However, if relegation was a risk, who's to say we wouldn't have simply copped the 10k fine and kept the two league points that would have kept us off the bottom?


Besides, the post below is the perfect factual response to the title of his thread...

feel free to post links to the previous times Londons SL team has been financially bailed out from central funds.

Good Luck for 2014...

Interesting that Widnes didn't get all this attention and trolling when they finished bottom last season...

So doing nothing is a reward? Presumably, then, the only acceptable action is some form of punishment. I'm guessing you're a Daily Mail reader.

And when I don't pick you up on your frequent failure to correctly spell common words like "you're" and "their", you feel you're (that's the one to use there - as is 'there' there, by the way) being rewarded? Bizarre.


Really? And how many of those examples you give involve promoting a club from a part-time competition into its fully funded full-time top flight?


As I said originally, licences are awarded on the basis of a club's performance over a three year period. So, let's try again: Entry to Super League is currently based on a system with a three year cycle. Can you tell me what percentage of the three year licence reviews held so far have resulted in no clubs being elevated into Super League?

My sincere apologies, that's what happens when you use Smart phones these days........paper don't tend to read them since they are full rubbish half the time.

You clearly enjoy franchising which is fine but does take away the competitive edge you surely have to agree and if sky monies was fairly distributed don't you think it would make for a better rugby league all round or do you just see it that the chosen few should benefit.

It's only because you at Salford have a new owner with money who wants to improve your club and get them back to the top. It'll be like this for any team and I wish us at Cas would have someone with plenty of money come in and help us ( too much to ask ? ) !!!!

It's not that I 'enjoy' franchising, just that I accept that for the time being, given the massive disparity between the full-time clubs and the part-time ones, it's the best system we have. It elevates clubs into the full-time competition based on an analysis of the club as a whole over a suitable period. This, in turn, allows clubs to plan over a three year period rather than just live year to year. This doesn't make it a closed shop though, does it? To answer the question you won't answer, there have been [ino[/i occasions when the three yearly licence review has led to the maintaining of the status quo. Not one. That's a strange 'closed shop' isn't it?

However, ideally, yes, the money should be spread more evenly throughout the game, the gap shouldn't be so great and there should be automatic P&R, but the sport doesn't have sufficient funds to do that. If we spread the relatively meagre Sky money more evenly, how many clubs would still be able to spend up to the full salary cap? And when clubs can't afford to pay top players what those players (or their agents) perceive to be the 'going rate', we run the risk of losing them to the wealthier NRL or RU.

That right there is the problem. Rugby League doesn't exist in isolation and, perhaps uniquely amongst sports, faces stiff competition for its primary resource - its players - from a more cashed up rival sport and from an equally more cashed up rival competition within the same sport.

And sitting beneath that is the primary problem: we don't have enough money (and yet, bizarrely, when someone with money [idoes[/i come into the sport, he gets criticised by fans of other clubs). That problem needs to be solved before we bring back P&R. Unfortunately, the clubs or the governing body or whoever made this ridiculous decision has decided to ignore that particular elephant in the room and, instead, concentrate on bringing in a system that drops a full-time club into a part-time competition with the associated massive reduction in funding and the inevitable complete restructure of the staff, while, on the other tapered end of this particular turd, elevating a part-time club into a full-time competition where it can, in all likelihood, flounder for a year and present a guaranteed four points to each of the other clubs in that competition (six to the one that meets them in the Magic Weekend) before dropping back down again, laden, no doubt, with a big bunch of debt. And this will all be based on the performance of just one aspect of the clubs involved - their playing squads (and only the first team squad, at that) - over a period of just one year. Just what is the fecking point of that?

[iCapisce[/i?

I accept and agree a large proportion of what you have written but lets just look at the championship on the last day of the season this year...York were relegated leaving Keighley, Swinton, Barrow and Hunslet going into the last match of the season fighting for retention of their ( see their not there) status as a championship club.

It brought a meaning to very game leading up to that weekends fixtures which you have to agree is completely lacking in Super league ( I hate that title..no reference to Rugby league at all) in fairness once clubs like Salford Castleford and London were knocked out of the Challenge cup what meaning did their season have.

I firmly believe that in all sincerity Rugby League is unsustainable as a full time sport which unless as you point out you get a benefactor who is prepared to splash the cash, once that happens you instantly get a two tier competition similar to what there is now.

Perhaps automatic promotion and relegation may not be best but to deny a club like Featherstone the chance asking them to wait potentially three years before being accepted is also very unfair, anything can happen in that three year window so which season do you choose as the one which grants them the chance. You say I am avoiding the question and to a degree I am since without looking the answer up I can't answer how many teams have been uplifted on each cycle but again I ask you how many have been dropped back down.?

Did you have this view last season when there was no relegation from the championship?

Yes absolutely and had Swinton finished the season in the bottom two I would still have the same view.

Well done on the spelling. Smart phones have this amazing ability to spell better when the mistakes are pointed out to their operators.

To business: You're focusing on one particular year when the relegation battle went on to the final day of the season. How often is relegation decided weeks before the end of the season, and how often is it decided by results elsewhere? Had there been relegation from SL last season, Widnes would have been down with weeks remaining. No last day relegation battle. No finger nail biting series of matches with the outcome depending on so many factors. Nothing. They'd have just quietly dropped off the perch. Where were these 'meaningful games' you seek then? That's what happens when one team is considerably weaker than all the others. And yet that's what you're advocating: a system where the top division has one uncompetitive club and where the only way to avoid the inevitable is for that club to spend more than it's got in a bid to stave off the drop. That just doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

(Incidentally, on the subject of 'meaningful games', it always seems to be the fans of clubs not involved in those games who have an opinion on whether they're meaningful or not. Salford's performance in the meaningless game against Hull a couple of weeks ago was one of the best we've seen this season, in a game where the result was determined by a try to Hull in the last minute. It seemed pretty meaningful to everyone involved, so who are you to say it wasn't?)


Are you advocating going back to part-time then? Jeez. Bye bye Tomkins, Bye bye Chase, Bye bye O'Loughlin, Charnley, Hall, Watkins.... Bye bye chances of ever beating Australia.

We have enough funds to sustain a limited number of full-time clubs. We need to be looking to increase funding so more clubs can become full-time, not regressing to some "straight aht o' t' pit an' straight in t' team" rose-tinted part-time past, surely.

If not (and surely you aren't) then we're stuck with the two tier competition. P&R won't bridge that divide.


Under franchising, clubs aren't judged on one season, so there's no season to choose. They're judged on the three year period as a whole. Featherstone have, this season, ticked one of the boxes that was required for them to be considered for elevation and they aren't being denied anything. What you appear to want, though, is for Featherstone (or whoever finishes top of the Championship) to be elevated from a part-time competition to a full-time one on the basis of one solitary season, and on one solitary aspect of that club: its playing squad. And it's [ithe club[/i that gets promoted, remember, not the squad (in fact, it's often the case that the majority of the playing squad gets left behind). So why shouldn't access to SL be based on the [iclub's[/i performance rather than the squad's?

It's also worth noting that you - in keeping with all advocates of P&R - see the P but not the R. You claim it's unfair to deny Featherstone promotion. No mention of the relegated team. What happens to them? What happens to a club that has a full-time set up but which has, on the basis of one poor season (or in Salford's case, on the basis of accidentally having an extra player on the field for 20 seconds or so) has to make umpteen people redundant so it can restructure to a part-time operation, only to reverse that entire process nine months later because they're promoted again into the full-time competition, but in a much weakened state. Where is your sense of fairness there?

Clearly you have your view and I mine, what you have overlooked either through ignorance or a lack of vision from anything other than SL is that Featherstone have finished top of the pile for three years on the bounce so really you would expect them to be rewarded wouldn't you agree.?

and who says they will not...
However, whereas Featherstone has done well and the club certainly deserves a chance in SL, you fail to take into account the costs of being in SL and the effects it has had on the other two clubs in that borough.

Lastly, Leigh IMO were ruined by their "season in the sun"

I accept what you say but by the same token teams who have fallen foul in terms of financial distress whilst in SL have remained making a complete farce of the franchise system.
Bradford spring to mind along with Wakefield and Salford who let's not forget till Koucash came along borrowed to the hilt to retain SL status.
Who's to say Featherstone or Leigh for that matter wouldn't have been better candidates.

I know lots of Salford fans who have an obsession with our club, it is good to see fans of other clubs are becoming equally obsessive....lol

He's a Swinton fan you dizzy get. And stop quoting him, some of us are trying to avoid the two-faced numpty. (Jesus, I sounded like MR there, get help!

)

As for this thread, how embarrassing and utterly pathetic. The reaction from some opposition fans to the whole takeover, including mates who have show sympathetic tendencies towards Salford in the past, has been utterly laughable.

How are they not being rewarded? Aren't they being recognised as champions? If promotion is the only reward you recognise, then there's no reward for finishing top of SL, nor for winning the Grand Final. A bit ridiculous wouldn't you agree?

And while having a squad of players capable of finishing top of a part-time competition is a [inecessary[/i condition for elevation of [ithe club as a whole[/i to a full-time competition, by no means is it [isufficient[/i, as evidence from the pre-franchise past shows.

As for lack of vision or ignorance, I notice that, once again Marshy, you're all P and no R. What about the relegated club?

Did you ask to join my gang



Can't someone just kick him off? we pay our taxes and should therefore be allowed one blatant act of hatred to due our collective suffering from porcinaphobia.

I don't so much find if laughable but pitiful that these numpties can't go on their own forums and start discussions, think in some cases it's because it's difficult to have a conversation with someone else when your the only contributing fan.

Some clubs - including Salford - have struggled financially during the franchise period, but they remained in SL because they had a three year licence that allowed them to do so. The point I keep stressing - and which you seem to have trouble understanding - is that it's a [ithree year licence[/i. There is no reason to relegate a club if, during that period, that club has financial difficulties, as long as the club survives. It may give up its licence, or it may be asked to give it up if the difficulties persist, but as long as it comes out of those difficulties, there's no reason to relegate. However, those struggles inform the next licence review. I see no "farce" here. It seems to be working how it's meant to.

Now the irony is that, as we stand and with the next licence review less than twelve months away (had we stuck with franchising) there are two SL clubs in a pretty parlous state (London and Wakefield) and at least one candidate - probably more - with a good chance of replacing them. The elevated club(s) would be given three years to gain a foothold in SL, and would know well in advance that they were heading there, thus giving them sufficient time to adapt to the requirements of a full-time competition. Instead, we're spiralling out of control into a situation where a club will come out of the part-time competition with little time to prepare, spend a year in the full-time competition taking half to two thirds of that season getting up to speed - by which time it's too late - before dropping back down again. There's no incredible relegation battles in this scenario Marshy (one of the things P&R fans seem to think will happen). It's all over by the back end of July.

And then, of course, there's the relegated club: the club that doesn't appear to exist in the eyes of P&R fans. What happens to them?

Sorry just picked up on the unbelievable hypocrtical comment ..
Huddersfield
SL 1998 Huddersfield 12th - Wooden Spoon .... not relegated
SL 1999 Huddersfield 14th - Wooden Spoon . ....not Relegated
SL 2000 Huddersfield 12th -Wooden Spoon ...... Not Relegated
SL 2001 Huddersfield 12th - Wooden Spoon ....... not Relegated.

If only they practiced what they preached.

Can I have permission to talk about the concepts of P&R vs franchising with him? Not much happens on the Swinton forum and I think he's lonely.

obviously a glory-hunter who isn't aware they played at FARTown

Feel free Red John.

A Swinton fan taking the pi$$? That would be like a blind man poking fun at me because I wear glasses.

The trolling from fans of rival clubs simply reflects the fear they have. I would rather the club be feared than liked or patronised for being $hit. I welcome the trolling. In fact, it gives me a warm feeling inside.

That all you got then?