Can't wait to see them back in, wonder who it will be at the expense of though.

I have to say that Championship fans are coming over as quite a bitter bunch at the moment. Why not just focus on what your club is doing right or wrong and leave other clubs to their own devices.

Correct, my football team Sheffield Wednesday are currently facing a winding up order with more than £1m to the taxman, and around £20m owed to the bank, yesterday new investment was halted, and the club could be in dire straits. However the won't be getting any special treatment, even when they are arguably the biggest club in League 1, and were one of the best supported clubs in the championship. Unfortunately there is no magic wand the owls can wave at the FA



Obviously the RFL is nothing like the FA in terms of its business aims and professionalism.

Think there just may be 15 in the new set up.

nope,the RFL have catagorically stated that one of you is out.

"Framing the Future" anyone

Suggestion on the Wakey forum from someone whose knowledge I respect and trust that the clubs are being asked to ignore the difficulties, allow the Crusaders to remain, and allow them a franchise in 2012, despite financial meltdown, but with the teams staying at 14. Or something to that effect.

If it turns out to be the case, either someone is going down, or someone is not coming up, because the clubs are not treated equally.

I want the Crusaders to work, but if you have a licensing system, it has got to be open and transparent, with the rules applied evenly. If not, you just have the RFL acting like emperors and relegating as to their whim.

Not a chance. it would break the agreement with sky (14 club comp) and would require the majority of loss making SL clubs voting for a smaller share of Sky money - will never happen.

you've been in SLE to long and your vision has become clouded if you've ever believed that.

Indeed it does.
Our chairman has gone on record saying that we need 10k average attendance to break even as as example.

ten thousand just to break even is a scary thought.

And he is pretty much spot on with regard to that.
If you work on each ticket sold being worth a tenner to the home club, then 1.3 million in gate revenue is the minimum needed from that.....you could argue that through shirts, merchandise, beer, food etc, that another 1.3 million is available.....and 1.5million from SKY and there you have 4 miilion and change...self sufficiency.

10,000 to spend full cap though.
I can forsee 15 team league, magic weekend as is with the WCC seeing off the weekend

Very true. Our chairman told me, that for every 1,000 short of the 10,000 someone has to find £100,000.

if you cant spend full cap you should not be in that league.
SKY payments-1.2 million a season.
cap i.8 million,there really is no excuse.

Well there are excuses, not all of a clubs income goes on player wages

What about overheads? Youth Development? Community programmes? Marketing? Bills?

theres at least another half a dozen revenue streams.

Well there are at least half a dozen clubs that don't spend up to the full cap that I can think of right now. Are you suggesting we just have an elite competition compromising of a paltry selection of wealthy clubs? If so then we will just forget this conversation ever happened...

is it really that many?
i'd have thought three or four at most

To be honest, I don't really see what all the bickering is about anymore.

Despite losing a lot of creditability with farce after farce, the RFL will shoe them on one way or another because quite simply they have to. As with London, they are more important to the long term future of the game than Wakefiled, Widnes, Leigh, the Isle of White or Jossies Giants. I just wish the RFL had the b0llocks to say so.

In the meantime, I'm sure I can find something more important to worry about.

to get league points ?

Absolutely spot on.

Put bluntly if there are no Crusaders then you can wave goodbye to the development sides in South Wales and all that comes with that.

The only ones that would benefit would be maybe Scorpions but most of the dual contract players turn out for Scorpions quite a bit anyway.

I know its popular to cast the RFL as a perpetual bad guy working against the best interests of clubs, but its worth pointing out again that the size and entry methods for Super League are subject to agreement by two bodies: the RFL and SLE. The current 14 SL clubs voted to guarantee a place to a championship club and to keep the competition at 14 for 2012-15, even though that would inevitably mean one of them not getting a licence, rather than share the Sky fee among a larger number.

It's not that hard to work out, is it?

Wigan wouldn't be playing for league points. They'd be playing for the WCC. It would be their bye weekend. Not rocket surgery or brain science is it?