I am certainly what some call a,"traditionalist". If by that they mean someone who thinks every club should be treated equally, and be allowed to aim as high as they want to go without being told " forget it your wasting your time" ,then yes i am. I havnt heard of virtual terrace, i'll have to have a look at that, thanks.

If you click on the board index the VT is at the top of the list. It's full of cranks.

I should slot right in then

You wont like it

might be fun though

dont mind fighting my corner for something i believe in.
Edit that, just been on, what a bunch of muppets.

The licensing criteria is not based on quality of stadia alone. Widnes are a bigger club than Featherstone in every respect. So are Castleford and Wakefield. Featherstone have also promised a better ground, and have made stadium improvements. That doesn't mean they are in any way suitable for Super League. I don't know who you think is 'squandering' money, or why fans like you seem to believe that the sport's governing body should be ploughing money into certain Championship sides because they cannot generate the money themselves, but thankfully views like this are roundly dismissed for the lunacy that they are. I think if certain fans had their way, RL would be an amateur sport played on park fields in a handful of Northern villages along the M62.

What on Earth are you talking about? You are aware that Catalans have over 70 years of history? What relevance do Sheffield and Gateshead have to anything? Or for that matter, any concept of 'history'? How do you think teams gain a 'history'? In the 1950's Doncaster were a 'created team with no history'. If you were around then, would you have been against the club being founded? I don't think you have any concept of reality. No teams are being 'forever excluded', the fact is that most of the heartland Championship clubs cannot ever possibly hope to become big enough to compete in a league such as Super League. What do you think would happen if the previous system had continued and somehow a team like Batley had been promoted? They would be beaten by 60 points every week with an average crowd of 2,000 or less, would be relegated at the end of the season, and in likelihood would probably end up going bust. The whole thing would be an absolute joke from start to finish and would be massively damaging to the club involved as well as the sport as a whole. The funny thing is that people at Batley and other such clubs are fully aware of this, I've spoken to their directors who have stated as much. If you want to cling to bizarre, outdated and fantastical ideas about teams such as Batley one day reaching Super League then you have every right to do so. Just don't be surprised when you are laughed at for being absolutely deluded.

Every respect?



No, sorry ... recent results / performance on the pitch would suggest that not to be the case. Remind me, isn't sport a results-based business.

Should be but other issues eg stadium/finances etc have come into play ! some say quite rightly others say no.

I prefer the top 4 going up from C1 , but there are certain criteria to be met eg capacity & secure tenure .

Huddersfield beat Wigan at the weekend. Does that mean they are a bigger club than Wigan? Wigan Athletic are currently in the Premiership and Leeds United are in the division below, does that mean Wigan Athletic are a bigger club? You could argue that on-field results don't really make too much of a difference in terms of which club is bigger, unless those results are sustained over a number of years. Either way, there are predetermined on-field criteria which must be met in order to apply to Super League, and Widnes met them. They achieved the neccessary results in order to be promoted. So did Featherstone, but they didn't even apply which probably tells you something.

You stated 'every' ... it was an overstatement ... HTH

wigan athletic ,hull city,burley and many more clubs are not bigger than leeds but at least theyve had the chance to live the dream and play in the top tier! which the chiefs of our game have taken away I can see both arguments as in we dont want to see clubs boom and bust but its still nice to see a success story little club come good and if they are by far the best team in the league then they deserve the chance to promotion or we could see in championship case fev win title for nxt 3 years and gain nothin but be a big fish in a little pond! which the fans and other clubs will think whats the point

The relevance of sheffield and gateshead is they were expansion clubs that were swallowed up to keep two traditional rugby league teams afloat, ie, it did not work. Though through hard work they have reformed, and have my admiration for doing so. When super league was formed they wanted other clubs to merge to create hybrid clubs with no history , all for sky television, who were, and still are, pulling the strings, at that time it was billed as a european super league, with one french club.Today's super league still has one french club, not i hasten to add the same one. So where is catalans history in our competition?. London broncos have had various names and played all over London, yet still need to be propped up by the rfl. No disrespect, you have your view , i have mine, you will never convince me that a closed super league is the way forward. As for promoting a team that finished nowhere, well anyone outside looking in must be laughing at the farce.

I'm just not sure why you are talking about things that happened 12+ years ago and have absolutely no relevance to this thread or anything else that is happening at the moment. As for people laughing at the system, no, actually the FA were looking to adopt a similar model in the Premiership, which is the strongest league of the most popular sport in the world.

The difference between football and RL is that firstly the nature of the game means that lesser teams will always have more of a chance to cause an upset in football, whereas RL is much harsher on weaker teams. And secondly, football has 4 full-time leagues, RL has one. Automatic promotion and relegation is viable between full-time leagues where there isn't too much of a difference in terms of finances. Attempting to replicate that system in RL currently would be akin to having automatic promotion and relegation between the Championship and the Conference in football, it's just stupidly unrealistic. Your point about Featherstone is a valid one, if they win the Championship for the next three years and have a strong enough application then they deserve to go up. You can't complain about them not having gone up this time though, since like I said they didn't even apply for Super League.

like I said I see both arguments but surely its up to the big wigs to promote or give out more help to close the gap between championship and superleague because all I can see is the gap getting bigger and eventually there is a danger of sl being a closed shop and rl below sl being a nonentity and when I say help I dont just mean throw money at them but employ couple of people who job is to just solely help the vlubs become bigger and better off the field aswell as on it! there might already be people doing this job but in my opinion its not workin,

But very few of the current Championship clubs have anything like the potential to become as big as Super League clubs. That's what I have been saying all along. Even with heavy investment, teams like Batley and Hunslet realistically wouldn't have any chance of improving to the stage where they could compete at Super League level. The only way clubs like this would ever be able to compete would be through levellng down and limiting the growth of the Super League clubs, which is one of the things that automatic promotion and relegation provided. Surely anyone can see that lowering the standard and limiting the growth of the game for the sake of certain teams that wouldn't otherwise be able to compete would be absolute stupidity. I'm sure certain posters are fairly resentful towards the new expansion teams entering the league next year, but they are the ones that will help to sustain the Championships. If we continue to rely on teams with extremely limited potential such as Batley then yes, the gap will get bigger, because these teams are not big enough to compete and will be left behind. And before anyone accuses me of being disrespectful to Batley, I'm not, the people running the club aren't idiots, they don't have any pretensions of being anything more than a good Championship side.

we are never going to agree on this, lilke i say you have your views i have mine. attendancies at super league level, as far as i can see, dont seem much different now to what they were years ago. each year now they " take the show on the road" and play to vast empty spaces, which frankly is embarrasing to see, so who is buying into your glorious vision of the future. Attendencies at championship and below level have declined rapidly however, because fans see no future so why bother. There may be just super league teams left in years to come, if that is expansion you can keep it. The Dons. board,with fans also dipping into their own pockets, are going out on a limb to try and gain promotion, and people like you are saying "why bother" . Rugby league is a minority game and the RFL has put all its eggs in one basket, dangerous practice.

Like i said earlier it's a waste of breath talking to these people.

No they weren't.

There was a rumour going round that the ever growing number of foreign owners wanted to protect their 'investments' in teams and make the Premier League a closed shop. The FA said that this could happen, but only if a majority of teams voted for a rule change to scrap the existing promotion/relegation method. It turned out to be a load of hot air, and no votes were ever asked for, as the owners of Premier League teams didn't want to scrap promotion and relegation.

If Harlequins can be a Superleague club so can Doncaster.
As for teams not applying for Superleague, they shouldn't have the choice, or even have to choose for that matter.
If they finish top of the Championship, they are in Superleague whether they like it or not.
How could such as Fev (or Batley for that matter, given some backing .... and they would get Sky money) do much worse than the Crusaders or Harlequins?
Superleague is just like a gentleman's club, if your face fits your in and if it doesn't your out and that is just not fair.
The fact that most clubs won't get there is immaterial, the fact that they realise they probably won't get there is immaterial.
Going back to football, Swansea and Norwich are doing well in the premiership.
It is never certain that they will go straight back down.
And even if they do, the following season could be exciting if they go back up again.
And so it should be in Superleague, not 3 year protectionism.
We could lose any one of Wakefield, Harlequins, Salford or Widnes to be replaced by such as Fev, Halifax, Sheffield or the like and where would be the damage in that?
None!
Someone has to finish bottom and be relegated, not feather-bedded.

could not agree more.

If the FA are looking to use the same system as the RFL do you think that all the other league clubs outside of the premiership would allow the FA to do what the RFL have done in the past ie to fast track new teams straight in to the SL or in footballs case straight in to the premiership?

It would NEVER happen---and it SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED in the RFL as far as i'm concerned.

I am very much in agreement with Geoff, Dragonfan, and Stand-Offish on this one. They make some very good and valid points.

Where are clubs without hope ... and I don't mean hope three years down the line?

It must be soul-destroying for the likes of Featherstone who must prove themselves over three years or more to justify getting promoted. In the mean time they run the risk of losing their better players to Super League which means, in effect, that they have to run like hell to stand still.

The structure of rugby is somewhat different to football in that the teams who are promoted from the Championship to the Premiership are full-time; whereas this doesn't apply in rugby. It wouldn't be good for the game, or the clubs, if the promoted team was almost certain to get relegated, which in most cases is probably what would happen.

Personally, with regards to rugby, I would exempt the promoted side from relegation for one season.

I know this flies in the face of competition but because of the gulf between Super League and Part-time rugby, it is the only realistic way to avoid the straight up, straight down problem.

The present regime of franchises is wrong. It smacks too much of a closed shop. Straight up and straight back down wouldn't be good either. A compromise somewhere in between is necessary.

If we continue to rip the heart out of rugby league amongst the part-time clubs, the game will enter a serious decline. The decline may have already set in but the worst effects won't be felt for some time to come. If the RFL don't recognise the problem very quickly, and do something soon, it could be too late to do anything about it!

I think the future of the game would be best served by all teams returning to a part time situation. SL clubs would benefit from vastly reducing their wage bills and it would not become such a massive gap to overcome for any promoted CC side. It would also make it easier for a promoted team to recruit players.

I have a lot of sympathy with most of your arguments RB but not this one.
IMO every club should be striving to be professional