I'm sorry that the facilities were sub standard for you.
Conditions for away fans were far from perfect but the club are in the process of developing the ground and that in turn will enable us to provide the facilities you deserve.
Usually with the attendances we get all the facilities are shared so there is no segregation, no away car parking and no away toilets.Some Fev fans didn't want to be seperated but that is the decision the club made which meant that away toilets had to be provided at short notice.
The car parking area was rock hard a week ago but we have had so much rain in the last week that conditions were more akin to a swamp. Sadly we can't control the weather but the conditions on match day is something the club need to be aware of and a back up plan should perhaps be in place.
The floodlights are being upgraded.
Please bear in mind we run U15 U16 U18 U21 and a ladies team but don't get the funding from the RFL that SL clubs get and there is a cost involved to running those teams and with the income we have we have to work with some things take longer to do than we would like.I'd rather see the club develop young players and do the ground alterations stage by stage than pump all available money into the ground and abandon the youth set up. Our boys have beaten SL opposition this year at all levels so that shows we are making progress on the field.
What i will say is that the board do care about supporters and are working their socks off to improve the ground for all fans, home and away and unlike our near SL neighbours who have been making promises for years we will develop our ground, the stands are already there but we can't do it overnight and just need the support of fans from other clubs who are used to all seater modern stadiums.
Only a few years ago we were in administration so the turn around under the current management team has been remarkable.

Phil I don't understand the need for segregation last night, we were in the pub on station road befoer the game with no problem, was going to visit the bar under the Family stand but was prevented by stewards, as previously mentioned away fans toilets very poor with no womens and 1 disabled in not a very good state.
We sat down, good view and dry but obviously lots of work to do, mind you so have Wakey and Cas and they have been going at it for 3 years.

The concept of your proposal is pretty much what I had in mind. The 10 clubs in tier 1 would be THE biggest and most prosperous clubs in SL.

I would only have 1 up and 1 down though. After 18 league matches, I would have the bottom 5 of tier 1 play the top 5 of tier 2 as this will inrease the intensity.

One Champioship side to go up and the same with the top 5 and bottom 5.

As a result, I feel it would relly improve the pedigree of the game and protect good young Brittish players in the longrun.

Thats the beauty of two tiers of 10 imo - You an do it in so many ways. Your way could work better as there would be more chance of upsets etc. playing the bottom teams tier one, but the only thing I'd feel with this is would we be short changing the tier 2 teams somewhat by not giving them opportunity to play against the top 5 teams?

I do like your idea though. Two tiers play home and away - then you could have the mini league of top 5 tier 2 and bottom 5 tier 1 wth the top 5 to qualify for tier one next season - with each team only playing teams from the other tier - thus in effect giving all tier 2 sides a chance, albeit slim, that if they compete and beat enough tier 1 sides they make it into tier 1 the following season - that would make every game like a cup final IMO.

The only problem is what to then do wth the other 5 teams in each tier - top 5 play off for the top 5 tier 1 champions takes up 4 weeks - then this is where id bring in the expanded WCC for top 5 super league and top 5 NRL - 5 games against each NRL side takes another 5 weeks, semis and final another 2 and you've got 11 weeks there - which would fit nicely with your idea of the 10 week mini league for the lower tier 1/ upper tier 2 teams with a final stand alone week or the WCC final.

Bottom 5 tier 2 teams then drop into a northern rail cup competition/ european shield with the rest of the championship and the top french sides for the remaining 10 games of the season.

Fits perfectly IMO - The only problem being is could the top tier 1 teams survive with only 9 games home games per season every two seasons. It would be fine when the WCC was here - as you would have 14 games that year similar to now - This is where TV money would hopefully plug a gap, but this is the only potential flaw with your model IMO.

As RL fans what do we really want?
1. High intensity games every week in SL1, to produce an Ashes winning team.
2. The pinnacle to be the envy of other sports and be rewarded accordingly from TV
3. Expand player pool, we lose too many at 19/20 who may be late developers or have their progress blocked by the ageing Aussie, and a FT 2nd tier provides a good home.
4. Reduce imports by having more academies in a FT culture
5. Promotes expansion
6. It gets back to the basic principles of sport, try explaining what we have to play for (Leigh) to a non RL person, they laugh.

Where does the additional £10 million per year come from to fund such a structure?

The logical split would be keep SL money as is, the bigger gates will help and allow a £2m cap. Divide the 4 current SL clubs money that drop together with the £90k from the promoted Championship clubs and you have £500k, that should allow for £1m cap

Before the franchise system we had already got to the stage where automatic promotion and relegation had gone. Wakefield survived at least once because the NL1 champs either didn't want promotion or didn't meet ground criteria. What franchising does is make SL [unot[/u a closed shop but does impose minimum standards on clubs. It's not perfect but its better than the alternative of P&R which just won't work any more.

As to who it has benefited well Widnes for a start. We also have clubs in new grounds such as Wire, Salford and Saints who went about getting these sorted because they had to in order to keep their places or at least not be in the at risk category.

Also if there are crap teams in SL then the ones outside of it can't be any better otherwise they would have taken the franchise off the likes of Wakefield.

I would have no issue with promotion based on minimum standards as in Football and RU. Hunslet and Dewsbury were denied promotion on minimum standards, both times saving Huddersfield.