This they have history of in the past

Cas in 2005 is one that springs to mind

Isn't that tb's club?

Quote ="Hedgehog King"Here's an interesting one. A certain "tb" was told of the interview in this thread and didn't reply to the post. m.rlfans.com/forums/viewtopic.ph ... &start=525'" And you are surprised by that

Quote ="Hedgehog King"Here's an interesting one. A certain "tb" was told of the interview in this thread and didn't reply to the post. m.rlfans.com/forums/viewtopic.ph ... &start=525'" And you are surprised by that

No, but to be fair - ne never complained when Wigan screwed them over with the salary cap scandal.

But I dont have a link , strange really , if the RFL were going to do something sneaky like that , you'd expect them to announce it in the press wouldn't you

The payback of which will ' kick in ' in a few months time , why do you think Wakey are everybodies favourites to drop despite out perorming Cas in recent years


[size=50That should warm things up around here[/size

I think some people view the RFL as incompetent and wonder how they can police the salary cap while being so lacklustre in other areas.
Some of the 'money men' in the sport are beyond the pale but are seemingly encouraged ; some are bankrupt one minute and club chairmen the next - while some take a club into administration and begin as 'new' owners.
The most galling of all is that genuine coaches and players suffer.
John Dixon did not recruit for Super League allegedly because Leighton Samuels had lost interest.Near the end of the season the 'brains department' from the RFL were sent in to assist with 'cashflow problems and seek new investment'.This assistance now turns out to be the selling of the club to money men apparently disliked by those at Wrexham FC and who themselves are such intelligent business people that they failed to do due diligence,allegedly,and faced a winding-up order.
Can it be true that the RFL are owed £700k for such professionalism ?
Probably best it's not transparent and we'll leave all the rich,honest business people in the country,and from abroad,to busy themselves in the private boxes of soccer and cricket grounds while rugby league coughs and splutters from crisis to crisis.

I am amazed, you'd have thought that someone with such an interest in proving / disproving assertions would have found it very useful.

Transparency is not the word we are looking for cru but honesty and fairness

I'm sure other fans of championship clubs like my self can see that licensing is great for the sport.

Applied fairly and honesty, the criteria can only improve SL. That hasn't happened and SL hasn't been improved. Any clubs being rejected for SL should then be allowed to work closely with the RFL in order to improve. This can then only improve standards within the championship. Again this hasn't happened. One championship club will get the nod for SL having worked with the RFL and they have made no improvements to the championship. So even the inadvertant knock on effect hasn't happened.

Without honesty and fairness embarrassing situations like the one we find with your plastic club will continue. The good name of RL will continue to be sullied and people will continue to turn their back on the sport. Even you must be abe to see that past your blinkers!??

Licensing is a great idea and wonderful opportunity to improve our sport missed due to people having ulterior motives

And still we wait for said article 24 hours or so after the original post referring to a salary cap breach. Google really is a lot more complicated than we originally thought.

This kind of backs up what was said in my original few posts. People make up their own 'facts' and treat them as gospel.

The bit that confuses me is people seem to think they know for definite what the RFL are doing and Quins, Catalans and Crusaders are their blue eyed boys and in no matter what. This could well be the case but why, if you are so certain, do you need to be told it by the organisation? If I go out for a walk and my head gets wet from drops of water it doesn't mean I need to run home to check the weather forecast to know that it's raining.

Why do we have a franchise system in SL ?

What happens if the heartland clubs remain and the game is played solely around the M62 corridor as some blinkered idiots on here think it should be?

My guess is Sky will soon get sick of it and let the game fall by the wayside in favour of the truly global and Britain wide union game. Inferior game but so much more for the business that is Sky in a commercial sense. That is a fact which is why the union game gets so much more from Sky and sponsors.

Like it or lump it rugby league needs to be truly global and Britain wide as soon as possible if it isn't going to die in the cold of union's shadow. This needs to happen and new areas need help because they are not traditional rugby areas, that is plain to see and is the way it has to be for the game to survive.

Does anybody think rugby league will survive if it remained being solely played in the M62 corridor with no expansion clubs and no Sky money as they want the expansion clubs.

Not really sure what we're getting at here.

My main point is that Sky want the game to be Britain and maybe Europe wide with regard to Super League. If Sky want that and we, the game, want Sky's money then we need to toe the line. It's as black and white as that really.

We can stay on the M62 corridor and retain the flat cap, ferret fancying stereotype that the game has or we can drag ourselves into the 21st century and look to compete with union as sooner or later that is what we have to do to survive.

Cru, where did I say was against expansion? Crafting this to suit your own needs eh? I'll make it simple for you welsh folk. Licensing - good if applied fairly. As it is now - embarrassing. Rugby Union needs to do nothing to destroy RL.

You're right about sky though. How well run is our sport if it relies on the whim of a tv company. No sky, no rugby league, someone's doing a great job eh?

Will rugby union disappear without sky? No. Is it better run? Sadly, yes

What do non SL clubs get from SKY ?

You seem to have written this post having read exactly none of my subsequent posts. The person who seems to be making up facts to suit an agenda is you.

The reference I cited was a Leighton Samuel interview published in League Express. As that is not available on the web that's the end of the matter.

I can probably google up half a dozen threads from the relevant time where people say that they have read the article and nobody says "What article?" but I'm sure that you wouldn't read it anyway.

What facts have I made up?

My whole point to the thread is the RFL would not achieve anything by being transparent.

So you tell me that LS did an interview that stated his players were employed in his factory whilst playing for Celtic Crusaders as amateurs but no news agency or website picked up on this? Strange.

Do you expect the mainstream media to give a **** about a salary cap breech made in a semi-professional league in a largely regional sport?

As I remember players were being paid as "development officers" (which obviously doesn't count against the cap) by Dekor plc whilst playing amateur rugby league in their free time. Totally against the rules.

Question for you, if at the next round of licences, Barrow get a licence over Celtic. Would you want to know why? Or would you just accept it?

Very good point

RFL officials, including Richard Lewis, have suggested that the inclusion of the Celtic Crusaders was put in place, in part, to please Sky. It has been suggested by them, and people on these boards, that Super League wouldn’t have been expanded to 14 clubs without the Celtic Crusaders or the Welsh Crusaders as they are now known. I believe this to be true.

This was an opportunity for the RFL to do the right thing and explain to the RL community that this is a positive thing. As well as giving a new club in an expansion area a chance, it also frees up another place for a heartland Championship club. Therefore, they should simply have said that the Celtic Crusaders will be in SL and do not need to enter the bid process. Their presence gives another club a chance anyway, due to the SL being expanded from 12 to 14 clubs.

Instead the RFL have tried to put forward the notion that the Celtic Crusaders were actually one of the best 14 clubs. This is clearly nonsense. The effort and finance put into making it appear so is what has caused many of the problems surrounding this new club. The lies and cloak and dagger nonsense, which has resulted from the Celtic Crusaders/Crusaders lumbering from one disaster to another, has resulted in a deep-seated mistrust of the RFL by many Rugby League fans. I have no doubt that some of the criticism of the Crusaders is unjustified, but I believe it has come about due to the RFL’s cack-handed and dishonest approach to the inclusion of a Welsh club in Super League.

I think honesty would have been the best policy. It worked with the inclusion of Les Catalans. There was even more of a reason to be honest with the inclusion of the Celtic Crusaders. So many of the problems the Celtic Crusaders have had, and almost all of the anti - Celtic Crusaders feeling, could have been avoided.

The moment the RFL decided to tell us that this was one of the best 14 clubs in Britain, they made a rod for their own back.

Great post. I agree.

Spot on.

If Crusaders really are worth extra funding from Sky then the RFL should come out and say so. They should also drop the pretense that this was one of the top 14 bids.

No they haven't. They were 'put forward' as one of the 14 best applications for the last round of SL franchises. There is a fairly significant difference.