TBH, the technical details are boring in the great scheme of things - all that I'm really interested in is who, if anyone, has a clue how to make RL in the capital interesting and successful. Otherwise, what are we actually rescuing and why? Just to repeat the same depressing story all over again? To copy verbatim from what I wrote in another thread (and which isn't of course an original idea at all) - the only thing worth trying IMO is the following: (it could easily fail too, I quite admit, but surely better than the insanity of trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome ) Quote Since you mention London, I'd let them have no cap and sign as many Aussies as they like and call it London Australians. (c.f. London Irish, etc in the other code). Let NRL clubs send players to them on loan too. Then help Skolars grow organically with a load of financial support to eventually become London, er, 'Londoners' I suppose. Then in about 5 or 10 years we might even have a 'London' derby You see, over the years, one of the criticisms of various London sides is that they've been stuffed full of Aussies (and often, it is alleged, not very good ones). So why not turn the thing on its head and go the whole hog and actually MAKE it a fundamentally Australian team? Personally, I think the Aussies in such a team would feel a lot more attached to the shirt ( heck, put the flag on it). Australians in London could get behind it. I'm pretty sure that if lived in Sydney and a 'Sydney Brits' team was in the NRL they'd be my club. Likewise, I think opposition fans would feel more passionate about trying to beat that team - almost a mini-international if you like. No, it's not what we really want to achieve in the end - a fundamentally British London club being successful, but it 's at least a way to get some good rugby played in the capital and some passionate support. The important thing is to go the whole way with the idea - this is NOT a club initially full of Aussies that is eventually going to morph into a British one - it's an 'Aussie' club from day one, and intends to remain one, based on the fact that London is basically another Australian city in terms of population: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian ... ed_Kingdom '"

TBH, the technical details are boring in the great scheme of things - all that I'm really interested in is who, if anyone, has a clue how to make RL in the capital interesting and successful. Otherwise, what are we actually rescuing and why? Just to repeat the same depressing story all over again? To copy verbatim from what I wrote in another thread (and which isn't of course an original idea at all) - the only thing worth trying IMO is the following: (it could easily fail too, I quite admit, but surely better than the insanity of trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome ) Quote Since you mention London, I'd let them have no cap and sign as many Aussies as they like and call it London Australians. (c.f. London Irish, etc in the other code). Let NRL clubs send players to them on loan too. Then help Skolars grow organically with a load of financial support to eventually become London, er, 'Londoners' I suppose. Then in about 5 or 10 years we might even have a 'London' derby You see, over the years, one of the criticisms of various London sides is that they've been stuffed full of Aussies (and often, it is alleged, not very good ones). So why not turn the thing on its head and go the whole hog and actually MAKE it a fundamentally Australian team? Personally, I think the Aussies in such a team would feel a lot more attached to the shirt ( heck, put the flag on it). Australians in London could get behind it. I'm pretty sure that if lived in Sydney and a 'Sydney Brits' team was in the NRL they'd be my club. Likewise, I think opposition fans would feel more passionate about trying to beat that team - almost a mini-international if you like. No, it's not what we really want to achieve in the end - a fundamentally British London club being successful, but it 's at least a way to get some good rugby played in the capital and some passionate support. The important thing is to go the whole way with the idea - this is NOT a club initially full of Aussies that is eventually going to morph into a British one - it's an 'Aussie' club from day one, and intends to remain one, based on the fact that London is basically another Australian city in terms of population: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian ... ed_Kingdom '"

There seems to be a misunderstanding.

Most Bradford fans, whilst clearly not exactly 'happy', are generally ready to accept the loss of money as the price for SL membership, but it's the fact that the money was shared amongst the other clubs which grates. It could have gone to support the amateur game or maybe junior rugby - it could even have been have been given to a club like London who might have more need of it, but no - like a pack of scavenging hyenas they divvied it up between themselves.

TBF not all SL clubs voted to divvy up the money between themselves. How did London vote?

But the RFL presumably had no say in it as we are constantly being told that Sky money belongs to the SL member clubs and they decide how it is distributed.

A reasonable point.

However, hyenas need to eat and due to a lack of strong governance and clear rules, there is a grab what you can, devil take the hindmost culture. It isn't pleasant, but it is understandable.

I've always assumed (based on very little evidence, admittedly), that it was an attempt to indirectly recover oldco debt from the newco - which SL clubs (assuming they were creditors) were uniquely placed to do. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me (though I'd be pretty deeply unhappy if I were another creditor). If it is purely a 'punishment', then I agree, putting it in to the grassroots would have been much better.

I cannot see your point. Most of the Northern clubs have failed at least once.

but in the case of a newco formed by a totally different set of people I can't see any point whatever in being punitive - at the end of the day you want to encourage new people to come forward and 'fining' them for the sins of the old lot seems a strange way of encouraging anyone.

At the end of the day, the deal was done but I'm adamant that better uses could have been found for the money than having a big shareout amongst the SL clubs.

One of the problems I see with London Broncos (apart from the mis-management and under funding) is it has very little identity. People have no doubt mentioned this before but London is a vast place, to simply call something London and expect people from that vast metropolis get behind it is stupid. Some of the boroughs in London are like large towns and people identify with the locality of where they live rather than just "London". If you were to ask someone from Tottenham where they were from they would probably say Tottenham rather than London or before London. A team in London needs to set down some roots and stay long term, take on the local name and build a local fan base. It's difficult to predict, but I'm guessing if they'd have stuck at it in Fulham and were still there now, they would be in a much stronger position. Apart from Football, people really only tend to support the sport teams in their local district, even in London.

The [uimpression[/u I got was that Guilfoyle squeezed running costs for the end of that season from the SL clubs - they were obviously pretty keen to maintain the 'integrity' of the competition, preventing liquidation mid-season. Could well be wrong, it was all a bit murky.

Because licensing was (supposedly) based around business sustainability more than anything else, then what to do with a newco was inherently controversial. Mainly because no contingency was made for it. You might want to encourage people to come in to save Bradford, but go too far and you're discouraging investment in other clubs. Ultimately, that's why licensing had to be binned.

Bradford were unlucky in some respects. Wakefield were able to make a positive out of 'new company, fresh start' PR. And people were maybe distracted by the subsequent implosion of Crusaders. By the time it came to Bradford, Rangers had gone down that path to the lowest level of the SFL and it was seen more as debt-dodging. You want to encourage investment, but for the reputation of the sport you also want to encourage deals with creditors - rescues rather than reboots.

I think that argument is a little circular and perpetuates the misunderstanding of what licensing was intended, and indeed ever could, achieve.

Licensing was never about being better than Bradford, it was about being good enough. Nor was it about stopping clubs going bust, but giving them the best platform for stability and growth.

Now some may argue that Bradford, Crusaders, Wakefield proved that licensing didn’t do those things. This would be quite specious reasoning because there is always a risk of bankruptcy and no system can legislate for poor management. It may very well have been the case that Club A that would have replaced Club B in a P+R situation would have also gone bust, as well as clubs C and D who were overspending to try and avoid relegation and Club E also went bankrupt overspending chasing promotion

In that context whatever the game did to save Bradford couldn’t discourage anyone from investing in no other club, because no other clubs participation in SL was dependent on Bradford dropping out. It was dependent on it whichever club that was being good enough to be in SL.

Besides, once the decision was made that Bradford were staying in SL, whether we gave them less TV money, the same, or even more, didn’t have any real effect on anyone outside SL.

To remove the money from Bradford was a short-sighted, self-interested, counter-productive decision. It made no sense whatsoever to take a club with money problems and cut their funding in an attempt to solve these money problems.

It is telling that the decision to remove the money from Bradford, effected nobody, and benefitted nobody other than Bradford and the 13 clubs who voted for it who all got free additional money. This is where the governance issues arise. It isn’t necessarily a strength, rules or even really competence question. It is where the decision lies and who is fighting which corner. SL clubs should never have been the ones in charge of whether to remove money from one of their member clubs to distribute between themselves. Nor should it be down to the RFL to decide what is done with SL money as a large part of their responsibilities (and some would argue current power base) lay outside SL.

There should be an independent SL board making independent SL decisions. It is all very well Ian Lenegan demanding more autonomy and independence for SL, but independence from whom?

Gargoyle more than squeezed costs, he made the entire coaching staff and office workers redundant for the last couple of months and the majority continued to work , without pay, until the end of the season. Not even sure how you can do that as it's the [iicon_surprised.gif2ye92r1job[/iicon_surprised.gif2ye92r1 which is technically redundant, not the [iicon_surprised.gif2ye92r1person[/i was the limit of what they actually intended to do.

Simple rules needed:-

- The RFL runs the game (like the FA runs soccer)

- within that a Super League organisation is ok (just like there is a Premier League organisation in soccer)

- bring in the 2 x 12 / 3 x 8 structure from 2015 (thereby opening the prospect of clubs rising up through the game to the top level by winning on the field (like soccer) - however unlikely or otherwise a relegation from/promotion to SL will be in any particular season under that structure.

- Go into Administration = 6 points deduction

- Go bust = relegation to the bottom division

- Scrap the salary cap

Absolutely. What they should be is open to debate, but everybody knowing where they stand would be a bonus in itself.

Smokey, I don't have a problem with licensing in principle, didn't expect it to be a silver bullet and don't blame it for all SL's ills.

My issue was that it was poorly executed and tried to dodge the difficult 'what if...?' questions. When one of those came home to roost in the RFL's nest of discretion, they were screwed whatever they chose to do. They could let Bradford die (heartless dastards!), admit that they'd misrepresented licensing (double dealing cads!) or fudge some nonsense of a political compromise together to save the the Bulls and 'move on' from licensing (idiots!)

They went for the third option and in isolation it does look stupid. When you consider the alternatives available at that point, perhaps it was least bad.

Punishment like this are all very well, but without an understanding of the broader reasons why clubs go under it will lead to kicking clubs while they are already down.

It's also worth thinking about the typical lifespan of a medium sized business. My suspicion is that RL clubs are actually pretty stable and long lived when compared with their peers in other industries.

Tweet from Martin Offiah:

MartinChariotsOffiah
Can't believe my @alljoinjack roomy @TherealSeanLong has got a job in London with the Broncos #Result

Interesting.

Am I the only one who would like that translated into English?

Offiah says that Sean Long has apparently got a job with London Broncos.

Good news - seems to be a very highly rated coach and heaven knows the Broncos will need all the coaching they can get this season.

London will get bailed out, they always do.

NAH...You're mistaking us for Bradford

are the RFL buying or taking a lease on the olympic stadium now for London to play in..........thought not.. it doesn't have a BD6 postcode

And London will continue to produce twice as many local players as Hull KA, they always do.

Not entirely true. They probably produce the same amount. However London throw theirs in the starting line up whether they are good enough or not.

Oh I see, Hull KA are producing loads of players, they're just not playing pro-RL. Great.