Tell what position Huddersfield are in this season. They were promoted to SL. Tell if Hull KR have made the top eight. They were promoted. Castleford are above several appointed SL clubs. They were promoted and the same goes for Wakefield.

So your thesis isn't proven. Promoting a championship club is not likely to result in a less competitive teams.

On the other hand London were artificially placed in SL. How have they been doing this last few years.

So were Catalan....but they don't fit your pit village plan for the game!

Didn't Catalan finish 14th and last in 2010? Just behind London in 13th?

And Leigh were relegated and failed miserably in SL and finished bottom. Oh wait a minute, Catalans finished bottom also.

Headhunter - do you attend Rugby League matches? Do you consider yourself to be a fan of any particular club?

And unlike Leigh they had a three year advance notice that they were going to be in SL, were able to plan and recruit accordingly and still finished bottom.

Catalan also finished last in 2006 but a pit village who were promoted to SL finished above them were relegated instead.

Quite right. Also Hull and Salford were promoted from the division below.

Yep....then made the play offs the following 3 years whilst London continued to be hamstrung by the cost of living in the south and the RFL's ignorance of good business practice in forcing Ian Lenegan to stop investing in the club, leaving us in the hands of a hobbyist with not a clue how to run a sports business.
The benefit to us having the hobbyist by the way is that London are 100% debt free....not even an overdraft whilst Wakefield are doing a Bradford, Bradford are doing a Bradford and there are other clubs in the north not looking too clever. Fev's owners offer of 7 figures in escrow is about as much use as a chocolate tea-pot.....Modern Clubs need to have an income of 5 million minimum...7 if they want to challenge for honours!

We don't want to challenge for honours to begging with. Survival has to be the target first year.... Gradually building slowly to increase expectations to a top half finish. With a food coach even a part time club can beat a full time club, look at when we best Cas. We could compete to finish mid table with the other bottoms clubs then build slowly on this progress.

As a fan, that is what would get me excited about being in superleague for the first season, the chance of staying up like hull kr.

So is headhunter still blatantly dodging the question as to which team he supports?

Oh yes, he sure is.

It's not the club he supports that's important - it's whether he attends any matches in the guise of a diehard fan. I'm not saying he isn't allowed an opinion if he isn't a fan but it would explain a lot if he came out and said "actually, I don't watch any games and my heart doesn't belong to any one club".

His posts and his attitude answer my question to be honest. It's obvious and his lack of understanding about club Rugby League and the passions that run through these clubs from Chairmen to fans is something that is completely alien to him. He's only feeling half the story.

Travelling 200 mile round journeys on a cold wet afternoon and shovelling hard cash through the turnstile window gives you a different perspective on the game than the one Headhunter thinks exists. 37 Chairmen and countless club officials wouldn't exist for a start. Without that passion this sport wouldn't exist and yes, maybe that's a big part of the problem as passion and romance often gets in the way of sensible business decisions. But that's Rugby League and it's something that Headhunter clearly can't understand and it's something that the franchise system clearly cannot cater for.

He is a RL fan, not a lifelong supporter of any particular club, he doesnt have those colours running through his veins , he doesnt feel the emotion, the hurt , the elation , to quote a famous scribe " He is more machine than man now "



But as I posted yesterday, watching newly promoted Crystal Palace fans stood singing for 90 minutes yesterday, it is raw emotion that runs proffessional ( ie paying to watch ) sport, it is that which pays for it

Rugby Union is different in that its history hasnt had a century of rivalry between clubs, therefore it is less emotional than football and RL, even American sports all being relatively modern and not being localised dont produce the same feelings

We are what we are, we have what we have, its no use wishing for what you dont have, but we can and should be working much harder to improve all that we do have, no matter what the structure is, because it seems to me this is just another attempt to find a magical silver bullet to solve all our problems

It wont

The next crisis could just have driven up and parked outside Red Hall. 'The Observer' is reporting the new Wakefield chairman as saying that the club's undercapitalised (does this translate as 'deep in the dark brown smelly stuff'?) for £400k and they've sold Tim Smith to Salford for 'a substantial fee'.

If you put aside whether licensing or P&R is the best way forward, there is one common denominator which needs to be looked at. The RFL. This is the problem within our game. Whether that be because they don't have the balls or whether the clubs chairmen have too much power I don't know. If they had ultimate control over the game, they could put a plan in place and stick to it.

Take licensing for instance. The game has let it run for 2 licensing periods. That imo is wrong. There shouldn't be licensing periods. There should be just reviews. These reviews should look at the current clubs to see if they are abiding by the license criteria/rules. They should look at the finances, attendances and talent within the game to see if there is room for more clubs within the top flight. If there isn't then the game continues as it is. Licensing should be all or nothing but not what we currently have. If the RFL or Chairmen don't have the balls to go this route, then the only solution is P&R and all the problems that come with it. (They have been well documented over the years)

IMO the game hasn't given proper licensing time so they are reverting to what it was before hand. (Just for those who point to the dwindling crowds and clubs financially struggling as evidence to licensing failing, we are in one of the worst economic times in our history)

I believe that all the good work licensing has done such as youth development and stadia improvement will be undone by scrapping licensing. Clubs will revert to spending all their cash on keeping them in SL rather than investing in youth and facilities. If the RFL are to bring back P&R there needs to be criteria which encourage...no demand that these things are at the forefront of a clubs plans for the future and that they are not empty promises.

Quite correct, but licencing was flawed from the start, so it had no chance, the rot was built into it by the RFL, from then on the results were obvious

No, all he's done is address the elephant in the room!

No one in authority wants to discuss it but I'll be hugely surprised if there's more than one club, Leeds, who's business washes its face without the aid of a benefactor.

Wakefield are OK but need to trim their outgoings and increase their income in order to meet somewhere in the middle.

SL clubs as a whole should do the same!

Wigan

Congratulations to Featherstone Rovers - took the LLS for the fourth season in a row.

Outstanding.

Just to check, we are talking about the crystal palace who have gone into administration twice in the last 15 years right?

Unless you know of another Crystal Palace dick-head?

So we are talking about crystal palace who prove time and time again that they arent big enough to compete with the likes of man Utd it's why they keep getting relegated and going bust.

I just wanted to check because it sounded as if this was something you thought we should emulate but that would obviously be moronic

Yawn. Go to bed you prick.

As cogent as ever!

I aim to please