for the time being,all the super league is interested in is new stadia, at least by widnes getting in it will help the the balance of lancashire and yorkshire clubs

No I'm not in the least bit nervous. I must admit I was extremely nervous last time around and I would feel the same again but for our new stadium now being built.

Personally I think there is an imbalance in Superleague with too many yorkshire clubs and i feel one of them will miss out. Wakefield and Castleford have really let down the RL with years of false promises about new stadia and no result (Probably through no fault of their own). I feel this will give both clubs a big black mark. Further to this Wakey went into administration and Castleford are now offering timely' big spin' with further promises due to all the setbacks and the RL will see straight through their desperate exaggerations. This 50 million ground sale must be the spin of the century, I read on the Cas forum they are selling Whelden Road for no more than 6m-6.5m and the rest must include the cost of the supermarket, the new stadium and god knows what else they can add to it. I'm sure both clubs will eventually get new stadiums but I can't see either happening before 2013.

I was of the same opinion last time around that Superleague can't afford two teams so close together, especially considering it's not a massively populated area. My opinion hasn't changed and before someone mentions Hull I see them as stronger clubs financially with both clubs attracting good support over the years.

I think the RL will consider Salford to have more potential for attracting new support in a new stadium in a more prominent area of Greater Manchester, offering such a large conurbation of potential. This said if we do get the new license it's up to the club to fully maximise the opportunity a new stadium could offer or I fear we could be a future casualty in 2014.

As much as I've always liked Wakefield as a club If I was a betting man my money would firmly be on them losing out this time around. (On the grounds they have two black marks to Castleford's one, plus Cas are a stronger team than Wakey at this moment)

Should be Crusaders out end of story.
South of Wales Franchise went bust so up sticks to North Wales and go bust again.
They should never have been in in the first place and now FFS we have Widnes coming in (allegedly) a club about 20 miles from Wrexham.
Expansion my ar$e Wales is a Rah Rah country end of

Rant over

BTW Barrow for me, would love a trip to the lakes every year to watch RL

I agree but I just know it won't happen. The Crusaders, Catalans and Quins are here to stay despite what many feel about them with their special priviledges. Is sport not meant to be a level playing field?

No problem with Quins, great day out and they are producing players.
Catalans the same plus it has RL heritage.
Crusaders....
fkin waste of space, Bridgend was a $hithole and Wrexham is the same.
3 years of lies and RL funding, utter disgrace

In fairness it's taken many years at Fulham/London/Quins but it does seem they are working very hard to grow the game in the capital and develop a few local players. Perhaps the RL think if they give it 30 years with Crusaders then they may bring 2 or 3 local lads through?

Fair point well made

Personally I don't really have an issue with 'expansion' as an aim but just the desperation for it to be in Super League and that's what seem's to cause most problems!

Widnes can run a full academy in Champ, so not too hard and wouldn't begrudge RFL helping in lower leagues too.

Was thinking internationally, PNG 4th best side in World? Never had a Pro RL club! NZ World Champions... only have one!

So is it as desperate as we / RFL like to make out?

Wakefield are going to lose the licence 100% Poor Stadium and they recently went into administration, they WILL be replaced with Widnes because of their strong academy and quality of stadia.

But the RFL need to wake up and stop letting Crusaders,Harlequins and Catalan Dragons have as many overseas players as they want.

Why should they be allowed to bend the rules for those 3 clubs its a joke. Its a huge disadvantage for all the other clubs.

Play by the rules or get out the league!

The RFL are like the British Government one day was great, now gives everything to everyone else!

You can see how far Salford have come along because a debate about should Salford have a franchise no longer has somebody saying "they need to change their name to MANCHESTER"

I, to be honest, am concerned but not worried: Wakefield have dug a hole and (imo) saved us. The new stadium, in which we are to be paying guests remember, and our work in Manchester should save us. Against this is our history in that we have not set the leagues alight (whereas Wakey have) or made the needed progress year on year (as Cas have).

Strangely our fine finanacial status and record will not be seen as important as it should: it sems that all sports clubs are expected to live beyond their means.

My main worry is the looming links with Peel and with Sale: both are predators of the nastiest type.

Speculation on the Wakey board is that 2 championship clubs are coming up.

I know that's probably not true but its apparently doing the rounds amongst certain jounalists

Harlequins have been in existence 30 years, and have 6 overseas players in their squad this year.

Catalans have been in existence 6 years, and have 6 overseas players in their squad this year.

Crusaders have been in existence 6 years, and have 12 overseas players in their squad this year.

We've been in existence over 100 years, and have 7 overseas players in the squad, and it would have been 9 if the Leo Latu deal hadn't fallen through and if Bailey hadn't retired.

The RFL need to wake up and stop letting us sign as many overseas players as we want. Why should we be allowed to bend the rules? It's a joke. It's a huge disadvantage for all the other clubs.

Play by the rules or get out the league!

Depending on how you judge this, Hull KR have 10, Wigan have 8, Hull FC have 7 and most others have six in one way or another.

I don't want to appear a smart a*se here but both Catalans and Harlequins have at least 8 (not 6) non French/British born players to my reckoning.

Who are the 8 Harlequins players you are taking exception with?

I'm not all I'm saying is Quins have 8 non british born players to my knowledge. Dorn, Bailey, Randall, Temata, Howell, Krasniqi, Kouparitsas and Bryan. I don't have a problem with it I was just correcting a previous poster who said they had 6. And before you go to the trouble of explaining that some don't count on the quota I know.

I'm not disagreeing with anything you say, but:

How many overseas players were in the seventeen last weekend, or the week end before? Answer: 5, and 4 the week before. When the calibre of the overseas players is that of Cashmere, Holdsworth and Patten, there's no arguement against including them in our seventeen. Nero, also, adds to the squad, but I'm not sure about Mark Henry anymore. I'm of the opinion he's ok going forward, but not the best defensively or particularly quick, and we really should be able to find a British player of the same quality.

On the other hand we did have Leo Latu and Bailey on the books, plus we've still got Feka and Anderson, but would the latter two break into the first team right now. I would hope not, and Godwin appears a much better player for us then Leo Latu, probably, would have been. Our recent team selection has been far better than the summer recruitment drive. There seems some confusion over who decides what we players, but we certainly appeared to have far too many 30 plus players coming into the squad.

Anway, my point was, the number of overseas players does need capping. Although, it shouldn't stop any SL club bringing in genuine quality Aus/NZ players. Young players are coming through in abundance, whether this is due to franchising or better coaching is debateable. It could be said part of McRae's failing as our head coach was his old school method of finding an experienced Aussie to plug the gap.

It's very easy to criticise some of the recent signings but have you considered how difficult it must be to attract certain players to the Willows at this present time. I'm sure the club are very ambitious in who they approach but that's the easy part. Let's be honest the club aren't going to make it public knowledge who and how many turned them down. We only got Luke Patten because of DJ!

Let's hope Salford will be a much more attractive proposition if we can gain some momentum in the new stadium.

I'm not too sure about that, we currently only have 4 of our 27 man squad who are 30 or over and those are Patten, Cashmere & Nero (3 you've mentioned for the right reasons) and the other is Anderson. 19 of the squad are English / Irish (i.e. home grown) compare that to Saints, Leeds, Wigan & Warrington and we fair much better for 30+ players.

The average age of our squad at this moment is time is 24.84. (and thats not including Marriott, Davidson and Holmes)

I'm nervous!

You just never know what the RFL are going to come up with, until we get the nod for another 3 years I'm always going to have my doubts!!

The problem is that 2 of the 8 which you have identified are UK developed juniors. The orginal poster said overseas players not born overseas. I would have thought that most contributors would take overseas to mean developed overseas like the guys we have and the 6 Quins RL have. Clearly they are not overseas players if they are UK citizens who started playing the game as juniors over here.

I was responding to an earlier poster who was whining on about Catalans, Harlequins and Crusaders being teams full of overseas players. It's received wisdom that the newer clubs are just packed full of Aussies, and the people bleating about it don't bother to check whether it's true or not. The truth is, we are no better than them, and in some cases, worse.