Push it back til French is fit!

No urgency from clubs that have missed loads of games to get some mid week fixtures lined up.

I imagine they’ll just creep over the 18 games and be fresh as daisys for the playoffs.

Extending this season disrupts next season when the World Cup will now [iallegedly [/i will be. Considering we want to have home/Euro internationals at seasons end and the disruption already to next season which could have to be cut short to get the RLWC in before FIFA WC I personally think we end this season as advertised.

For the past couple of seasons, the game has been in exceptional circumstances and turmoil and judging by some of the other comments, some supporters are in agreement.

But, you can never pleased those who expect everything to be as it was up till 2019!

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Your post is fixed

Bang on that Nicky

Are there even any attempts being made to rearrange the postponed fixtures? I know we' don't look anywhere near good enough to challenge at the end of the year anyway but not great if we go into the playoffs having played five more games than most other clubs.

I agree. I can accept postponements but at the moment they look more cancellations than that. It makes a mockery of the league if these missed fixtures aren’t either replayed or points go to the team that didn’t cancel.

If the league table just showed points won and not percentages then the teams who have not played many games would make strenuous efforts to rearrange postponed fixtures.
Wigan have played more games than any other team and the fatigue is showing.
I commend the players for the effort displayed at each match considering how lightweight our young forwards are. They must be aching, carrying knocks and shattered. Definitely not fair if the other teams don’t catch up on their fixtures.

I imagine things get a bit easier for SL now that 'close contacts' who are double jabbed are no longer required to isolate? Often the strain on player availability came more from the close contact rule rather than positive tests.

If you want a higher quality sport where there is a decline in the number of top quality players and a decline in support, the time has come for some clubs to merge and form less but bigger and stronger clubs.

A classic example being Salford and Swinton clubs who are both struggling both on and off the field. Salford in danger of having to leave the AJ Bell Stadium and Swinton with no Stadium of their own playing at the home of Sale RU which is nowhere near Swinton.

Thirty six clubs in three divisions with most along the M62 corridor is not a good situation to have in the present time of a poor financial state of the game, declining crowds and less quality players with only a handful having Academy teams.

Time that some owner and directors stopped burying their heads in the sand and clinging to their own little empires and faced the reality that the time has come for a complete overhaul of the game where the number of "professional" clubs is concerned.

If it does not , I fear for the games future as a fully professional sport!

A few seasons back, the Aussies did it when they said there was too many clubs around the Sydney area and they did not let objections get in the way and just went ahead with mergers with the result that the NRL is now better, bigger and stronger than what it was at the time.

Looks like none of the postponed games will be rearranged with player welfare deemed the priority. I can fully understand the concerns regarding welfare but it makes the season a complete nonsense if we're honest.

An absolute nonsense. The season has lost all credibility in that case and other than them needing the money from Sky and through the gates, there seems little point to it. Is it any wonder clubs are struggling to tempt fans back in? How will they give our players their energy back from having to play Friday, Wednesday, Sunday, Friday, Thursday etc for weeks on end, whilst some teams choose to take the two weeks off post the cup final?

Jeez I love Rugby League but what an absolute state it’s in currently.

I know you don't like the NRL, but listening to the Ellis podcast, it's a different level over there. Ellis talks about them sharing spaces/facilities with other sides & listening to him talk, the organisation and coordination is superb. It's no surprise they haven't had any games called off.

Over here, we'd rather just say "nah, we'll have a win % based comp". From the outside looking in, it looks like another roll over to appease some clubs who claim poverty.

I don’t like how they’ve acted, in fact I think it’s disgraceful but fair play to them, they have the money to do it properly and that’s because they got the game booming over there and started to rake it in. We on the other hand are a shambles. It’s little wonder they were able to hide behind safety concerns, when our clubs just seem to be so unprofessional and then you have a couple twisting the rules to their advantage. The games at the lowest point I can recall over here and I just hope we can bounce back but without some whopping changes, I’m not sure how it can happen.

Undoubtedly money plays a huge role at all levels. They can pay for these great facilities, but, even more importantly, they can pay for real leaders too. That's what the game is missing over here. I don't know if it's because the structure is different here, or something else but we just don't have strong leadership imo. We don't have a CEO who says this is what we're doing and drags the club's with him. That's what the NRL has at the min. Plenty don't like it, but he gets stuff done.

It's one of the reasons I was excited by the Hearn family rumours a few years back. If he could wrestle control from the club's (I'm even including us in that btw) then I'm sure he'd have drove real change.

For goodness sake, they are fully professional, now more fit and like football players should be used to playing more than one game per week with a squad system and substitutes.

When the game was semi professional, it was not unusual to play two games a week and the players had other jobs including working down a mine.

And there were no substitutes!

Warrington vs Catalans off now because 3 of Catalans essential back room staff have tested positive.

Tough game is Warrington away.

Call me cynical but now that Catalan have played 18 games and only list two if they didn’t play again all season they would finish top! Just saying…

I’m sure they’ll be ok for Leigh and Huddersfield at home in the next few weeks to be fair.

Saints away might be risky from a Covid perspective though.

Wonder when they cancelled the plane over . Farcical and its not even the player who are effected. Suspect in the extreme making our sport a laughing stock .

Regards EW

Serious questions need to be asked of these clubs and it’s staff and players. There’s no point comparing it to premier league football or even the NRL due to the vast differences in income but how can we have so many problems but things like country cricket and lower league football be seemingly pretty much unaffected. It is little wonder people are so cynical about why games are being called off, especially tough away games, when said club is in a good position. No loss of income and no loss of percentage points.

Should it not be a cancellation and 24-0 result then as I thought the threshold was 7 cases for a postponement?

Who knows what the rules are anymore. It was that and is meant to still be that I believe but it just seems that like many things in rugby league, the clubs make their own decisions on what to do.

I have suspicions but in truth no idea whether these ‘’postponements’’ are legitimate or not. All I know is that if we fulfill the rest of our fixtures we play every 5 days for the rest of the season. We’ve played with similar turn arounds for a few months now, there can’t be any doubt that will take its toll on the players.

In an era where player welfare is meant to be more prevalent than ever that surely can’t be reasonable and definitely isn’t fair or a level playing field.

Give it a rest as there are more stringent regulations with Covid19 in France at the present time then what there is now in the UK.

Catalan have done well in playing as many games as they have.