a few hundred down on the 2500 needed,which is still nowhere near enough for sle imo.

at the moment the club have reduced the price of ST's in the hope of attracting new customers.
i'm sure when the season starts the club will be doing a few promotions in an atempt to get more people in.

they were good enough to get out of that division TWICE. You had the opportunity before in SL and failed miserably thats why you are where you are at the moment, unlike Cas what has managed the play offs in their extended run in the SL and thats with using their own junior development not players on dual contract, sorry squire the only thing you and the number of other clubs in the championship can compete with Cas is with your posh toilets.

Who's hacked Chissit's account?

I have a lot of time for the club and MOST of its fans, just the odd exception to a couple of them

Whoever it was managed to remember the trademark "squire". I always imagine chissitt tugging his forelock to the Baron of Wakefield or somesuch when reading his posts.

That would be Bigalf from Cas

Oi!! Keep me out of this thank's

I haven't said anything about the Widnes franchise bid. HTH

Having a new (ish) stadium is not the only element of the franchise application. HTH

Absolutely spot on, but I wasn't ever saying that Widnes shouldn't be in SL (they should, imo), just that I don't understand why Cas are amongst the favourites for the drop when they have a sound business platform (without a sugar daddy), consistently challenge for the playoffs, and have one of the best youth systems in the league.

Thanks for that mate...

My point is that if you are doing all you can to follow the franchise ethos, and Red Hall decide without seeing anybodys application bid that it is time for a change how can anyone be happy with that decision?
By announcing it the way they have it makes a mockery, you could have the situation of everyone sitting on an 'A' grade and someone still dropping out if the RFL stuck to their words.

Is this another thead where 90% of the posts are works of pure fantasy?

It is easier to get into the playoffs with the top 8 guaranteed, and your academy was not in group A like Widnes, who also won it.To be honest Castleford always brought a decent away support to Widnes.So if i was picking the weak clubs i say Wakefield,Salford,Celtic, and Harlequins but they seem to like expansion the RFL. In my eyes Swinton,Wigan, and Oldham are close to Manchester,and makes me laugh that Salford are saved with this tag.In my opinion Salford is mainly Manchester United, and breeds football.

With 27,595 posts you should know better than most on here, it will probably help with you posting on the Hudds board as well

Thats true, the amount of utter guff posters from other clubs come out with about the Giants truly is quite impressive at times.

Point 1, the RFL press release mentioned on this thread stated that a Chp club would be promoted IF they met the criteria, not one was guaranteed to come up anyway regardless which seems to have been banded about on these forums a lot.

Point 2, if it was simply a pretty seats race then both Leigh and Widnes would have been in 2 years ago, its not, it never has been and never will be

Try as I may I cannot make head nor tail of this thread especially the underlined bit, I was also under the impression that there was no league status for the u18s this season so how can they have won it. As a matter of interest where were the Widnes academy last year when Wakey won it against such opposition as Wigin,Wire and Cas, now if you had won it in that company then you could have been really proud of the achievement. Cannot comment on the rest though cannot understand it really

Spot on there squire, we can't be wrong all the time though,

or can we?

Right then so how much of your hard earned money are you prepared to wager that Widnes will not get a licence in 2011

Widnes will be in on performance across the board, not just pretty seats.
leighs stadium's nicer and technologically better so why werent they in 2008? Because although a stadium and facilities are important they arent the be all and end all. theres probably 5 or 6 chp clubs with better grounds than Belle Vue. Simples

firstly, most of them were minors last year when wakey won it, so they would probably have been in school. certainly not old enuff to play in the academy last year (many of them) and secondly the only difference between our academy teams season and wakeys last year is that wakey got a trophy for their efforts. widnes finished top of the pile, they won it, just didnt get a shiney piece of metal for it. oh and you mean winning it in the company of Leeds, Wigan and st helens? yes, obvioulsy hammering those teams means nothing because we didnt beat wakey. of course. oh hang on, wakey did so badly in the league portion of the season they didnt get into the top group with widnes, thats why. by that logic wigan are because they didnt beat wakey in the grand final.

Tell me then other than playing in a better stadium, what exactly will Widnes bring into SL that both Wakey and Cas cannot provide and I mean in actual facts and not in your opinion, and seeing as you would not disagree with what I said I assume you think they will be promoted sorry given a licence. Widnes will be told 3/4 month in advance of the unfortunate one or possibly two SL teams, that being the case how do the RFL know that their bid will be better than those already in SL, nobody will deny Widnes deserve a shot in SL but so do the rest of them, no more so than Fax who it just so happens happen to have won the comp Widnes have been striving to win for the last two year, Oh and as for better grounds in the championship, you are pushing against an open door here squire we Wakey fans have to stand in it every other week so its just possible we are more qualified to talk about that than you are

as you say simples.

Last season the majority of the Wigin youngsters that played in the reserves were also entitled to play in the academy. Credit to the club when they played Wakey in the final instead of putting the likes of Farrell and co in they stood by those youngsters that played there throughout the season otherwise the Wigin Reserves who went through the season unbeaten would have played and won it comfortably, so nobody at Wakey thought that they were poop just you editorialising to strengthen your pitiful argument, oh and for what its worth quite a few of that winning side that got signed professionally at Wakey are still eligable for the academy, but unlike some clubs they progress to a higher standard hth.

That criteria , when announced was a GF appearance or a NRC win only , so yes they were guaranteeing a club would come up , the ' extra ' criteria only surfaced later

Whether they repeat this guarantee next time is very doubtful

The Championship Chairmen were happy with that decision , although I doubt it will happen again

What if you are a championship club doing all you can to follow the franchise ethos ?