidents of this have we seen in recent history? Without looking it up I can only think of Hull and yourselves it would appear.

They are the only incidents which have been noticed but, as the RFL have shown that they don't monitor the teams and have to be told of any infringements by the fans, whose to say how many others have slipped through the net?

My point entirely. This is not cut n dried imo.

Well this one certainly didn't slip through the net, the fact that it took 3 weeks and was raised on this forum is not proof that it would not have been realised at a later date, with potentially more significant and embarrassing consequences for the club and sport.

And I would say it is "cut and dried" as far as Fax are concerned as he played for Rochdale in the 3rd round and Halifax in the 4th round. No ambiguity there. I sincerely hope there are no more incidents at any other clubs and to be honest I don't expect any either, it isn't rocket science.

Just thought.... if the RFL couldnt even check a team sheet (yes I know it was Halifax's fault, but they still had 3 weeks to check into this!)... what confidence is their now in the RFL's "live" salary cap checks....

I don't expect there would be many instances at all. In-season transfers aren't all that common these days.