If Salford moved to Sunderland then came back to Salford for two games how many would you lot get?

Interesting that here we have a thread slagging off the number of Crusaders fans who failed to 130 miles from Wrexham to Neath and yet on another thread, we have Wakefield and Castleford fans claiming that they refuse to travel less than 8 miles to Glasshoughton or Newmarket.

Why be unrealistic though? At the end of the day you are just not going to develop a strong SL club in many UK cities no matter how hard you try. Birmingham, Newcastle, London, and countries like Scotland and Ireland are simply not interested enough in the game because there are already sports in place there which are part of their heritage and culture, you will not change that with any amount of marketing, free tickets or whatever.

There is no way Rovers will ever struggle crowd-wise in SL, because whilst we had (IMO) a slightly disappointing crowd on Sat night, it was still higher then every attendance yesterday, so I'm sure we'll be fine.

Re Keighley, it's just my opinion like I said.

There was more at Dewsbury and Batley.

The year that Keighley won the (pre superleague) second division, six teams were relegated from the first division, four of whom (Featherstone, Salford, Wakefield and Widnes) had finished the season above the two relegation spots (Hull and Doncaster). Did Keighley have a better claim on a top division spot than the four teams finishing outside the relegation spots? For info, Salford then won the division in 1995-6 without promotion.

No not at all, but they had a much, much better claim then London IMO.





You sure about Salford? Always thought Keighley won back-to-back titles.

Not only is it not even remotely interesting, it's also not even remotely relevant.

This weekend was one of the worst for attandance figures for some years as only 1 game got over 10k

Reads more accurately now- Since when have the RFL had millions to prop a club up-last year I believe it made 17k or something equally insignificant

But you believe what you will- Stick to talking drunken cr*p with your mates in the social-they will believe you-Shouldn't you be talking about the absurd amount the BP chairman is about to get- think of a number and tell your mates

Wrong! On every level Wrong! And just in case...wrong again. The inland Revenue were never paid...so nobody cleared a debt. The Broncos offered to pay up....the Inland Revenue said no, they folded and the SL chairmen voted to let us stay at the top table. If you want to point the finger...point it at The RFL/SKY...but be careful, one of these organisations gives you a dispensation for extra overseas players, the other 1.2 million a year

I am not being unrealistic. I love this game, Rovers & all the small clubs & grounds but the day uncle Mo signed us up to super league & full time pro squads the writing was on the wall. Lots of cubs including ours struggle to make ends meet, the big spenders like Leeds still loose players to Union. the only way forward is to spread the game in large citys that can support teams in large stadia with the oportunity to have other revenue streams other than match days & if the spread is not over large areas of the UK we are stuffed as the real money from TV & sponsors will elude us. The salary cap is keeping the lid on things at the moment but it will have to rise or Union? Australia will take the best players.

I'm absolutely positive that Salford won the second tier in both the 1995-6 winter season, and the 1996 summer season (ending Wigan's cup run in between). Whether Keighley won back to back before that I don't know, but doubt it as there was promotion in place in 1993-94 and it was Workington and Doncaster who made it to Divison 1.

As opposed to £12million a year that other clubs in non-RL areas perhaps receive?





Gutterfax the special dispensation thing is a non-starter as far as Quins knocking Rovers is concerned - your club survived on it for many, many years hence you having a strong side between 96-99 with the likes of Matterson, Barwick, Retchless etc.

Please accept my apologies, you're right, had a look on the Cougars website and they won the title in 94-95 but didn't do a back-to-back, sorry.

Won`t argue there.

I don't always agree with Roofs, but he has the honesty to admit when he is wrong. Quite a few other posters could learn from that.

How right you are sir. A club founded in 1980 needed to be built around australians when it joined super league for the first time in 1995, 15 years later and exactly the same applies to a team founded in 1882 when they joined in 2007 125 years later


I mean to say, HKR was purely an amateur set up before 2007 wasn't it?

But after 11 years of (undeserved) SL status for Broncos/Quins, we step in in 2007 and immediately draw 3-4 times Quins for games, even after years in the wilderness the potential was always there for two strong Hull clubs in this [u[irugby[/i[/u city.

But his point stands.
It's a pity you have to go asking the RFL for dispensations.
How many overseas players is it? 8? 9?

Dispensation for 1 player, sure more controversial events have happened in SL the last 14 years.



Probably got 8 or 9 overseas players at the moment yes, but considering it's only our 4th season in SL is that really bad? What team has come up and managed to be successful without overseas players



Like I've said before though, the production line is without doubt underway - Welham and Watts are first team regulars (when not injured obviously), Latus has a long way to go but is learning and shows enthusiasm, and more will gradually be brought through, + we have plenty of English players we've brought in like Briscoe, Fox, Murrell, Cockayne, Walker etc.

That do?

His point is absurd. SL was a paradigm shift in the sport of RL. Whatever any clubs did prior to that (and pretty much all were run badly when assessed by the current franchise criteria, extreme short termism on and off the field, no business sense at all) is rendered meaningless when compared to the guaranteed financial resources available to clubs with the inception of SL.

Or if you insist on persuing this line of argument, why choose this particular period of HKR's history to condemn them for playing overseas players? Put another way, in only two years of a 125 year history, HKR have sought dispensation to play additional overseas players. One of which had played all his professional career in the English game for a number of clubs and I doubt anyone would be churlish enough to suggest that the pleasure he gave to thousands of people and his devotion and commitment to English RL was not deserving of one extra season in the top flight of RL.

Proof that franchising does't work

Look at the Widnes v leighs attendance figure, from this weeks games despite Widnes playing poorly and losing to Batley the week before. Leigh took about 800.