.................and we'll still be at the stage where Chairmen are being photgraphed with a hard hat stood next to a digger, saying "We're about to move the earth".

Balls to that.

Leeds Rhinos to drop out and the whole team shall relocate to the NRL. The last three grand finals have proven this league isn’t motivating Leeds Rhinos stars anymore.

They only get up for big games whilst been complacent against the lower sides.

Yeah, we've done that before - about 40 times now, I think. They said last time, 'We're building a new stadium' yet, no new stadium. 'We're building a new stadium'. Where is it?

Problem is, as soon as they step foot in Oz the English lot are hit with the big gash stick.

Saints will not play at their new stadium till 2013

It will prob be cas stadium is a dump plus the fact they gone fined with there fans not really looking good is it

Fair enough wakeys ground is a dump aswell but think the whole fans thing will give cas the boot

If it was upto me i'd get rid of quins the bunch of charity cases plus done nothing

Couldn't agree more but after Nigel Wood put his big size 11 in his mouth on Bootsandall very early in the season they cannot back track now or they would look foolish- mind you they are idiots anyway.

Why , hadn't the butties arrived

SL winners x ??
CC winners x ??
good crowds
excellent production of kids
stadium IS on its way

Reckon they are in with a shout of a new franchise, don't you

I didn't say they wouldn't get a franchise

But this isn't going to be the case, not by a long shot. Let's say Widnes, Barrow or Halifax come up, can any of the clubs being mooted say for certain that they are stronger than any of these clubs? Of course they can't in the same way that Widnes couldn't prove that they were stronger than Salford or the Crusaders last time. It is an objective decision and wouldn't last a second in court.

This is also not what licensing has been from day one. They pick the 14 clubs they want in, nothing to do with who is strongest.

Trust me I argued enough about it last time but the process works like this. They give clubs a grade A-C, A's and B's are guaranteed entry C's are not. Approximately 2/3rds of the clubs were given a C grade meaning that they could pick 6 clubs out of the final 11 without having to justify them in the slightest as they technically had the same grade. The same will apply this time around.

If those 5 criteria for Championship clubs are correct then Barrow won't be eligible. Their ground has a capacity of ~8k and they have not averaged 2,500 last season or this one.

I don't care what anyone "thinks", "knows" etc the Vikings ARE NOT guaranteed to be shoehorned into SL!!!

They may meet a few of the criteria, but this is RL and you know what happens when they control things!!!

The saddest thing about this whole FIASCO , which is what it is, is that it has next to nothing to do withwhat happens on the field and that is the KEY SELLING POINT OF RUGBY LEAGUE!!!!!

Everything else is secondary.

Sadly the RFL etc see it completely the other way round!

Spot on

So the RFL in their wisdom have announced extra criteria a few weeks before the end of the qualifying season for the Championship clubs that are in a position to apply for SL

I'm completely surprised

Licences were graded only after they were awarded. Clubs which didn't win a licence didn't have their licence graded, for the fairly obvious reason that they didn't have a licence to grade. So no – 11 applicants didn't get a C grade of which only six were picked.

Really worried now, but i am not surprised. We must be favourites as we have the worst ground in SL and are making no progress with the new one.

I missed a trick. Whats gone wrong with the Wakey stadium development

Starry the clubs have known about them for the season.

TOC made a point of trying to drum up support at Widnes earlier in the year in an effort to get the turnover over the £1m mark but he attributed it at the time to unlocking the extra 100k on the National league salary cap.

Both Leigh and Halifax have referred to the minimum crowd figures in press releases in the last few months too. The Leigh one was in the press release for your home game against Widnes.

So basically with how many months notice before the end of a 3 year qualifying period , or is it something they decided upon once the Toulouse fiasco came out , that was around feb/early March wasn't it

Ive no idea when these have come in but TOC was speaking about the £1m turnover figure towards the start of our league campaign and the Leigh press release was some months ago.

It certainly seems to have only been mentioned from the start of this season.

I'm waiting for an employee of the RFL to take up A1.11 in the members obligations section:

[uWHISTLE BLOWING[/u
A1.11 [iIn order to ensure that Rugby League is a sport in which it is safe and acceptable for those
who have concerns about potential Misconduct the RFL has a Whistle Blowing Policy. It is an
offence of Misconduct for any Person Subject to the Operational Rules to harass or victimise
any person who has made a disclosure in accordance with the Whistle Blowing Policy.[/i

Bye Wakefield. Hello Widnes.

Bye Wakefield hello Leigh.

Seriously, can someone tell me why Widnes are perceived to be a good option? Poor crowds in NL, don't produce a lot of quality from their youth system, went bankrupt on low crowds and poor results last time in Super League. Lets face it they are hardly Super.