Amongst your paranoid ramblings I am struggling to decipher your plans for RL success & expansion. If the simple crietria is generating more income than you spend then we will be back to a part time game within months, with all our best athletes playing yawnion.

Well, supporting a club that has recently built one of these "forced" stadia - the only way my club could be even remotely viable is in a new stadium which could deliver more income streams for the club than our decrepit old one.

We've also mammothly increased our crowds as a result.

Interesting that you would suggest we didn't "need" our new stadium - our financial statements whilst at KR and chairman would probably disagree.

Which of the clubs in "old" stadia are breaking even? Perhaps the RFL are right to force clubs towards new stadia that can help drive more sustainable clubs?

The RFLs plan for success and expansion has worked where exactly? three clubs going bankrupt in the last two years? The Crusaders debacle? Londons still ongoing problems??
How can you view this as success?

The sooner this game realises it is a small time sport and returns to a semi pro status the better. We lasted for 100 years as such, so why change it? If some one wants to play Union that's fine by me, i'm happy to watch the ones staying behind a playing RL. As long as i can watch my local team on a Sunday afternnon i'm not really bothjered what happens in the rest of the country.

You are looking at it from a purely selfish POV, most clubs can't afford to!!

Could you please point out how the RFL are responsible for any of those clubs going bump? I mean in detail, not some long-winded version of "they just ARE I tell you".

Not sure this would work. If youngesters at grass roots level know that they can earn more money playing kick and clap rather than league then we will lose interest in league from an early age. Money has changed most sports as well as Rugby which has helped our game and other sports. I personally don't see a way back to semi pro game. There are probably more clubs doing ok financially than aren't at the moment it's up to the clubs to run themselves responsibly.

The problem with new stadia is that unless you actually build it as a club (Saints) then you do not get the revenue streams, like food/drink etc. (Salford).

I agree with both side of teh argument to an extent although (an cas fans rarely do) i have to side with our Wakefield colleague.

On one side having a new stadia does open up a massive amount of opportunity for commercial success - corporate entertaining for example is massivly higher in new stadia compared to old ones. This obviously helps to make clubs more revenue and supposedly for viable businesses.

on the other hand new stadia cost a lot to run and maintain - and if Salford is anything to go by hardly a receipe for sucess. failure to get the desired level of income from teh stadia results in it being a hinderance to success as apposed a catalyst.

However before you even get to the new stadia clubs are being forced to spend huge amounts of money on designs - legal fees and the such. Which in the current climate clubs simply can not afford - simply beacuse the RFL want new stadia to appear on TV - which makes teh marketability of the game as a whole go up and inturn sponshorship revenue - Well sort of assuming you dont sell it for free!!

Have some people forgotten that stadium quality is only ONE of the things that clubs are assessed on again?

Give over - Stadium quality was one of probably two criteria to be reviewed by the RFL.

The other one being were you on the predetermined list written by the RFL months prior to the applications being handed in.

Wahey - not often you see conspiracy theory bullcrap spouted about this topic.

Oh, wait a moment...

Nope, a total failure to respond to my point. I have never, anywhere, said the RFL's plans have been a success. I was intersted in how you are suggesting RL should operate to be financially sustainable & still attract the crowds & youngsters necessary for it continue.

Let's take a look at this first, RL well SL anyway is a business if you cannot generate enough income to balance the books you're in trouble, that TT is basic economics.
If you rely on sponsorship or a benefactor then equally the ground is still shaky, if you can generate your own as FTV seemed to be claiming Saints do and I believe Leeds do then you're ok.
Some people believe build a new ground is the answer, I don't necessarily think it is, certainly not in all cases.
Losing players to union will always happen sadly, we cannot chase debt via a salary cap to keep pace with a higher one in union and nor should we, that way lies danger.
If clubs can be run efficiently they should generate income, if they invest in a good quality youth set up that (in the end) will pay dividends.
Living beyond your means, and chasing unnecessary targets are the recipe for disaster, as we have seen lately.
Look at the effort your club is going to fit in with this ideology, I'm sure it's not that long since your CO was bragging to the world about a GH and a £50 million pound Weldon Road bonanza, now (according to fully!!) you're happy with £5 million and a half build GH, if it ever happens.
What the bloody hell is wrong with Weldon Road, it's a great ground and one I enjoy visiting, the answer is nothing, it just looks bad on SKY.
Sadly so does the Stoop with no bigger in it, but I'm not the RFL.

Right this one now, I didn't fail to answer your point I simply challenges you to defend the current one, which you have failed to do.
I can't claim to have all the answers, that's for the governing body to do, I have alluded to many aspects of good business practise which would help the clubs and that would be a starting point.
Another would be the RFL holding their collective hands up and saying we got this very badly wrong.
Just because the car is heading towards a cliff, it doesn't mean the passenger had to sit there and do nowt!!!!

Wrong Wakefield will get all income from NM.

London and Crusaders simply because they are/were only there at the behest of the RFL, they serve/served no purpose other than that.
Us the RF new what our track record was like, rather than believe what they were told they should have asked for proof, if they had who knows!!
Bulls had just been independently audited by one of the UKs largest auditing company's, it is impossible that they were not aware of the problems.
In all cases it demonstrates the incompetency and corrupt nature of the governing body of our sport and the reason our game has gone backwards.

Just wow.

Depressing, isn't it?

A simple 'no I can't' would have sufficed.

ok, to sum up:

Anybody who was an RL fan in 1994/5 when Superleague was born, will remember that one of the major plus points to the changes was the fact that the Sky money, and increased revenues would bring financial stability. Big clubs teetering on the brink of extinction is nothing new. Ask the fans of clubs such as Wigan, Hull, Halifax etc...

But SL was meant to change that! It has'nt

Its not neccesarily the RFL's fault either. Its the clubs that are living beyond their means. earlier in this thread a Saints fan was going on about income streams being improved at Lp as opposed to KR. One man has funded your new ground. the club alone, on income generated or bank lending would never have got the money needed. what happens if Eamonn decides he wants his money back? How long would it take to pay off such a debt? Look a Bradford City. Thier major outgoing that is crippling their ambition is the rent the pay a former director who owns the ground!


Rugby league is a sport that can never compete as a financial money spinner with union. mainly because our international game is not strong enough! why try. There are thousands of lads running around playing the amateur game who would love a shot at being a semi pro. Our game will not die if our players are not full time! but it will if the sugar daddy benefactors at many of the SL clubs pullout!

As would you adding an argument to back up your version of events, rather than that half d effort!!!

Not true, in fact I would venture that a pretty small proportion came from EM for our new ground.

Sale of KR, Tesco partnership, council contributions and yes cash from directors/shareholders, but by no means all from EM. In fact, as a shareholder I had the opportunity to vote on loan funding from one of EM's contacts rather than EM himself.

I'm not saying it's easy, but by the same token it's not a matter of moneybags McManus piling cash into a stadium - it has been a long and complicated process raising funds from many different sources.

I asked you to back up your argument. You failed. It's not really incumbent on me to produce a 'version of events' when I'm not the one claiming that 'events' occured. However, as I've got a spare moment or two...

London went bump because the guy paying the bills stopped doing so. There are several other clubs that could easily happen to, and not all of them are in SL. It happened to clubs way before SL was even a gleam in Murdoch's eye. Not the RFL's fault.

Crusaders went bump because the owners were more interested in property development than running an RL club. You could argue that what failed here was a 'fit and proper person test' and I wouldn't necessarily disagree. RFL partly at fault then.

Wakey. You basically said that your club lied to the RFL and then you blamed the RFL for believing the lies. Have a word with yourself. Nobody's fault but the incompetents running the club.

Bradford were not audited by KPMG. Neither was anyone else. KPMG are retained to carry out an analysis of the business plans put forward by the clubs as part of the application process. Their report gave a favourable verdict on the Bradford business plan (with some reservations) and the RFL licence reflected the findings of that report. But you'd rather believe that KPMG and the RFL colluded to give Bradford a licence in the full knowledge that they were virtually bankrupt. Deary me.

indeed and ironically it happened to bradford northern in 1963