The Championship is the new Yorkshire league now; eight out of ten clubs!

That makes Leigh the expansion club! What will Starbug think?

I absolutely agree with you that there does appear to be a double standard often when it comes to the divisions and how they're treated particularly when it comes to disciplinaries but we do not have the full ins and outs of this situation.

What we do know is Barrow's infringements are over a four year period and appear to be a succession of decisions to ignore the rules. With this in mind I don't think they can be outraged about the decision, more of their club's actions under Des Johnson. Whether Wigan were fortunate to stay up as many suspect they were is irrelevant to that.

I'll reserve judgement until the facts come out.

Ah you know the details, would you like to share?

Well it's clear that 'what everybody knew' has proven to be correct, hasn't it?!

And our only non-Yorkshire away game.....is at the LSV!

No, he's reserving judgement until the facts come out.

another bitter wire.

But that's not true, is it Chris?

Quote ="tb"But that's not true, is it Chris?'" What isnt true? Championship clubs only have 1 quota spot. www.loverugbyleague.com/feature_ ... ained.html

Quote ="tb"But that's not true, is it Chris?'" What isnt true? Championship clubs only have 1 quota spot. www.loverugbyleague.com/feature_ ... ained.html

At least their local derby is VERY local.

The Championship and CC1 need to be regionalised with the winner of the eastern and western divisions meeting in the Grand Final. The current structure of CC1 is an absolute joke. If this was Super League there would be hell on!

Yep. It certainly is true.

Oops tb. Again

Keep providing the entertainment, one day you may raise to the dizzying heights of smokey ta

So you are saying the RFL chickened out?

No it's not. Scholars and Gateshead enjoyed exactly the same enlarged quota as Crusaders. ie a larger quota for teams in expansion areas where there's not (yet) the underlying player production infrastructure

¿Que?

I think the RFL chickened out on that one.

So you've given me three (completely irrelevant) exceptions to the rule, but that doesn't change the fact that the majority are on one quota spot, or that this is a stupid diversion which is irrelevant to the issue of whether crusaders were cheating by playing quota players who were not eligable to work in this country.

ETA: I hasten to add neither Skolars nor Gateshead were even IN the championship that year or any year. Should we discuss Bartercard Cup quota places too?

At the moment it's only one Welsh club as, unless both I and the Crusaders' website have missed something, there's been no confirmation of Crusaders being admitted to CC1.

But 'the majority are on one quota spot' isn't what you said. You said: "the rest of the league had only one quota spot." (and for the sake of argument, I assumed that when you said 'league' you meant the league, not simply one division of it



It may seem petty and pedantic - but when it comes to assessing claims that one club was cheating by playing more overseas players than any other club was allowed to, the fact that there were other clubs with the same quota is actually pretty important.

This is true

It doesn't "seem" petty and pedantic. It [iis[/i petty and pedantic.

When discussing "the league", we're discussing the one we're talking about, not every single one of them.

The claim was not about them cheating the quota (although why would they when they had such an exemption?), it was about playing none eligable players.

We can all speculate on whether they were cheating the cap by having super league quality players on their pay roll, inflating their crowds, whatever, that's speculation. We can however say with certainty that they cheated.

Wigan breached the salary cap in 2006 and were docked 6 points in the 2007 comp. Barrow breached the cap in 2010 and were docked 6 2011 points in July this year.Exactly equal treatment (actually Barrow go off lighter their six points equals two matches, Wigan's equalled three matches.

Then Barrow "were found guilty of systemic breaches of operational rules over a four-year period following a lengthy investigation by the RFL's compliance department.

"In addition to breaching the salary cap, the club failed to record in player contracts all financial benefits or benefits in kind."

Which led to today's punishment.

Do you really think Wigan should have been docked 29 points and had a director barred from the game for eight years for not doing what Barrow have been found guilty of doing?