Two things Mr Bug.
Are you exactly sure on what assistance clubs receive? Only reason I ask is that in interviews club chairmen seem to give praise to the RFL and their hands on assistance.
Secondly doesn't the old phrase 'live within your means' ring true? If you cant afford it don't do it? It does seem to me that clubs seem to be getting themselves into financial hardship then complaining about it. None of us have the answers but if you're in debt.. scale back. If you cant afford to dine at the top table then dont. FWIW I would like to see Chp clubs receive more from central funding. Despite still posting losses at many clubs SL clubs receive enough from the Sky pie already

They recieve money for one ' marketing ' person , which is pretty pointless unless that person has a fairly decent marketing budget which would allow them to employ people as and when needed to action marketing initiatives

Other than 4 or 5 clubs, most in SL are suffering financial hardship. Are you suggesting they should drop
out of SL?

Im saying if you cant afford it cut your cloth accordingly.
If you have someone willing to write off these debts then, by all means, fire away

How about if you have somebody willing to loan you £ 700 K ?

The cost cutting going on at Crusaders is there for all to see. I was talking about the Championship clubs anyway, no need to deflect

So which Championship clubs were you talking about ?

To compare the cas and halifax academy is not the best idea we have an academy and reserves that tend to be near the top of the table and has produced england players at senior, knights, u18's and and u16's in this franchise period, and has brought through milner, clarke, arundle, massey, walker, eden, thompson, holmes, davies in this franchise period while we have played westerman, shenton, owen, huby, boyle and orr from our academy in this franchise period that came through in earlier years, how many rl players have come through at fax since the last franchises. As i understand it you only currently have an u23's which is itself fairly new. With such a basic youth structure you would be lucky to produce more than a couple, if any sl quality players in the next 3 years. Your academy doing well 7 + years ago is hardly a good marker on how good you will do this time, as most of the players and staff will be differant if not all of them. Even then how many of your academy products from that era went on to play sl?

You may have set minimum standards but cas have better than minimum standards in all areas except the ground, we have an award winning comercial manager and our sponsorship activities go from strength to strength, our community dept is very good, we are competative, regularly challenging for the play offs or getting in them or crowds are about tripple what you get. Even if sl double your crowds (and bearing in mind that the floating fans that will come when your in sl will only watch so many drubbings that you will receive as you will almost certainly be in the bottom 3 f the table, so you will do well to double your average) and get 5k you will struggle to be able to afford a competitive team with out a very rich backer. cas average a few thousand more than that and the only reason we can be as competitive as we are on our small budget is because we have a top notch youth set up that brings so many players through. Salford get similar crowds to what you would get and even with a wealthy backer have struggled to get from the foot of the table since getting a franchise

Cas also have a history of financial stability never spending more than they can afford (something that the rfl have already praised, we even turned a small profit one of the years of this franchise) which is not something halifax have, cas also owning our own ground meaning that we have collateral to borrow against should we ever need to.

As you have said its difficult to compete in all these areas whilst out of the top flight, however franchising is not about giving teams a fair crack of the whip its about picking the 14 best clubs (or the 12 best clubs plus the rfls expansion projects), halifax would have to convince the rfl that they could do better or equal to castleford in most areas, which there is no evidence to suggest will be the case in fact all the evidence points the other way.

I like fax, always have , its my favorite away game, and i would love to be playing you guys in sl but you appear to weaker in all areas (bar your stadium) than salford did when they came up and they have struggled near the bottom of the table, with few home grown players, plenty of overseas players and low crowds, so to suggest the fax would do better than an even stronger club (cas) is unrealistic imho.

Thats very true about the Crusaders.

I particularly like the way they are not allowing more than about 2000 - 3000 fans into the Racecourse for games to stop unnecessary wear and tear on the seats.

Good bit of forward thinking there.

Good post pyeman, tough to argue against that.

So which Championship clubs were you talking about ?

No need to deflect

Sorry, any of them in general really.
If they're all in trouble lower the cap, it's not about competing with SL but for example your own club are in trouble and if no one steps in you're going to have to cut the wage bill. If that ends in being demoted and at a lower level then so be it. Everyone thinks they have some divine right to dine at the big boys table and it just cant happen, Leigh/Barrow/Halifax are small towns and unless you've a welathy backer from somewhere like that you've no chance

And we are in trouble because ?

Our financial backer has suffered because of his business having companies going bust on them , something which could happen to most RL clubs

See you meant Leigh right at the start , so why didn't you just say it , you make out we have done something wrong " If you cannot dine at the big boys table " , and yet you say " if you have somebody willing to make up the shortfall , thats OK "

Make your mind up , yes Leigh Barrow and Fax are all small towns , London , Huddersfield and Wakefield aren't , and yet they are no different to us , take away their financial backer and they are bollaxed , as I said , it's all about who got lucky , Warrington did , W1g4n did , Hull did , all clubs on their harisses , but got lucky , dont try to pretend its any different

Halifax, small town? Is geography off the syllabus nowadays? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... population I can see many SL teams below us, and thats not even bringing into account Calderdale for whom we represent.

Halifax, small town? Is geography off the syllabus nowadays? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... population I can see many SL teams below us, and thats not even bringing into account Calderdale for whom we represent.

I must not be looking hard enough.

The only thing I see is a parody between their situation & that of the Greeks, with the powers that be continuing to pump money into a black hole, when the majority know they won’t ever get the money back.

Quote ="justthebasicfax"Halifax, small town? Is geography off the syllabus nowadays? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... population I can see many SL teams below us, and thats not even bringing into account Calderdale for whom we represent.'" What? I got about 100 towns down and didnt clock Halifax I mustnt have been looking hard enough? And buggy I think Leigh's situation is unfortunate and thats exactly full well one hundred percent what I mean. Unless you've the fanbase and spread to survive, then you need a wealthy backer, I dont know why we should pretend otherwise. Im not having a go at Leigh, i'm just pointing out this fact and if clubs are struggling financially cut back, someone will either replace you or other clubs will follow suit.

Quote ="justthebasicfax"Halifax, small town? Is geography off the syllabus nowadays? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... population I can see many SL teams below us, and thats not even bringing into account Calderdale for whom we represent.'" What? I got about 100 towns down and didnt clock Halifax I mustnt have been looking hard enough? And buggy I think Leigh's situation is unfortunate and thats exactly full well one hundred percent what I mean. Unless you've the fanbase and spread to survive, then you need a wealthy backer, I dont know why we should pretend otherwise. Im not having a go at Leigh, i'm just pointing out this fact and if clubs are struggling financially cut back, someone will either replace you or other clubs will follow suit.

Quote ="justthebasicfax"Halifax, small town? Is geography off the syllabus nowadays? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... population I can see many SL teams below us, and thats not even bringing into account Calderdale for whom we represent.'" You need to be careful here because that list is a list of largest individual settlements and is not the best indicator of urban area population demographics. Take Warrington - The 'settlement' of Warrington, as defined probably by ancient boundary's, shows below Halifax (who's settlement and urban population figure are the same) but the figure you should be using is the Warrington URBAN area population number as a better indicator of the 'size' of a city/town. As such Warrington is down has having a settlement population of 80,661 but it's urban population is 158,915 versus Halifax's urban population of 82,056. It was not a great Wiki Table to use for your argument to be honest!

Quote ="justthebasicfax"Halifax, small town? Is geography off the syllabus nowadays? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... population I can see many SL teams below us, and thats not even bringing into account Calderdale for whom we represent.'" You need to be careful here because that list is a list of largest individual settlements and is not the best indicator of urban area population demographics. Take Warrington - The 'settlement' of Warrington, as defined probably by ancient boundary's, shows below Halifax (who's settlement and urban population figure are the same) but the figure you should be using is the Warrington URBAN area population number as a better indicator of the 'size' of a city/town. As such Warrington is down has having a settlement population of 80,661 but it's urban population is 158,915 versus Halifax's urban population of 82,056. It was not a great Wiki Table to use for your argument to be honest!

Did you find Warrington? If you did, look a few places up from them and there they are.

Okay but that list is tosh.
The last census put Warrington at 212,000 in a growing town and that was ten years ago. Theres a quarter of that 'population' in the small district I live in alone. Old town might be 80,000 but how out of dates that?? 30 years??

To put Halifax in the same size bracket as Warrington is ludicrous. They're a small town bordered by bigger clubs.

What defines a "small town"?

Just as Warrington is a smallish town bordered by three of the biggest football teams in the world , so what ? , it was you who started the ' comparison ' game , maybe Cas aren't big enough to be in SL ? , let's face it compared to London nobody is ?

How big is Wrexham , compared to other towns with RL clubs in them ?

just thought i would add this, i dont have exact figures, but of the 4 superleague clubs (5 if we include mansalchestford) in the northwest, widnes has a population of around 50,000, with the others haveing populations 3-4 times that (if not greater).

Would it be very wrong of me to suggest that the 'hand-outs' are not directly from the RFL , and that they receive these 'hand-outs' from the Sky money ? They only receive said funding due to the RFL allowing their continued inclusion in Sooper Dooper League ?

Quote ="Andy Gilder"Hitler had the support of the majority, didn't make his ideas or opinions any more valid or reasonable than yours. Remind me again what happened to the likes of Fax and Leigh the last time they were in the top flight? Certainly in Fax's case they didn't manage to stay "solvent without handouts from the RFL", did they?'" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Quote ="Andy Gilder"Hitler had the support of the majority, didn't make his ideas or opinions any more valid or reasonable than yours. Remind me again what happened to the likes of Fax and Leigh the last time they were in the top flight? Certainly in Fax's case they didn't manage to stay "solvent without handouts from the RFL", did they?'" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

a couple of points in my defence, for those that do not understand semantics, geography or History.

Halifax is part of Calderdale, it draws support from towns within Calderdale, from Brighouse, Sowerby Bridge to Hebden Bridge, I stand by my theory that not enough people paid attention in Geography if Halifax is considered a 'Small town'. I wonder what a big town is?
Secondly when we hit troubles i dont recall handouts? As i recall it we took our medicine, played a load of kids for the rest of the year and got relegated, since then we have built up solid foundations and the ground is now in good nick, we have the best RL pitch in the land, check our groundsmans awards, we can't invest in everything SL clubs have because we dont have the Sky money, and we dont have the draw of playing Wigan and Leeds every other week, Halifax is a very healthy and vibrant club.
What will be will be, I for one have enjoyed trips to Toulouse and every single ground in the Championship, its a very honest division thats been served scraps for too long, people should respect the whole rugby family, history should also show people that every dog has its day, and what goes around comes around, a touch of humilty wouldnt go a miss.