thats your opinion, thats fine. I just dont think you know the bids better than not only the RFL but the people actually making the bid

no, i think what i said was allowances need to be made for them

only a complete idiot, a total fool would think that the success or failure of a club can be put down to a tactic. It is stupid beyond belief to try and distil the inner workings of a club to when it was promoted to SL. There are a million and one things that could have been done differently, with a million and one different outcomes. yes we can and will learn, we look at what does work and what doesnt. One thing we know is taking the slow approach doesnt work, we have tried it for over one hundred years with very very very very very very little success. We know 'organic growth' (in the flatcapper sense) doesnt work, because organic growth didnt work.

of course you cant, Les Catalans continuing success is a threat to your club, its understandable it just needs to be ignored.

Mogg has never pulled on a french Jersey and Pelo is french

Tell me of a situation where renaming a rugby league club and moving to another location actually improved matters. There must be instances of it but they are extremely few.

In the Crusaders case, they are screwed because LS wants out and nobody wants to replace him in financing the club. And before you bring up Moss, he was quite clear that he was only interested in having more games in Wrexham and wouldn't be injecting any funds.

As for wishing them out of existence. You constantly bring up how great it is that Crusaders are in SL rather than CC, I'm just pointing out that they would far, far better off had they stayed in CC for another 3 years minimum.

I think a blind, deaf and dumb person who could only communicate through smell would know more than the RFL.



In other words, criteria matter for heartlands teams because we don't want any of them going bust but "allowances should be made" i.e. "criteria ignored totally" for expansion teams even though you admit they are much more likely to go bust than heartlands ones.



Except in the case of Catalans which is the only decent team to ever join SL from outside the English heartlands. And of course Toulouse when they join.

It is stupid beyond belief to believe that there is no connection whatsoever between success and preparation.

except they wouldnt, because they still wouldnt have had someone looking to put in the necessary funds, would receive less tv money and would be less attractive to sponsors, they would be in a worse position not receiving £1m a year in TV rights than receiving it,

there is no intrinsic benefit to Crusaders, to them, for them being in the Championship, they would have had lower crowds, less sponsorship, less TV money and less visibility

they werent some profit making stable club in the championship, they were still reliant on LS to survive

The costs are much, much lower. It's not a coincidence that LS pulled his money out when they were in SL not when they were in NL1.



Much higher visibility you mean. Crusaders had all their home games live on network TV. Their crowds were growing. Junior development was coming along nicely.



According to the RFL's notes on their application, they were.

Were they lying?

:2fyh5aiywell you would think that. Strangely though the administrators tennis and football seem to disagree with you, but what would they know, those sports arent famous in Widnes


:2fyh5aiyyes

:2fyh5aiyno

:2fyh5aiyerm no, there was nothing 'organic' about Les Catalans preparation for SL. Though I would have been happy for Celtic to have gone down the same route, and the same with Toulouse

that is Two years preparation for SL where everything else becomes secondary


it would be stupid beyond belief to think there is no connection between success and preparation, im not sure anyone has espoused this viewpoint though. I just dont think that just being a semi-pro side prepares you for SL, its certainly not the way Les Catalans did it

Yes, they did.

They played in the French elite league and assembled a really strong team before joining SL. They were given the time to do this by the RFL. It's much the same as Toulouse only they didn't join the English system but stayed in the French one.

Stadium costs are the same, in fact so would most things, the only major increase would be the playing squad costs, which would be offset by the increase in funds from TV and Gates


their crowds didnt grow as much as when they were in SL, i wonder why?

where in the RFLs notes did it say they were profit making?

Well, quite a few people managed to predict difficulties for Celtic without detailed knowledge of their bid. I don't know if they all based that prediction on recent experience or are simply persistant harbingers of doom, but it does seem that the RFL failed to ask one vital question...What if?

This episode discredits the whole bidding process. If a club's forecast can be so out of whack within one year that the owner decides he can't afford to put any more money into the club then that bid was just pie in the sky, which, since it was audited (?) and accepted is no good for The Crusaders, Celtic's (ex) fans, expansion, clubs which may have actually had a robust and sound bid rejected and the credibility of the game as a whole.

yes, by signing the best french players to full-time contracts, and then only when their SL place had been guaranteed

and i have already said i would have been in favour of expansion clubs following that track rather than going through the same process as heartland clubs

No, it isn't otherwise National League clubs wouldn't have such issues of boom and bust promotions which is why automatic promotion and relegation got scrapped.



The notes on Crusaders SL licence said that they were financially stable.

That they were able to do was because the RFL gave them enough time to prepare. Crusaders weren't given this time and the results are clear.

Toulouse were rejected from SL but they are still playing in the same city and haven't found it necessary to relocate 130 miles away.

well it seems they were simply persistant harbingers of doom, as we havent yet lost the welsh franchise


also, doesnt the same apply to your club? and Wakefield? Your chief exec has basically come out and said without outside investment your club is unsustainable, and that it is only surviving on his goodwill. That the business model is losing £500k a year and that unless the council or some other kind soul pumps in a fair few million for a new stand you never will be sustainable, with what you have just said regarding the crusaders in mind, how can you justify your inclusion?

so other than player costs (and the costs associated with them) what will cost Crusaders more in SL than in the Championship?

so it didnt say they were profit making, Glad we got that sorted

Lewis has his abilities but judging SL applications definitetly isn't one of them




The criteria either apply or they don't. There are no half-way houses.



In case you hadn't noticed. France had already got a semi-pro and amateur leagues that Toulouse recruited its players from. How is that not "organic growth"?

I didn't say that they were profit making.

Toulouse had a very good bid, with a very good business plan, the reason they werent admitted was player strength

Just being in the Championship isnt preparing for SL, if you are saying maybe they should have had a year or so longer between being accepted into SL and begginning to play there then yes I would probably agree. If you are saying they should have just stayed in the championship for three years and applied again next time, then no, no good would have come of it

in your opinion, which as we have seen, is biased and self-perpetuating

why? surely an intelligent system would understand that heartland clubs and expansion clubs are different,

im assuming you mean Les Catalans as that was the example used!
and no, one club with two years preparation time with the money and investment and attraction of a Super League side, along with the ability to cherry pick the best talent in the country for free isnt 'organic growth'

or if it is, i would be happy to allow say Leicester a chance at this 'organic growth' malarky

Not only my opinion. In the opinion of the majority of Crusaders fans, their club was not ready for SL.



Not if the criteria really were there to prevent sides from going bust.



It isn't? Then what is "organic growth"?



As would I. Let them pick what players they like from the semi-pro and amateur ranks and join a semi-pro competition.

I'm saying that I would have objected to them being given a guaranteed 2012 slot subject certain "performance indicators". It is pretty clear that the club's management are so clueless that given an absolute guarantee that they would have sat on their hands for three years and done nowt.

you havent spoken to the majority of crusaders fans

they havent 'done a widnes' yet, and im sure there were more aims than just that to the criteria

its nothing, its a random phrase made up by flatcappers as an excuse to keep expansion sides out of SL.

why semi-pro? why not pro? it worked with Les Catalans so lets make it work with Leicester as well

like les Catalans did?

so lets get this straight, you want expansion clubs to be prepared like Les Catalans were, but you dont want them to be allowed to prepare like Les Catalans did?

Why do you constantly bring Widnes into every topic on expansion clubs when there is no reference to Widnes, or argument from it’s fans?

This thread has nothing to do with Widnes, It is supposed to be about [i“Crusaders chances in next round of SL applications”[/i.


Here we go again.

The reason why Widnes fans are fed up with being compared to failed expansion clubs primarily because we went into administration, is because it is a ludicrous comparison. You also get people like you and dally M proffering the notion that Widnes have been going bust every few years.

Widnes have gone into administration once in their history, and that was because we ended up with a crook owning the club, with a track record of sending clubs into administration, spending £3million on clothes in a VAT scam using the club as a front, funding a squad and then pulling out at the start of the season. In the end we went bust, and probably shouldn’t have been allowed to put in a bid for 2009.

Perhaps all the clubs in SL that have been into administration, or have had to have rich backers come in to save them from administration, should be regarded as failed clubs and thrown out of SL?

That way you’ll have a league full of expansion clubs, with Les Catalans and Crusaders probably being the only two left and playing each other every week.

because even though it doesnt explicitly mention Widnes, it is fairly clear that Widnes are the club in mind when Widnes fans are calling Crusaders,

it would be silly to pretend that Widnes and their bias towards them wasnt an intrinsic part to those people forming their opinion on Crusaders and where we go from here