With a new team playing in Championship 1 based in Neath. www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... aders.html Well its one less weekend for us all. Easy trip down the motorway to Wrexham. Overall though a total embarrassment for the RFL.

With a new team playing in Championship 1 based in Neath. www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... aders.html Well its one less weekend for us all. Easy trip down the motorway to Wrexham. Overall though a total embarrassment for the RFL.

Once again, a total cock up by the RFL & all concerned. It's a shame because the Catalans expansion worked so well! Hopefully they can turn it around in the next few years, but I doubt it.

Oh dear. They were rushed into super league quite clearly. Widnes would of been much more of an asset to super league.

What a joke. RFL, you should be embarressed. This is entirely Lewis and his band of idiots fault. The crusaders where asked to play in Super League, no club would turn that oppertunity down.

It's pathetic though isn't it?
Surely with the record of this happening over and over sooner or later one of these idiots will relise that for expansion to happen this way needs funding.
Unless someone is prepared to say...
right, here is the money that will guarantee us three years survival"...
they should not be fast tracked in.

We met some great people down in Bridgend.
Its them i feel sorry for.


But we remain stuck with idiots running our game.
Making our game look stupid.

Look at the magic weekend.
I know some people just block it out as they do not like the idea, but those of us who went were pretty much all of the opinion it worked better in Cardiff than Edinburgh.
Cardiff they tell us never really got behind the idea and didn't support it.

Well excuse me, thats the job of the RFL /SL not Cardiff bloody council.
Only SL would have had that there for two years for no apparent reason, then start a team down there and rob them of this fantastic opportunity to promote themselves by moving it to the other end of the UK.
Like I say the people running our game are idiots.

Well I can't see it lasting in Wrexham. I can almost walk it for the Wigan game there but I just don't see the depth of interest in either code of Rugby locally.

Yes there is a good RU side in Chester and there is Chester Gladiators RL and various RU sides in Wales such as Mold but it isn't some sort of hotbed area for either code. You won't get many people from Chester supporting a Wrexham based side if they were hoping for any of that either.

Given the expectation is they will lose most of their games as well it isn't really that enticing a prospect for the locals to start supporting them is it?

As there is to be a club in Neath they should have just bit the bullet, demoted the Crusaders back down to NL1 to be the Neath side (as basically they are bust) and just admitted it was too soon for a side from South Wales in SL.

I can't help thinking all this has done is postpone the inevitable and the Crusaders will eventually go bust which to my mind is worse than being demoted to start again in NL1.

Dave

Whether they make it work in Wrexham will depend on the people at the Crusaders. They are near Rugby League land and will have no difficulty recruiting players from Lancs, Yorks & Cumbria.
The local area might not be a hotbed of Union but if they were after Union players then they could do no worse than look around here on the Wirral.
Seventeen clubs, two of them semi pro. Only 30 mins max by the M53. Plenty of talent around and they will play League provided someone talks to them.

As for fans, who knows where they will come from.
Locally perhaps people may respond to ticket deals offered and that would get a few through the gates. The unknown is where will the Crusaders be after the next franchise deal.
Rumours around that Noble has a squad lined up which will be pretty good. The difficulty will be for the RFL is if they make the top 7 in SL which I think is the cut off for clubs adjudged to have "made a contribution to SL".

Five years ago we didn't have any clubs or players in Wales, even after all this we could very well end up with two.
The object of the excercise all along was to develop RL in Wales especially S Wales. There is a massive amount of talent to go at and the overall objective does appear to be working out better than expected.

Surprising what can be salvaged from an absolute wreckage.
The Crusaders into SL has been a disaster. From it all with two Welsh clubs and loads of Welsh talent coming into the game the RFL could end up with a better result than they ever dreamed of.

So will the next franchise round end with 14 or 16?
Will a heartlands team go? A club going nowhere with their ground and poor crowds whilst the Crusders stay in SL.
Or is someone brave enough to bet that next time around Cru will be ditched?

and so the shambolic bandwaggon that is the Crusaders moves to Wrexham, well at least for today!!

A total joke that is making the game a laughing stock. Just a shame the RFL don't have the balls to tell them enough is enough.

The aim is surely that as the Crusaders go bust the Neath side will be ready for SL then Dave?

We talk about the PR disaster but surely demoting the club two divisions would be far worse than just moving htem to another town/city?

Yeah I think they are saving as much money as they can before quietly withdrawing their licence when it expires.

This is very sad for the clowns at red hall who gave them thier licence but fans will save money on going to wrexham so more spends in catalan

What a fooking joke!!

Always knew Crusaders wouldn't get of the ground, the RFL (aka Jokers) should have planned the South Wales entry properly and gone with a Cardiff based team.

That's twice now that it has failed in South Wales, once in the mid nineties after the successful World Cup and again now!!!

Professional game run by amateurs, with this and the way the game is declining at this rate I give Rugby League a decade!!

One the plus side that club is in such a mess it's a perfect way for us to kick off 2010. Professional attitude and a thumping win! No excuses!

I wonder if Nobby knew what he was signing up for.

The whole thing is a total embarrasment, nothing else needs be said.

Indeed. Smash them into the ground!

What two clubs to you mean?

Chester pays it's first team players and Caldy have a wealthy backer but both clubs play at a low level in RU terms. The most successful RU club in Cheshire outside the top flight (i.e. Sale) is Macclesfield who are one division away from the RU equivalent of NL1.

It's not a very high standard. North Wales does not as far as I know have similar clubs.



Wrexham isn't that big a place and there is a big English/Welsh rivalry in the area with Chester City soccer club and Wrexham having stoked this up over the years. It's got to come from North Wales IMO.



South Wales is the place to be. Even the WRU see North Wales as a development area whereas down south the oval ball is the one considered to be of the right shape.



I admire your optimism but I don't see loads of Welsh talent flocking to the Crusaders and if they recruit established SL players from elsewhere with few Welsh players in the team then it's pointless. Down in South Wales I think they stood a far better chance of recruiting local players.

IMO the hope is that Neath do well and eventually earn a right to a SL place by winning a franchise and not because they were parachuted into SL prematurely as the Crusaders have been. I think we will end up with one Welsh RL team and it will be Neath in the not too distant future.



I thought the existing NL1 sides had been guaranteed one place in SL next time (which in itself seems stupid if no side meets the criteria....) and the other side was odds on to be a second French side.

Dave

The Crusaders finished 2nd in both comps (I think) and worked their way up from the bottom.

Surely the Neath side cannot do better than this. So I cannot see how it will work. Shame on Widnes really who have the financial backer, the crowd the stadium and the history.

Well it depends what you mean by working their way up from the bottom.

Given the Crusaders achieved what they did on the playing side then I don't think you need a clearer indication of what is happening to them now that playing success alone can't be used as a single promotion criteria to a league that requires the financial outlay of SL.

Neath will need to work their way up not only on the playing side but financially so the RFL don't make the same mistake again and stick them into SL.



Widnes previous financial backer left them high and dry the year before the franchise system came in I think. I am pretty sure Widnes were told that due to them effectively going bust and that because the RFL were unsure of their financial stability under their then new backer they could not be considered for promotion.

If I have remembered that correctly then that seems sensible to me but hindsight looks to be showing us that similar caution or scrutiny was not applied to the Crusaders entry into SL.

Of course if we didn't have a credit crunch maybe the Crusaders would have been fine so we can't discount external factors being why they are in the current situation. I think it's a bit simplistic for people to suggest that Widnes should have had their franchise in the first place as there is a lot more too it than having a nice ground and someone who currently backs the club.

Dave

shambles...........only word i need.

they gave a franchise to open up RL in SOUTH Wales, not north wales.
Let Celtic struggle on in the south, and if this guy from Wrexham wants a superleague team , then let him put his bid in at the next round of franchise applications.

if Celic cant keep up standards, then stick em in a lower division , let em build up to see if they are capable, and in the meantime promote whoever won the NL1 final ..Barrow??? and let em stay until the applications come round again in a couple of years.

and its a farcical U-Turn that the RL are backing this wrexham proposal. Goes against all their proposals to expand by having magic weekends, etc.

having said all that , i have long been an advocate of wanting a team in north wales...round the Chester area.

if the rfl want to expand the game then bring it to the west midlands

Nice, extra game I can can go to.

Oh and !^%"&^%£ shambles! Etc. Works for me though.

What you have to appreciate Dave is that it was an artificial progression in that it was done so with extreme salary cap exceptions, extra players on the quota etc etc; to me, it can only truly be defined as 'success' when achieved within the same rules of your peers. Sure, it would have taken longer for them to get promoted (even from Championship One), but it would have given a better indication of their foundations. Indeed, they have done a lot of good work in South Wales, but it should have been done over a longer period of time without the pressures of Super League that undoubtedly affects the club from top to bottom.

Cumbria must be brought back into the fold before trying to develop SL clubs in other areas, Bring Barrow in and take Crusaders down, any newly developed teams should operate in the lower league for at least 5 year just to make sure it succeeds both financially and on the pitch before attempting to integrate it into SL

I know it was done like that and I am saying that if Neath are to carry the Welsh mantle in future as I think they will, then all those exceptions you mention above can't be allowed again so I think we agree on that.

What I am also saying though is that playing success alone does not prove they are ready for SL and it won't do so even if they have that success without such things as extra players on the quota. So if Neath get to the top of NL1 then there should be no automatic promotion just because they are from South Wales.

Dave

Cumbria is a lost cause to all forms of top line professional sport isn't it? No Premiership soccer club. No top flight RU club and no SL side.

Now you might think that gives us as a sport an opportunity but I thinks its actually an indication the population up there can't support top flight professional sporting sides.

Towns like Barrow, Workington and Whitehaven are just not big enough and a joint side is a none starter as it would have to be on one of those towns so wold soon be considered Workington or wherever.

Dave