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.

Utter bollox

Please explain?

There was no pretence. The RFL were the sole arbiters of the quality of the bids they received, so the 14 best applications were whichever they said they were.

I like this quote. Sums up a lot of your contributions TBH.

No, they weren't. There was the small matter of criteria.

Because of the various criteria used and the subjective factor involved, the 14 best bids in the opinion of the RFL were not limited to what a fan might consider to be the 14 best clubs. They were the 14 bids that in the opinion of the RFL satisfied best the criteria that the RFL were using to judge fitness to join (and value to) SL.

It also sums up your post , no point in wasting my fingerprints on it

More utter bollox

There was a fair amount of subjectivity built into the criteria themselves and the process used to judge them. It was never the simple points-based process that SKY outlined and many fans seem to have believed.

Which fits in exactly with what I have said.

They are saying that the Celtic Crusaders were one of the best applications, and therefore better than the clubs rejected, therefore one of the best 14 clubs in Britain.

There was no need to do this. It has caused them and the club no end of problems trying to live up to it.

And yet you continue to do so.

What nonsense. If they are in the top league composed of clubs selected solely against criteria that judge how good a club is run then that puts them in the top 14 in the competition.

What brainwashing is going on!

Perhaps you are suggesting, kosh, that crusaders aren't amongst the top 14 clubs in the country? How the hell can they improve SL by being there if they are not ready?

Are you starting to see where the problems are?