Along with most other people on here I thought poor old Wakefield were going to get the bullet this morning.

Whilst initially I thought Crusaders going was the right thing I think if we consider the bigger picture the ripples from this decision might be felt far further afield and for longer than we realise.

If the club do enter the championship and carry on and show an improvement in things both on and off the pitch then when it's time for the next round of franchises given the RFL's thoughts on 'expand the game at all costs' you have to think that they will be hot favourites to come back again.. at the expense of clubs like Halifax, Leigh and any other heartland sides who might have Superleague aspirations.

The Welsh international RL side is pretty poorly supported as it is... todays decision won't do anything to help raise the profile of the game in Wales. It was occassionally mentioned on Wales tonight on TV and they showed highlights on the sports reports sometimes.. if there were any highlights. Less people will be interested in the game.. if thats possible. Will the Crusaders supporters now follow South Wales Scorpions? I think not. Professional RL in Wales has now totally reverted back to being 'that game they play up north with only 13 players'

With rumours of Crusaders players not getting paid what sort of sides (if any) will turn up for the remaining fixtures? Will this have any bearing on the final table? If they don't play out their remaining games will the opposition automatically get the 2 points?


I'd sooner Quins were the team that lost out today. Neither side offered SL much but for me Crusaders offered marginally more than Quins.

and you were doing so well until that last line

Unfortunately for you Barry Cru dont have a bloke willing to write off 2 million a year.

Do you think Quins offer more than Crusaders did?

Seriously?

its not that i disagree as such. Just that i was kind of hoping your usual 'quins out' segway was not going to appear. although deep down i suspected it probably would.

Ahhhhh right!


Do you reckon the Vikings will pick up any disaffected p*ssed off former Crusaders fans?

Or will they just bypass Widnes and travel on to Warrington?

strangely i did see a guy walking around widnes in a Crusaders shirt the other day but we dont associate with such deviants.

cue visons of a two wheeled scooter thingy with a "quins out" promotional wrap. I think the word you were stretching for was segue.

The bigger picture is that Moss and co in Wrexham will let Cru die out and will wind up Wrexham fc. This letting them sell the ground for student flats.

A serious post and then the second to last sentence, but I'd agree that this will affect the clubs and the game more than the "Well, that really fracks up my plans!" angle on player recruitment.

there will be now welsh/wrexham club at all next year

This decision will almost certainly be the death of our club.

The sad part is it seemed that this was done purposely.

We were one of the first clubs to put in our application but it took them until the day before franchises were announced to withdraw the submission. Pull the other one it has bells on it. Do they honestly think we believe it took them until the 11th hour to 'assess' finances? No, I don't believe that either. What it did do, however, was leave no time whatsoever for the RFL or anybody else connected with the club to seek alternatives.

Wrexham Village now have a club that has basically gone bust and a ground and Wrexham Football Club that are seemingly separate entities. They now have to offer Wrexham Supporters Trust the club for £1 that will pull on the heartstrings and hey presto they have a ground or more importantly the land under it to sell.

I could see it happening a while ago and asked the RFL, I think on a message on here among other places, to keep a very close eye on things. I'm not sure how they could have guarded against this but we have been well and truly shafted.

Well you haven't. Not by the RFL.

Unless you think the RFL were single handedly responsible for you not having any supporters in South or North Wales and losing most of your games in Bridgend then losing most of them in Wrexham

The Wrexham football fans have been shouting for months how badly the owners were running things....for some reason I think the Crusaders fans thought they were exempt from their shoddy business management. I'm sure the decision todaycame as no surprise to the Wrexham fc fans.

Who mentioned that the RFL did it you idiot?

It is clear that I meant we have been shafted by the owners.

Not at all.

Wrexham FC had an alternative in that they had £800,000 (estimate) in the supporters trust to make offers to buy the club whereas Crusaders didn't have a trust never mind any money in it.

We knew they were dodgy, I have posted here suggesting as such, we just didn't have too much of an alternative. I still think they'll take Wrexham out too one way or another. I can see them offering WFC without the ground to the trust for £1, as I've said earlier. Once this happens asset stripped and they can sell the ground to the highest bidder.

But yes you were , 3 years ago , that is when your fate was sealed

If we didn't get Super League 3 years ago then the club were gone anyway.

Samuel was not willing to finance the club beyond that year, and for another three, if we didn't get Super League.

As it was he got fed up with the club after a year of Super League but we would have gone under had we not been given a Super League place and that will be the case now.

Which just tells us it was a bad decision to set the thing up as they did in the first place

The only way a Welsh club will become sustainable and prosper is if it is funded centrally and openly from the RFL , and even now i'd take that if it was done properly , and openly

In all honesty we needed a sugar daddy like Quins.

If we had that we would come on leaps and bounds more than them but as it was it wasn't meant to be.

I won't turn my back on RL though. I'll still watch South Wales Scorpions and will try to get up the heartlands to see a few games over the season.

Believe it or not but a lot of Crusaders fans are considering following Catalans when they are playing in the UK. There is one positive and gave me a smile earlier when I read it even though I was feeling numb inside. I still am if the truth be told.

sad day for rugby league in wales!

I support expansion and dont wanna see an M62 competition so didnt wanna see them drop out.

Hope the kids in N Wales still stick with Rugby League!!

To be fair ,most clubs existed before the M62 was built.

The bigger question for me is how will this affect the welsh RL team ,will they still be playing in the 4 nations this year.

For the sake of the game in Wales they must do. If the game at Wrexham needs to be moved so be it but it's imperative the likes of Scorpions, Cougars etc are not unduly hindered by Crusaders going and competing in the 4 Nations has to be priority.

Since when did Crusaders RL become Wales RL in tournaments?