What a totally embarrassing thread.

Really, how bitter are some people?

What have Swinton go to do with this?

Maybe we should merge with Sheffield.

Being lectures by a Huddersfield fan about finishing bottom and not being relegated! I've heard it all now!

No Wilky got is last trophy.

There are alot of people who seem to have contracted a very unhealthy obsession with Salford.

Does anyone know they phone number of that very good Doctor from Saint Helens way he may be available privately for a small fee. :-$

I assume that your comment is aimed at me?

Not only is this my 36th contribution to this forum, (and I don't post anywhere else on rlfans) but I have been following the club's fortunes since my son signed an Academy contract in 2009.

Nor do I follow any other SL or Championship club, but follow the fortunes of many.

I've just come in and have not read beyond this headline.

I think you just might live to regret your post. But then again you might not, unless you find a new ground, investor or you're not bailed out from "central funds" yet again. If your team is around next/next after that.. etc, we'll see.

Bloody hell talk about us not getting crowds, you have enough Antipodeans in Earls Court to fill your stadium/ park/ heath/car park many times over week in and week out.

Make the most of your fifteen minutes of fame mate as it just might be your last.

My comments not aimed at anyone in particular, other than those who have recently taken an interest in our club and hd a go. Apologies if you think they were aimed specifically at you, it was a generic comment and I will still await with interest.

How is 'failure' being rewarded?



Then what would be the point of relegating a club, causing it to lose the vast majority of its players (mostly the better ones) in the process, only for it to return a season later, much weakened?



A closed shop? Entry to Super League is currently based on a system with a three year cycle. Can you tell me what percentage of the three year licence reviews held so far have resulted in no clubs being elevated into Super League?

I've had the misfortune to go to Feathertone twice this season and while I could have the banter with some great people, the ground could not possibly meet Super League standards. A full size rugby league pitch is 100m x 68m. Featherstone's pitch is barely 80m x 55m - school size, and I doubt that the ground can hold the minimum capacity for SL. So if Fev want to move up, they need to sort out their ground.

Interestingly, when I started to take notice of pitch size after being at Featherstone, I was hard pressed to think of one which was full size. Even Headingly isn't, nor the John Smith at Hudds.

So by finishing Bottom you don't see that retaining a place in the elite league is indeed a reward for failure, it happens in the division directly below SL and also throughout the football leagues.

Can you name one club in the last three year licence review who have lost their licence when rightly they should have Bradford spring to mind as do Wakefield along with Salford and London for varying reasons some due to financial issues and some due to playing issues.

Apart from your inabilty to at least make the Doctor look like he's holding the spoon, the celebrations from his fist are down to the fact he'd just beaten your team.

Comical genius.

However, if relegation was a risk, who's to say we wouldn't have simply copped the 10k fine and kept the two league points that would have kept us off the bottom?


Besides, the post below is the perfect factual response to the title of his thread...

feel free to post links to the previous times Londons SL team has been financially bailed out from central funds.

Good Luck for 2014...

Interesting that Widnes didn't get all this attention and trolling when they finished bottom last season...

So doing nothing is a reward? Presumably, then, the only acceptable action is some form of punishment. I'm guessing you're a Daily Mail reader.

And when I don't pick you up on your frequent failure to correctly spell common words like "you're" and "their", you feel you're (that's the one to use there - as is 'there' there, by the way) being rewarded? Bizarre.


Really? And how many of those examples you give involve promoting a club from a part-time competition into its fully funded full-time top flight?


As I said originally, licences are awarded on the basis of a club's performance over a three year period. So, let's try again: Entry to Super League is currently based on a system with a three year cycle. Can you tell me what percentage of the three year licence reviews held so far have resulted in no clubs being elevated into Super League?

My sincere apologies, that's what happens when you use Smart phones these days........paper don't tend to read them since they are full rubbish half the time.

You clearly enjoy franchising which is fine but does take away the competitive edge you surely have to agree and if sky monies was fairly distributed don't you think it would make for a better rugby league all round or do you just see it that the chosen few should benefit.

It's only because you at Salford have a new owner with money who wants to improve your club and get them back to the top. It'll be like this for any team and I wish us at Cas would have someone with plenty of money come in and help us ( too much to ask ? ) !!!!

It's not that I 'enjoy' franchising, just that I accept that for the time being, given the massive disparity between the full-time clubs and the part-time ones, it's the best system we have. It elevates clubs into the full-time competition based on an analysis of the club as a whole over a suitable period. This, in turn, allows clubs to plan over a three year period rather than just live year to year. This doesn't make it a closed shop though, does it? To answer the question you won't answer, there have been [ino[/i occasions when the three yearly licence review has led to the maintaining of the status quo. Not one. That's a strange 'closed shop' isn't it?

However, ideally, yes, the money should be spread more evenly throughout the game, the gap shouldn't be so great and there should be automatic P&R, but the sport doesn't have sufficient funds to do that. If we spread the relatively meagre Sky money more evenly, how many clubs would still be able to spend up to the full salary cap? And when clubs can't afford to pay top players what those players (or their agents) perceive to be the 'going rate', we run the risk of losing them to the wealthier NRL or RU.

That right there is the problem. Rugby League doesn't exist in isolation and, perhaps uniquely amongst sports, faces stiff competition for its primary resource - its players - from a more cashed up rival sport and from an equally more cashed up rival competition within the same sport.

And sitting beneath that is the primary problem: we don't have enough money (and yet, bizarrely, when someone with money [idoes[/i come into the sport, he gets criticised by fans of other clubs). That problem needs to be solved before we bring back P&R. Unfortunately, the clubs or the governing body or whoever made this ridiculous decision has decided to ignore that particular elephant in the room and, instead, concentrate on bringing in a system that drops a full-time club into a part-time competition with the associated massive reduction in funding and the inevitable complete restructure of the staff, while, on the other tapered end of this particular turd, elevating a part-time club into a full-time competition where it can, in all likelihood, flounder for a year and present a guaranteed four points to each of the other clubs in that competition (six to the one that meets them in the Magic Weekend) before dropping back down again, laden, no doubt, with a big bunch of debt. And this will all be based on the performance of just one aspect of the clubs involved - their playing squads (and only the first team squad, at that) - over a period of just one year. Just what is the fecking point of that?

[iCapisce[/i?

I accept and agree a large proportion of what you have written but lets just look at the championship on the last day of the season this year...York were relegated leaving Keighley, Swinton, Barrow and Hunslet going into the last match of the season fighting for retention of their ( see their not there) status as a championship club.

It brought a meaning to very game leading up to that weekends fixtures which you have to agree is completely lacking in Super league ( I hate that title..no reference to Rugby league at all) in fairness once clubs like Salford Castleford and London were knocked out of the Challenge cup what meaning did their season have.

I firmly believe that in all sincerity Rugby League is unsustainable as a full time sport which unless as you point out you get a benefactor who is prepared to splash the cash, once that happens you instantly get a two tier competition similar to what there is now.

Perhaps automatic promotion and relegation may not be best but to deny a club like Featherstone the chance asking them to wait potentially three years before being accepted is also very unfair, anything can happen in that three year window so which season do you choose as the one which grants them the chance. You say I am avoiding the question and to a degree I am since without looking the answer up I can't answer how many teams have been uplifted on each cycle but again I ask you how many have been dropped back down.?

Did you have this view last season when there was no relegation from the championship?

Yes absolutely and had Swinton finished the season in the bottom two I would still have the same view.

Well done on the spelling. Smart phones have this amazing ability to spell better when the mistakes are pointed out to their operators.

To business: You're focusing on one particular year when the relegation battle went on to the final day of the season. How often is relegation decided weeks before the end of the season, and how often is it decided by results elsewhere? Had there been relegation from SL last season, Widnes would have been down with weeks remaining. No last day relegation battle. No finger nail biting series of matches with the outcome depending on so many factors. Nothing. They'd have just quietly dropped off the perch. Where were these 'meaningful games' you seek then? That's what happens when one team is considerably weaker than all the others. And yet that's what you're advocating: a system where the top division has one uncompetitive club and where the only way to avoid the inevitable is for that club to spend more than it's got in a bid to stave off the drop. That just doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

(Incidentally, on the subject of 'meaningful games', it always seems to be the fans of clubs not involved in those games who have an opinion on whether they're meaningful or not. Salford's performance in the meaningless game against Hull a couple of weeks ago was one of the best we've seen this season, in a game where the result was determined by a try to Hull in the last minute. It seemed pretty meaningful to everyone involved, so who are you to say it wasn't?)


Are you advocating going back to part-time then? Jeez. Bye bye Tomkins, Bye bye Chase, Bye bye O'Loughlin, Charnley, Hall, Watkins.... Bye bye chances of ever beating Australia.

We have enough funds to sustain a limited number of full-time clubs. We need to be looking to increase funding so more clubs can become full-time, not regressing to some "straight aht o' t' pit an' straight in t' team" rose-tinted part-time past, surely.

If not (and surely you aren't) then we're stuck with the two tier competition. P&R won't bridge that divide.


Under franchising, clubs aren't judged on one season, so there's no season to choose. They're judged on the three year period as a whole. Featherstone have, this season, ticked one of the boxes that was required for them to be considered for elevation and they aren't being denied anything. What you appear to want, though, is for Featherstone (or whoever finishes top of the Championship) to be elevated from a part-time competition to a full-time one on the basis of one solitary season, and on one solitary aspect of that club: its playing squad. And it's [ithe club[/i that gets promoted, remember, not the squad (in fact, it's often the case that the majority of the playing squad gets left behind). So why shouldn't access to SL be based on the [iclub's[/i performance rather than the squad's?

It's also worth noting that you - in keeping with all advocates of P&R - see the P but not the R. You claim it's unfair to deny Featherstone promotion. No mention of the relegated team. What happens to them? What happens to a club that has a full-time set up but which has, on the basis of one poor season (or in Salford's case, on the basis of accidentally having an extra player on the field for 20 seconds or so) has to make umpteen people redundant so it can restructure to a part-time operation, only to reverse that entire process nine months later because they're promoted again into the full-time competition, but in a much weakened state. Where is your sense of fairness there?

Clearly you have your view and I mine, what you have overlooked either through ignorance or a lack of vision from anything other than SL is that Featherstone have finished top of the pile for three years on the bounce so really you would expect them to be rewarded wouldn't you agree.?