Not sure you can entirely blame the RFL for not knowing how many clubs will make it to the starting line for next season - all the clubs in the promotion/relegation zones can do is try to finish as high as possible and hope for the best.

Midi-Olympique is reporting that there'll be a meeting with an RFL delegation in Toulouse, on 1st August to determine whether or not T.O will take part in next year's championship - with the paper saying that the final decision is up to the RFL, not the French.

If the RFL is not having to stump up best part of £1 million per year on Crusaders players wages & Toulouse travel, it might be that they can then afford to fund (for example) Coventry & Hemel to step up a little sooner to provide more C1 clubs.

Care to divulge?

Pointless post , go away

None of us here really know what went on with those 6 or 8 applicants t'other month, if anyone does know care to pass the info on?
Toulouse should go back, period. The money saved could be handed out maybe as two £100,000 grants to clubs looking to step up. But the RFL dont know what will happen with Cru (as moss and roberts have jumped on a plane to get out of here) and toulouse as well as any other promotions/mergers/bankruptcys

Your Nigel Wood and i claim my £5

Excellent , so ignore them , find a stadium , sort out a coach and general manager , tip in £ 150 K a year and set up a Championship 1 club in north wales

Well they should have decided by now what is going to happen

Championship clubs will be starting to attempt to sell season tickets in a few weeks , without having a clue how many matches they will be playing or who against

True on that last point.
I don't know, there's a lot of factors, it probably should have been sorted by now but then they probably epected to have the TV deal signed sealed and delivered. You say it's of no relevance but even a small grant per club would make a difference.
Secondly the club chairmen are probably in better contact and more in the know than us

That is all you had to say.

Ahh but this didn't start as a 'why arent the fixtures out' thread now did it. It started as a general discussion about the future of the Chps. If you wanted to talk directly 'why arent the fixtures out' go ask the RFL via email

Because it is rather obvious why the fixtures aren't out , but it's why we are in this situation which is the problem

I did say major sports! As for football, its not even remotely the same and you know it. There are certain minimum requirements, mainly relating to the stadium. It is a very rare case that teams move divisions because of them, something called relegation or promotion happens based on results on the pitch. There is not the same level dogma about improving standards etc. etc. (which ironically the RFL seem to ignore with more than one club completely failing to meet their promises and undertakings from the last franchise round) - the basic premise is that if you're team is good enough you go up.

You know it, I know it, why not admit it?

We need to be certain of one thing here, The championship is a dying competition.

Now you can point the finger at the clubs down here all you want but a large part of the blame lies directly with the rfl, As a competition there feels like there is nothing to play for anymore. For the first time in years i have missed Widnes matches for no reason whatsoever, I was stood on the terraces at Canal street in the 90's watching us play in front of 1500 people against Leigh while getting murdered by everyone, But it felt like it mattered. I was there when we got beat by Cas at Headingly and it hurt like crazy, before these last couple of years every defeat hurt like crazy. Now, i dont care, Winning does not matter, and when we go to SL it wont matter. Were here to massage the egos of the men at red hall and try to protect the few lucky teams who were in the right place at the right time. As a club Widnes will have to tow the party line or lose out, franchising is, and always will be a farce. A blind man could see that the crusaders has been a poorly handled joke from start to end culminating in tuesdays farce, And yet again the RFL are in a large part to blame. How does a club win a franchise and they fail so miserably in nearly every way if the franchise system is anything but a sham?

How can a club like fax be expected to compete for a franchise against a sl club, fax who will have a largely part time staff are expected to put together a bid to compete with other clubs who will have a full time team working on it with far more finances to spend making it a waterproof bid. Widnes managed it thanks to a rich owner, Without that you have no chance.

The championship is a league with very few games, With large patches of inactivity through the season. Merge the leagues ffs, Make the northern rail a straight knock out comp. Give the clubs down here regular games with multiple local derbies, Make the competition worth winning. Stop sky from bleating about every important game as a tick in a bleeding box, to you me and the fan at home it devalues every competition our teams play in.

Give the clubs a set goal, Achieve this and you are in SL.

Get a crowd average of 3,000
Have a stadium of 14,000 with 5,000 seats
have a turn over of £1.5M
Set up and run an academy
Stay in the black.


Achieve this and you will be given a chance at SL, Garunteed. Not many would make it, but at least its there, the carrot is dangled and its up to each club to make the grade. This would result in a stronger competiton across the board. So SL might have to expand as clubs become strong enough to get in, maybe. But as it is, games in the championship mean nothing.

Lastly, When in SL. If you enter Administration you should be expelled. You have clearly failed to do what your bid said you would, on those grounds you can no longer be trusted to deliver on any part of your franchise promises and should start again at the bottom.

People may mock this post, or disagree with everything i have put here. but the game bellow SL is dying, As a sport we cant afford to lose one more club, never mind another 19.

I agree with much of what you say only the tax loophole closures no one forsaw and it is the real reason the administration carrot was taken away. If Leeds lose the test case there'll be many more going the same way.
Its alright saying nothing on the pitch mattered but its not true. Leigh just moaned for three years and when the applications went in, one of the best Chp clubs wasnt handing one in

The RFL seem to think SL needs help with ticket sales, by the way they keep advertiseing in our programs for the 4 Nations- SL Grand finals. It's time lower leagues took back control of the RFL. As long as the carrot of the imaginary SL place is there it will never happen though.

Naked Cheerleaders.

The thing is it seems a bit unfair to make championship club try and achieve things that some SL clubs dont seem to be able to.

There should defnatley be a minimum criteri for SL teams introduced, like hvaing to have 5K average attendances etc etc, but for obvious reasons they cant do that.

Outside of European football there are very few sports in the world who use a straight up and down P+R system, throughout the world you will find more systems closer to franchising than P+R, there is a reason for that.

Indeed there is, the reason being that their sporting culture is completely different to that in the UK, mainly because the sheer size of most other countries means there isn't the same community feel or local rivalry etc as there is in the UK.

'local' is relative, many sports have 'local' rivalries and exist in a franchised sport. In fact i have no idea what your link between locality and franchises is? Leeds is no further from Wakefield because of franchising.

I've only ready a few of the posts saying that the clubs hold some responsiblity in why the attendances have gone down.

I try and get as many of my mates to attend RL games to try and help attendances and give the club money.

In 2009 me and a group of 8 other friends attended the majority of Barrows home fixtures in that season.

In 2010 me and 5 other friends attended the majoirty of the home games that season. All 8 mates attended the first half of that season.

Now in 2011 me and 2 other friends attend the majority of Barrows home games.

I asked my friends what was the reason was for not attending games any more, one of them said " There is no point in attending games anymore, we are just going to be playing the same teams every year."

Another said "We've been to Warrington and Blackpool, had a big home game in the challenge cup and we have won away at an SL team in the challenge cup what is there to look forward to"

I couldn't think of anything else to say to try and persuade them to come watch.

Every single person who did attend the RL games now watches the local soccer team.

This thread isn't about franchising in SL or the wrongs or rights of it , it is about the lack of thought ,care and attention shown to the Championship competitions and the clubs in them

We should not have to wait to see what happens in SL , to have the structure of our competitions decided

It shows a lack of respect to those clubs , their owners , players and fans

That lack of respect will show in the lack of interest from fans , sponsors and owners if it continues

I don't know whether it's down to franchising, negligence, or just my particular clubs fortune over the past few years but I am quickly loosing interest in rugby league at this level.

The running of Championship 1 is a shambles with large gaps in between home fixtures and there no longer seems to be any big matches during the regular season, which offer a pay-off for supporters who have attended the less attractive games.

The fixture list and the teams are bland especially when you know your going to be stuck in a league with the same 10 or so sides for the foreseeable future.

Do not lose interest just yet. The Dons just moved into pole position for the 2nd promotion spot. You already have a great SL standard ground and are located in an expansion area in a decent sized town. Now IF YOU COULD GET SOME MONEY OR A SUGAR DADDY, who knows what your team could be in a few years.

Rugby Union-If Cornish Pirates or whatever they are called had won the end of season play offs they were not going into the top div due to the ground being substandard

There's a bit of a difference between operating a system of promotion/relegation where promotion is also dependent on certain off-field factors (which both the RFU & football do) and our system of licences (which is more akin to county cricket - a fairly random bunch of teams who happened to be at the top at a particular time have their top-flight status preserved for ever, with only occasional changes). Cornish Pirates are hosting the Cornwall v Devon RL county fixture, BTW.

Franchising is irrelevant to the point of this thread, though. The clubs in the championship and championship1 don't know whether there's going to be any promotion or relegation this year, how many clubs will be involved, what the format of next year's competition will be (one division or two, for example?) That's really not a very satisfactory situation. The C1 clubs, in particular, suffer from a poorly structured setup.