This season no Championship club will be replacing them , but they then will have the opportunity to replace somebody else in future seasons

IF they are big and good enough to do so?

There are no clubs in the championship big enough and good enough to replace Bradford or Les Catalans.

Pre Peter Deakin Bradford Northern were no great shakes either crowd wise or on the field. Crowds rose for a short time during Bullmania but with the success gone, so have the crowds. Wasn't it a SL record low for Bradford against the Broncos just recently? They have been steadily dropping over recent years leading up to this, except for a brief unsustained rise when ridiculously cheap STs were offered. A large proportion of the crowds that were pulled in during the early years of SL have not showed loyalty to the club during this lean period. Any club having a good spell can attract hangers on and glory hunters. I wouldn't be surprised if many of those Bullmania fans now watch Leeds as they win things.

As for history and prestige, it was for a period of 6 to 8 years that they were a leading club and that ended about ten years ago. (Prior to that they had not won the cup for about 50 years and the championship for about 20 years so other than those 6 to 8 years they were hardly building much prestige). Its the past and that's all it is now. Hunslet, Swinton and Oldham have plenty of fine and proud history, all three won cups and championships and had big crowds and famous teams and grounds. All that history and prestige hasn't kept them at the top table, nor is Bradford's history (which also contains an incident of them becoming defunct 50 years ago) a reason to keep them there. Success and failure goes in cycles every club has highs and lows over time, it's just that some clubs have less devastating lows and some have less glorious highs.

If Bradford were to spend a period outside the top tier then so be it. Some other club from the area would absorb their fan base and keep those people watching the sport. It won't happen instantly but it will happen, to say no club could replace Bradford is insulting to those clubs in the second tier. Halifax for example have had periods where they were successful in the past just like Bradford and spells in the doldrums just like Bradford. Their crowds won't leap overnight but given a period of competing in the top flight and chasing trophies then some of those hangers on would start to find their way to The Shay as all such hangers on want is a way to watch a top tier team. They could just as easily find their way to Huddersfield or Leeds. Then in ten years time you have that club again with 10k crowds but rather than at Odsal it is at The Shay or the John Smiths Stadium, or maybe Leeds will have to be shutting people out each week. Over time support will gravitate towards the bigger names, the better teams and the top flight, if after a decade or more Halifax and Huddersfield have been in the top league and Bradford haven't it will be Bradford that will be the small fish looking up. The loss of Bradford would be absorbed, that couldn't happen with London or Les Catalans.

Also in sport "big city" means nothing, York, Bristol, Coventry, Leicester are all big cities. With the notable exception of Leicester Tigers where are all of their clubs. Likewise how much good has being in a city helped Nottingham Forest, Leeds United, Bradford City (or Bradford Park Avenue) or the teams in prestigious old cities like Cambridge and Oxford. Being in a city is only of use if you have the ability to garner that support and to use that to push on. Bradford have been going backwards for a decade.

thats a pretty one sided view of Bradfords history, they may not have been as successful in the preceeding years as they were during Bullmania, but it would wrong to pretend they werent contesting for trophies at the top end.


As you mention Bradford had their lowest crowd in SL the other week. That crowd would have been average for Huddersfield and good for Halifax when they were in SL. What you have put simply isnt true, and even it were, The game would still be losing out. IF only one team can be successful in an area at any one time, the pretty simple answer is to only have one team in that area.

Well it did Leeds and Notts forrest a fair amount of good. There are 4 leagues titles, 3 FA cups, 5 Leagues Cups 2 European Cups (and another final that was decided by a series of disputed refereeing decisions, the referee never reffed again and was as bent as a 9bob note) and 2 Uefa cups (with another final being decided by a referee later banned for accepting bribes to influence decisions)

THats not a bad total.

Just taking this small piece of your mostly well reasoned post, that simply wont happen in any appreciable numbers IMHO. Last weekend I didn't notice any significant rise in attendances elsewhere to indicate the missing Bradford fans had gone elsewhere last weekend, or indeed over our gradual decline in attendance over the past few seasons I don't think there has been a correspinding rise in attendance at Halifax, Hudds or Leeds that isn't accounted for by other factors (cheap deals and success at Huds for example). Speaking purely personally as a season ticket holder since the 80's, if Bradford is in the lower leagues I'll watch them there, but my dad who I go with probably won't (he's getting a bit old to go whatever league tbh is what he's said anyway) - but he wont be going eleswhere. If the club ceased to exsit I would just watch RL on the BBC when it was on, and probably attend the odd international and final as a neutral. I would not be attending any other ground for a league match.

Didn't stop them being relegated

No it didnt, and what a strong argument against P+R those clubs are.

Forgive me for one moment...aren't clubs now meant to earn their position on the pitch rather than on the terraces or the accountants books. I am sure that is the point of P&R. A club with crowds like Bradford have the potential of drawing should as has been said have no problem assembling a team for SL. However they have not been run right and unfortunately have to pay the consequences. They may yet escape.

People ask what do London bring to SL, how about what will London bring to the Championship?

What about the other grounds that RFL own/have interests in?

They only need to cut down the tall poppys, the others are fine.

not really they fell below the standard required on the pitch and were rightly relegated

There really is no end to the rubbish you spout

Oh, there is and it's got a bell too!

Relegation absolutely destroyed them, Leeds certainly, and cost millions, one of the best academies in Europe was utterly destroyed, they had to sell the stadium, have been in 2 administrations, a possible third, a roughly 50% drop in crowds and over a decade later they have yet to even begin recovering never mind recover.

Relegation from the PL also worked well for Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield Utd, Leicester City, QPR, Portsmouth FC, Oldham, Southampton, Crystal Palace, Portsmouth again, Bradford, QPR again, Crystal Palace again, and Derby County.


If you are looking for a way to destroy a professional sports club, Relegation is the way to do it .

Prior to the inception of SL and the Bullmania era the last title for Bradford had come in 1980-81.Their second in a row. Following that they finished 5th,9th,7th,8th,12th,7th,4th,8th,4th,7th,11th,3rd,2nd,7th and 7th. Largely mid table during that time, of the occasions when they did make top four they were 10 points or more behind the champions so hardly contending, just better than the rest. The only exception was 1993-94 when they and Warrington ran us very close for the title. They also finished near to the relegation places twice. So it would be wrong to pretend they were contesting for trophies at the top end as other than in 93-94 they weren't contending. They have had darker times than that period but they were largely run of the mill at that time.



Huddersfield and Halifax were both in SL alongside Bradford and other West Yorkshire clubs. Huddersfield's crowds are still quite low but they are improving and came from a very, very low point after decades in the doldrums. Halifax when in SL were competing with SL Bradford, who were very successful at the time, for floating fans. Those floating fans would have gone to the spectacle of Bullmania and to watch a team competing in finals (as the Bulls were then). Somebody moves to Leeds and has seen SL on tv, they are new to the sport and fancy going to watch some games, do they go to multi trophy winning Leeds or do they go to Hunslet? They will almost without exception turn up at Headingley in a Rhinos shirt. That same new potential fan if moving to the Bradford area with a choice of SL Huddersfield, SL Leeds, SL Halifax or Championship Bradford won't be likely to pick Odsal. It does happen and has happened when one club drops far enough down the ladder. It is part of the reason we don't still have clubs in the likes of Liversedge and Tyldesley and why we have some clubs in one geographical area at the top and some in the same area at the bottom. At some point in the dim and distant past another (at that time) more successful club in the area took the now weaker club's potential fan base away and one club grew while other clubs shrank and fell away. The same will happen in the future to some clubs we currently think of as big clubs, we just may not live long enough to see it happen.



Ipswich and Derby won trophies in the 70s too do you want to include them? What about Bramley and Dewsbury from our sport? They won things in the 70s too. When was the last time either Forest or Leeds won a major trophy? If not pre Premier League it was in the early days of the PL. Where are those two clubs now? Where are the Bristol clubs? The Cambridge and Oxford clubs? Where are York City (or the York City Knights)? How many league titles and European Cups have they won? My point was that being a city club does not mean you will win trophies or sit in the top tier nor does being a team from a small town preclude you from that. I was just making a point in response to Pinkerton's statement that there were no big city clubs in the Championship to replace the Bulls with.

I think I mentioned it in my earlier post but this process won't happen overnight, it never does so no one would expect a crowd that watched the Bulls to suddenly en masse defect to watch another team all of a sudden. Some would but the majority would not switch so readily. The process is more a shifting of the demographic for potential Bulls attendees over time to becoming attendees at another, more successful local rival. Some will be the very same people but others that start turning up at for example Huddersfield will be people who decide to take up watching live RL who would previously have opted for the Bulls (when they were at their peak) but with Bradford on the wane and Huddersfield contesting for trophies will now go to watch the Giants instead. The recent success you mention for Huddersfield will be the very thing that sways them. If current trends in competitiveness continue then over time people who would have (10 years ago) watched the Bulls will instead watch the Giants and the Giants crowds would rise while the Bulls ones fell. The impact is made not by people like yourself who have a long standing affinity for your club (I have similar feelings in regard to my own club) and will go regardless but by the people new to the area or not yet born who look to the big trophy winners when choosing a team. In all likelihood the Bulls would have to be out of SL for quite a few years (or stuck at its lower end for a long time while rivals shared out the trophies) for it to have a major or lasting effect.

Other than periods of dominance, even the best clubs will be mostly mid-table.

It would be like arguing that Wigan were a struggling club between 2004 and 209. They didnt win anything, and were a step behind the leaders. It would be wrong the argue they were a small club or struggling during that time.



It’s a huge assumption that a large proportion of BRadfords fans would have simply switched allegiances to Halifax of Huddersfield, especially considering that even now, when Hudds are the minor premiers, Bradford have spend the best part of a decade as a middling SL side, have had some horror seasons, been in admin twice and are struggling to get out of it now, even under this set of circumstances, Bradfords attendances are still roughly the same as Hudds, and neither are close to bullmania levels.
The reason that most fans in Leeds go support the Rhinos and not hunslet isn’t simply because Leeds are more successful than Hunslet, its that three-quarters of a million people live in Leeds and would identify themselves as people who live in Leeds and the team which represents them is the one which bears the name of the city they live in. Most people, even those who live in Hunslet, would say they live in Leeds.

Even if we swapped the last twenty years of Hunslet and Leeds, hunslet would not be attracting 5 figure crowds, it is a small area in a much much bigger urban area and is no more likely to be able to support a pro RL club than Middleton or Rothwell.

You can include Derby and Ipswich if you want. Leeds won the league in 1992, they appeared in the League cup Final in 1996, they appeared in the Uefa cup semi-final in 199 and the champions league semi-final in 2001.

Being a city club doesnt mean that you will win trophies. The reason for that is that we have few trophies and many cities. However big clubs are City sides. Barring London which is a collection of cities in a large area , all our big sporting sides are city sides, in pretty much all our sports. The only exception, which isn’t a great one, is Aston Villa who are based pretty much smack bang in the centre of Birmingham.

lol, Please please stop talking rubbish. Many of my friends are Leeds united ST holders, I worked in leeds for years. Absolutely none of them would blame being relegated for their current plight.

Basically your saying that Leeds although overspending by millions and having crippling debt shouldn't have been relegated. lol Overspending was Leeds problem, chasing the dream. They had to off load their best players they had overspent on. They eventually went in to administration in the championship but would have in the premier league anyway.

Leeds academy was destroyed because they couldn't afford it properly in the first place along massive wages they were paying certain average players

Leeds were badly managed, but I suppose just like Widnes you think over spending and then going into admin, putting lots of small business' at risk is ok.

had the premier league had a licensing system with no relegation Leeds would have been relying on prem handouts or booted out


ffs dont even try and say being relegated was the reason for Leeds downfall, try and look at the reasons they went from champ league semi finalists to prem bottom 3 in the first place.

Had the PL have a franchise system in place Leeds would have been able to offload their players for their true value instead of a fire sale which meant that many were unavoidably offloaded on the cheap, they would have had more income from TV, supporters and sponsors, they would have had guaranteed income and been able to restructure their debts and would have in fact paid off more of those debts to small businesses you so clearly want to see out of pocket.

There was no small business or supplier who got paid more because Leeds were relegated, all of them got less because of it, and the same goes for the multitude of other clubs who did the same.

Bad management was the cause of Leeds problems, those problems were massively exacerbated by relegation, only a moron could possibly think otherwise, especially when there are so many examples of clubs being relegated then going in to admin

they went into admin because they had no money they were in debt, smaller business wouldn't have got a larger cut of feck all if they were in the prem.

Rio Ferdinand didn't go to Man united on the cheap. Players didn't go on the cheap they went for less than the overpriced fees Leeds had paid for them while chasing the dream. Also letting some player go on the cheap was the only option because the players refused to move on and drop their wages. Leeds continued to pay part wages of some players they offloaded because they were on such ridiculous wages no other team would pay them the same.

Leeds united were paying more than half Jacob burns wages at Barnsley, Jacob Burns ffs lol

Franchise would not have stopped any of the above, Leeds never believed they would be relegated anyway

Leeds didn’t go in to administration in the premiership. The money owed would have had to be paid, so why wouldn’t it have been? BTW, you dont go into admin because you have debt, you go in to admin because you dont have the cash to service them.


And they had to do those things because their income was dropping because they were going to be relegated. All debts could and would be restructured around guaranteed income. Those debts would have been paid off had leeds had the guaranteed income to pay them. Relegation and the uncertainty of it caused the cashflow issues, which caused the firesale.

Now it may be convenient here for you to pretend Leeds didnt sell players on the cheap, history shows you are wrong, they sold Woodgate for £8m, less than a year later he was sold for £14m, Paul Robinson went as an England international for £1.5m, 4 years later after a drastic slip in form, he was sold for £3.5m, Robbie Keane went for £7m, Was sold for £20m, Liverpool agreed a £9m fee for Bowyer, he ended up going on a free transfer, Milner cost Leeds nothing, went for £5m, was sold for £12m, Aaron Lennon went for just £1m,

It is nigh on the most idiotic thing i have seen yet on these boards, and this is a board Starbug, Gutterfax and William Eve post on, to argue that the huge loss of revenue caused by relegation was not a major contributing factor in Leeds financial issues.

Leave me out of your almighty thread drift.......

I never said they were small or struggling, I said they were no great shakes, they weren't great at that time. You said I had been misleading to say they were not contending at the top end during that period. They were not competing at the top end with the exception of one season. They were then as Wigan were between 2004 and 2009 a middling team in the top flight. We tended to make a late run each year at that time to make our season look better than it really was. During those years our crowds were suffering but actually went up when we were fighting the drop in 2006 and have tended to increase since then (success helps). We were in a period much like the Bulls are now where we had been and still were trying to spend money we didn't really have to buy back former success. We will probably never know whether we were in quite as bad a state financially as the Bulls are now (we had certainly been in a bad state when we sold CP a few years previously). Under new ownership (Lenegan) we stabilised and have so far prospered. Hopefully the Bulls will be able to do the same.



But Huddersfield's attendances are going up and Bradford's are going down. As I said in a reply to another poster it is not an overnight phenomenon and to have a lasting and major effect on Bradford's crowds they would probably have to suffer a long period of decline probably outside the top flight with other local clubs enjoying much more success when compared with the Bulls. Leeds have probably had more of an effect than Huddersfield to date. It is not the hardcore that defect but those potential or future fans who would have chosen a successful Bulls when looking at who to support but would not select a moribund one over a local rival that is performing better at that time. It is their choices that shape on-going support levels.



But how many people live in Arsenal? That is a club that has a massive following yet no-one if asked is likely to say they live in Arsenal. So why do they identify with the club, why do they follow it? Do all Man Utd fans live in Manchester? No, many like a lot of sports fans follow success and that is what initially attracts.

Swapping the histories of Hunslet and Leeds and whether that would reverse their crowds is always going to be the sort of thing people will debate over and there is no way to categorically prove or disprove it. Whether or not 17000 would be turning up at Hunslet games you may dispute but I doubt you will be able to convince many that 17000 would be turning up at Headingley for the visit of The All Golds or the Skolars in Championship 1.



In the global behemoth that is soccer that may be true but Wigan and St Helens aren't cities, the two most successful clubs in our sport are both town teams. There may be a tendency to think that to grow big you need to be in a city but that doesn't always ring true particularly not in our sport. There is no need for any team gaining promotion to SL to be in a city. A city club can just as easily be a basket case as a success, we seem to have two of those at present.

If Bradford or Catalans are relegated this season there are no Championships clubs replacing them anyway, so what are you blubbering on about?

I wonder how Leeds Tykes/Carnegie would have faired under a licensed rather than a P&R system.

In football the decline or even loss of 2 or 3 clubs doesn't actually matter that much.

But it is still misleading because the same is the case for every team.

Hudds arent getting anywhere near though. Now you can say that at some undefined time in the future Hudds might grow some more. That doesnt prove your point. It simply adds evidence it was incorrect by admitting there is no statistical correlation.

And to a point you are right, if you are the only club in your market you have a large potential market. But thats no argument to say that what Hudds gain is what Bradford lose, or that Bradford have taken halifax's market. There are some places which intrinsically have a higher potential.


Well Arsenal isnt a place so not many people do live in Arsenal. If they do avoid them



Man Utd's overseas success is buil massively on the work they did to build it. That investment was built on the fact they were a big club to start with, largely built on the fact they had a large catchement area. Where is the alternative? Where is the evidence of what you are arguing? A club which isnt built on the fact it has a huge catchement area that a city provides?


You would still get more than you would at Hunslet.
Both of those are in a major urban conurbation. Wigan is in the greater manchester area, and St Helens in the Liverpool conurbation. And they are only big compared to small town clubs. Leeds commercially are far superior to both clubs. Part of that is that they have some fantastically skilled people who work hard and achieve success, but part of it is also that they are a big city, with a big catchement area, where big companies can advertise to large numbers of people.

It is only in the context that most of our clubs are pretty parochial, in pretty small towns, that St's and Wigan are big clubs, and to do that they still need to rely on the fact they are in much larger conurbations.

Any club can just as easily be a basket case as a success, in our game, at their own time, most clubs have been both. But to grow big, you do need be in a big city, because they game should constantly be growing. It isnt about today or tomorrow but 5-10-15-20 years time.

if the game is run well, and becomes a success, and we start adding 10% crowd growth a year, then in 5 years Wigan and Leeds are getting 20k+ crowds, Saints, Wire, Hull are knocking on the door, in 10 years we are looking at 30k+ crowds at those places. Thats 10% growth year on year, a tough target and one we probably wont meet but not beyond the realms of possibilty. There is simply no way these small towns compete with that. Not even close. There simply isnt 30k people in featherstone, never mind 30k fans for them to go at, there probably isnt 8k, or 10k for them. If RL is to be successful and sustainable it will be based around City clubs, because thats where the money is and thats where the people are.