Doubt it was him directly , however we were grateful yes.

If we was still playing at Hilton Park though we would have probably not been helped, if you undersatnd what IM saying

Im saying that finishing bottom year after year would obviously have an effect, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that moving down a league will benefit you.

There is nothing Ken Davy and Richard Thewlis have done to Huddersfield which wouldn’t have been possible had they stayed in SL rather than spending a year in the championship embarrassing everyone in that league. Appointing Tony Smith, investing in the playing squad and making a focussed effort on increasing attendances caused the improvement at Hudds, not playing some semi-pro teams for a year.

Sorry but is it being said that Huddersfield are now top of the league just because they were promoted 10 years ago. I'm off to put money on Hull KR being in that position in 2016 then

If we want to get pedantic, Huddersfield didn't get promoted through the true P&R path. Hull FC won the league and promotion that year. Huddersfield only went up because PSG went to the wall and they were needed to make up the numbers.

So he's directly to blame for the RFL doing anything that disadvantages your club but not directly involved when the same RFL are advancing you funds to support your clubs existence.

You can't have it both ways can you?

Didnt they get relegated that year though, when we beat Sheffield at home in the last game of the season. Then the year after they won the league?

No, because the team in the league below didn't meet standards so they stayed up.

Surely it's Widnes' year this year? Check out the odds, we should be throwing everything in them first!

:17p30e93I disagree, i dont think there is a chairman in SL who wouldnt want another Leeds or Wigan in SL.

:17p30e93They would be sharing a larger amount. We are adding clubs in to the league who can add value to it.



The two division thing is a none starter. It may (temporarily) narrow the gap between the top tier and 2nd tier, but it would cut off the 3rd tier and below completely and eventually it will bring more clubs, further away from the top clubs entrenching the three tier SL we have already

And you still don't get it and you seem to be ignoring the fact that franchising and these clubs going bust have coincided with the whole of the UK's financies becoming a mess.
No your right, in the few years just before franchising there wasn't as many 'casualties', but inbetween 2001-2007 rugby clubs weren't operating in a country plunged in a financial hole. For example, just for starters how much will all teams have lost out on in terms of cash the last few years from attendences and shirt sales from people who would of bought these things usually but simply can't afford to or are watching the pennies. And thats before you even start thinking about the bigger things like the changes in relationships between a bank and a sporting business.
How can you properly judge something like the franchise system which is heavily about financies as 'not working' when its trying to work in a country that's been walking on eggshells financially for a few years now? It would be like making a final judgment on a player you've never seen before play but he's playing with an injury, you wouldn't know what he's like when fit and in good shape.
And people saying he's doing a runner before a failed World Cup materalises, no, he just got offered a good job in the sport he grew up playing professionally and will clearly have much more of an affection for than this one. If the roles were reversed you'd expect an ex-rugby league guy to take up a role as the head of RL if given the oppotunity.

Yeah but he'd be a hero, especially if he still kept whippets and pigeons

True, but then there isn’t a chairman in SL that could spot one. By that I mean a sustainable one that does not rely on a rich benefactor. A Leeds or a Wigan has to start somewhere, the key is spotting where that seed will grow and we have not seen a good track record of this. I’d be all for replacing half of the clubs in SL to bring in a few “Birminghams”, “Bistols”, “Edinburghs” and turning them into “Leeds and Wigans”.

Heck, it would be nice if all the other clubs in SL could get near Leeds success (on and off the field) but they don’t, and I get the feeling some won’t any time soon.

RL needs a strong willed leader with a vision and the drive and contacts to make it work and even then he (she) will have to drag half the SL chairmen kicking and screaming all the way.




Like who? They would only be sharing a larger amount if the club(s) were immediately successful otherwise they would take out more than they put in.


Don’t agree. There would be less difference between an SL division 2 and the "third tier" than the current SL and the Championship.

I wouldn’t disagree with that, I think it will take someone with a great deal of strength to do that, and some clubs will need to be railroaded into it. That’s a bit of where Lewis failed in my opinion. Though his ideas were in the main, right, and he conducted himself well, his issue was, at times he didn’t take a hard enough stance. There wasn’t enough of the like it or lump it about him. He took too much of a collegiate approach and we ended up with some fudges which pleased no one.

Whoever is appointed needs to be confident and strong enough to make some enemies of some clubs chairmen, he needs to call them out on their numerous hypocrisies and failings (Neil Hudgell’s letter is the perfect example, he should have been called out on his nonsense, he should be called out on the fact he has admittedly, massively overspent on what was sustainable for his club, he has done it bringing in some pretty average overseas players. He is in no position to lecture anyone on the sustainability of SL) and explain why we are doing what we are doing and how we are going about it.

But if he is doing what he needs to be doing, he is going to take some stick from the usual suspects, we need to make sure he is prepared to do that, it is integral to the games survival it really is.



I can see the logic in that, but I think there are some (not all) SL Chairmen who can see the bigger picture. If you listen to GH’s criticisms of the RFL over the Crusaders, they are less that Crusaders were given a shot, but more that they weren’t supported when push came to shove. At the beginning of this year the North Wales Crusaders were invited up to Leeds to train at the Rhinos training ground. So there was support (at least from one big hitter) from other SL chairmen for Crusaders, I think we would see similar support for Toulouse and Sheffield. But it would take a commitment from the RFL to make it work, even if it meant more money for those sides initially which brings us back to my point above.
A 2 division SL would simply be SL and the Championship by another name, it would have all the same problems we saw before and it would make it nigh on impossible for anyone to break the stranglehold of the big clubs.

But Hudgell has not overspent. If he wants to put several hundred thousand pounds into HKR good luck to him. His money and his choice. if some player selections have been poor, so be it. few clubs get it right 100% of the time.

The idea that sustainability only applies if wealthy backers are excluded is plain daft. A lot of sport and the arts operate 'sustainably' with wealthy backers putting sizable money into an organisation. they have done so for decades.

Hudgell's point it that some clubs cannot operate in this way. They do not have wealthy backers but still spend as if they do. Then when the going gets tough Wood and lewis take it upon themselves to interfere using RFL money. Good money poured after bad.

Wood and Lewis pumped a fortune into keeping 2 clubs afloat in a 14 team competition. Hudgell is suggesting that a 12 team comp may be more sensible and that it is not the job of the RFL to prop up teams who cannot run themselves.

As a result of Hudgell and McManus etc I suspect we have seen the last of Wood proping up clubs with huge amounts of rfl money. Good.

Hudgell has admitted himself that HKR cannot be sustained on crowds of less than 10,000, they have been haemorrhaging over £200k per year since they came into Superleague (he's responsible for 25% of his quoted £8m losses across the game). He's also indicated that he is no longer willing to bankroll them for much longer.

Your statement about pouring "good money after bad" needs some explanation. Where have the RFL actually lost money?

Can you imagine the impact that a Superleague club folding mid-season would have on the game? Quite apart from the negative publicity, what happens to the league points? The simplest solution would be to simply expunge them but that would be unfair on teams that had already played them and banked the points. You'd also have clubs with blank weekends, not just disrupting playing & training schedules but impacting hugely on gate receipts and the bottom line.

I think the Lewis Luddites on here still don,t get it, they just won,t accept there needs to be change and assume because the RFL make profit then the game is OK.

Hudgell and McManus in my opinion are correct that the game is not sustainable due the weak profile of the game. Our sponsorship achievement is embarrasing, Stobart and Big Soup is "amateur" when we should be marketing the game to attract the Banking Institutions, Global Comms Markets, Electronic Groups, Brewery Organisations etc.

We once had a page of rugby league in the National Newspapers, then we went to column inches, now some days its a paragraph stiched on the side of the racing section, our Media performance is a disgrace.

Its the responsibility of the RFL to give our game some profile and stature, so that the clubs can endorse the product and develop revenue streams, the clubs can't do it as a single entity if the RFL don,t fight and give the game some "backbone" to compete in a business sense with other sports.
This is the major failing of the RFL (Lewis and Wood), maybe some of the club chairmen has exposed this and Lewis has escaped just in time.

I assume that prior to Lewis the big corporate sponsors were queuing at the door where they.

Do you think that the game has advanced or declined during Lewis' tenure?

Here,s another Luddite going back into the past, during the Lewis reign he has not achieved any big corporate name sponsors, but we do have "BIG Soup". We have not progressed in this department to give the game some precense.

The game has declined in Profile and Stature under Lewis, we,ve already voted on this forum with only 27% think that Lewis and Wood do any good. I work in Cumbria with loads of rugby fans, there they are 100% saying ..............Good Riddance.

If only we had gone out and approached big brands, not small ones, but massive ones, ones valued at, i dont know $16.94Billion or $182.29Billion, you know huge corporations, they would definitely want to throw loads of money our way and it would solve all our problems, maybe Richard Lewis could have gone out and found specialists in sports media and sponsorship sales, a worldwide company with an unparalleled reputation in its field that would have helped.

Why oh why oh why didnt Richard Lewis have IMG approach companies the size of the Heinz Corporation or Proctor and Gamble, there loads of rugby fans in Cumbria, they would 100% have been able to get Heinz or Proctor and Gamble or Stobart to pump millions in to the game. What company doesnt want to associate its product with working class men from pit villages in northern England and spend loads of time effort and money selling to a very small proportion of the country who like and watch RL.

Well said Smokey. Whilst all of us think there is nothing like Rugby League, we should bear in mind that in the great scheme of things we're a minor player. Football is worldwide number one, Yawnion has its corporate links and Rugby League has what it can beg from companies/people willing to give it a hearing. Of course we all want mega-sponsors pouring money into the game but realistically it ain't gonna happen.

Another Luddite going back into the past, Thought Lewis and Wood had an expansion model to showcase the game, we now have our special weekend offerings...................let me think.............Oh, its in MANCHESTER.

What was i thinking judging people on their words and actions

So Hudgell stops funding HKR and if they cannot find the money elsewhere they return to the chamionship.

The money loaned to the clubs could have been wisely invested and provided a return with no risk. That has been lost. The money put into the bulls could be 'lost' if they go bust. A long lease on an empty stadium - so stupid for a sport with such limited funds.

Your comments about the impact of a club going out of SL would carry some weight. However the extensive advances were made to the bulls in 2011...so why give them a licence in 2012? The lease had to be taken over in January 2012. Late but still time to withdraw the bulls. Wood and Lewis have the gamblers fallacy...keeping putting the money in. And dont forget it was the Crusaders who pulled out of SL...Wood and Lewis were ready to award alicence.

This is why McManus has asked for transparency and control in the future. Another example of incompetence, Lewis and Wood (RFL) did not have any creditable control or transparency of a certain Club when certain players were operating a season on Holiday Visas.

Credit to McManus for raising the issue publicly. Wood and Lewis much prefer secrecy!