Halifax aren't ready - way off in fact. Widnes are though.

Will they not be in a years time? Whats the problem?

Dunno, Quinz have never been dropped from SL, through merits of their squad. Gateshead avoided the drop, finishing one place off the playoffs - not bad for their first year in the Championship.

It's a shame that TO needed the exemption not to be relegated, but how close were they to staying up in their first year? I honestly don't want to speculate as to which will be the best Championship side for SL promotion in two years' time but almost all the clubs could put in an at least half-decent bid.

Bad luck to Leigh, reckon the RFL should keep them up and bring two C1 clubs up to make the Championship a 12 team comp.

Need a big money backer and a hell of a lot more fans through the turnstiles. We can't bust the 3,000 barrier - and that's with playing top notch Rugby League. Finance must be put in place to increase promotional offers to prospective fans. 2015 would be a more realistic target. It's OK just scraping a franchise but i don't want to have to go through what the likes of Celtic, Salford and Bradford have gone through this year. I want my club to compete. I had my bellyfull of hammerings in 2003.

I would have thought that when your ground is finished though a few more fair weather fans will start attending, and the whole place would look much more attractive for investors?

Leaguefan, I am 90% sure that Widnes' financial situation is fine. A lot has been made of the recent figures, but they were as a result of a poorly managed institution up to and including 2007. Now that the club has been cleared top to bottom, we're very solvent and ready to become profit making.

A sad day when teams are relagated even though they don't finish in the drop zone what a great big fiddle our game is.

funny when we got relegated a couple seasons ago because of it nobody said anything

Absolutely. No wonder people arent turning to the game, most people find the whole setup farcical.

It's not easy to persuade a non RL fan to come to watch Salford when none of our games mean anything in the big picture.

I suppose on paper a system whereby teams can win the grand final having finished in the bottom half of their league, while finding it impossible to get relegated, is quite bizarre.

And when you try to explain why a historic English heartland club is relegated instead of a French team (who actually finished in a lower position in the league) most people will say 'Thanks, but im off to watch football instead'

There are some right numpties posting on this thread, thinking so far backwards that you'd think they'd want the game to be all amateur and played in Victorian-era rugby union rules to make them happy.

spooneryork, why is our game a "great big fiddle"? EVERY team knew that Toulouse were exempt from relegation. If Toulouse weren't in the league this year (which they very easily could have been rejected), Leigh would have finished below Gateshead and Batley still anyway and would have been relegated (as Gateshead and Leigh picked up 3 points against TO to Batley's 1, meaning Batley benefited least from their inclusion and would be 2 points better off because of it). It wasn't a fiddle.

Geoff70sRocker, if you're going to troll, at least be witty and not a boring repetitive loser saying the same thing with little fact. You might as well just keep typing "RFL BAD, EXPANSION TEAMS BAD, HEARTLANDS TEAMS GOOD" over and over again. I find it amusing that you dis expansion constantly saying that it adds nothing, but fail to comment on the strides made at Catalans. Your only reply to this is to "send 'em back to France", to which I ask "why?" It's a European league for one. And also, how are they not adding to the competition when they have the 6th best attendances in the league, good young French players coming through the system, a competitive team that are currently in the play-offs (and finished 3rd last year and made the cup the year before that)? Sending them to the French League would not only make SL worse off, but also the Catalans Dragons worse off, the game in France worse off (as they wouldn't be fully professional), the international game worse off, and the game as a whole.

As for Widnes' financial status, don't read too much into it yet. Obviously the chairman has had to spend a shed load to get operations running better (which is a given). The fact he has done this is the biggest indicator. You have to speculate to accumulate, and he has done a lot with his money which the Vikings will hopefully soon benefit from.

At the end of the day, people can easily pick a fault with anything. And I mean anything. Every single RL club in this country has tons of faults in it that fans could pick up on. It's the fact that people can't look at the other end of the scale that is quite depressing. People seem to struggle with being able to look at positives as well as negatives to come to a firm conclusion, and these are the ones that I am glad aren't running our great game, otherwise we'd be in a right state.

Think youve hit the nail on the head there Geoff. Fortunately our league is exciting at both ends, albeit French teams cannot be relegated and I believe are expected to start the season on +20 points from now on.

You're talking to yourself again. Why do you do that?

Whoosh.


You have never read any other of halifaxxx's posts have you

A dedicated poster?
How the hell can you be a dedicated poster on a message forum?

Are you saying the RFL changed the rules for the 'drop zone' mid season or that they have just said to Leigh 'you're relegated' for a laugh?

Steve O'Connor also spent a huge amount of money on the stadium - the players' area and office space in the South Stand, gym, physio room, team meeting areas etc. in the North Stand. I was really impressed when I was given the tour. That will be included in the loss for last year.

I have a 3 month old that has a spare dummy if you want it.

You have left me with nothing to add, thank you.

I especially like this part of your post - well said. If I hadn't vowed to keep Taggart's famous outburst in my signature until end of soccer season I would have put above in.

Excellent news.

It is to be hoped that others are in similar situations although I doubt if some are.

Seriously, I just hope they don't fall down again just like so many others have done, including the Cougars!

Ok, so you've justified Catalans inclusion in Super League there...

I loved my trip to Toulouse and believe in the long-term it will benefit British RL in terms of potentially having a half-decent French national side, but that's hardly going to be achieved when the pivotal positions in the Toulouse side are all filled by Aussies. Really can't see why they can't have started off in Championship One and earned their way in to the Championship, and on the same rules as everyone else.

widnes and toulose will be the right clubs to enter SL next time.

CC havent been as bad as has been made out here and with a better squad and potentially noble as coach will improve.

Yes, getting battered every week in front of one man and his sheep has been a real credibility boost for Super League, hasn't it?

When the rumour mill of Celtic and Rangers joining English league was doing the rounds, which league do you think they would have started in ?
Wasn't Toulouse in equivalent level in their original comp?
Ideally you are right, but lets face it no matter what expansion clubs do (unless they are doing it "the right way" like Skolars) or however they are considered for SL/NL etc they are "cheating the rules" in some way. Every one of them has been the same accusations.
In the Championship comp - Get rid of the Quota rule, get rid of the salary cap and base it on being able to afford instead, and get the franchise system in the championship too. All going by the same rules then

1. Good point, but you generally expect it to take much longer to home grow a SL scrum half than a SL Prop. It took us (Catalans) two years to develop Bosc and we started off with Jones and Maguire as our halves and an almost-all foreign backline. Now we only need to develop a standoff. Expect TO to develop their key players in a similar timeframe.
2. C1 clubs could not afford to travel to France and their players would not get the time off work. I think that it would probably have been better for TO to start in C1 as they could have fielded essentially their LER side, they coudl have stayed in both comps, they could have played more French players and less foreign signings that would have cost them more.

Someone already posted that Leigh are going down with a really high points total, 9 wins and 11 losses, and unprecedented good run for a relegated side. Exactly the same win:lose ratio as TO have. Should both clubs have been in C1 last year?