Clearly don't understand how the licensing system works.

Each team is awarded 'points' for 5 different areas of judging: Finance, Stadia, Player Production, Governance and Marketing.

So each team is awarded however many points in each of these areas and the points are added up to give an overall grade. And technically, we have a stadium as much as you do, yours is just on a longer lease.

HTH.

haha maybe a little in all seriousness it would be interesting to compare every club against each others and see if we agree/disagree with the rfls grading decisions.

what were the 5 areas looked at?

i know finance is one, sure marketing is another, what are the others?

Stadia ? You don't have your own at the moment ? And marketing I haven't ever seen any from your club, nothing like the big one that wigan currently have ongoing now anyway.

Are you a wigan fan?

wether he is or isnt, his view on the marketing aspect is true. i have never seen a piece of marketing from saint helens. maybe if you did some you could sell out your local derbys.

Oh yeah, I completely agree with the marketing from Saints, it's awful. I wouldn't defend it.

However, Wigan fans can't say we don't have our own stadium and say that they have. We both lease our stadiums.

maybe the marketing is the difference between getting the A or B grade for saints then? obviously when you have the new stadium that will be good, i dont recall you ever being in financial trouble, your player development is obviously good with the likes of lomax and gaskell and eastmond. seems the marketing category is the only one lacking.

(and yes, i know this totally contradicts my first post, but tbh that was purely to see what sort of reactions i could get from you lot )

Saints weren't awarded an A license because of their stadia. They are effectively homeless at the minute amd the marks are based on current faciliites, not facilities that they might have next year.

Incorrect, the stadia part of the licence concerns the facilities for the period of the forthcoming licence period hence we have that covered, our achieving a B will largely be due to the drop in attendance figures this year, which (trolling aside) is down simple due to the 'Widnes effect', our inability to sell out the two main derby games is also a result of this. Its all very well saying we have 'stay away' fans due to people simply not 'wanting' to travel to Widnes but that's rather short sighted. For example this season we're missing out on large numbers of traditional 'walk-ups' and of course lots of parents won't be happy with letting their kids travel to widnes whereas they may have been ok with them travelling to KR. I believe a large part of wanting the new gaff so close to the town centre was because when surveyed alot of people said they found it difficult, or simple to much fuss to catch several buses or trains just to get to KR whereas the new place will be within minutes of the central bus and train stations.

As for an absence of Marketing on Saints behalf, if you haven't seen any you clearly haven't been paying attention. The fact that half the team are plastered all over the buses that run every few minutes around the town are one example. That Wigan are able to put up a few big banners here and there etc may be down to the fact that they have a larger budget for such things what with not having to channel funds into building their own shiny new Rugby League stadium.

Well said mate

I think the Saints marketing is pretty good. You see the player splastered all over the buses running to and from St Helens, even the ones running through places like Wigan & Leigh. LIke a previous poster said, they may not have as much income to throw at the marketing side of things like for instance Wigan [No cost of building new stadia] or Wire [Sugar Daddy] I'd agree that Saints application was stronger than Widnes'

But surely marketing is far more than somply buying an advert on the side of a bus? The best marketing efforts were from the Bulls at the start of their good spell, when Bullmania dragged in a huge increase in crowds, plus the model that I belive they follwoed, in Keighley Cougars. Whether these are sustanablwe models to follow has still to be proven, but they were fantastic marketing efforts. I don't think you can say that Saints are well marketed, when we continually have disappointing crowds, despite having the best and most successful team in Super League, and probably in Saints long history. The measure of marketing success should be bums on seats, or merchandise sales, and in both of these cases, you would have to say Saints are failing.

Saints could get better crowds if supporters only had to pay what Wigan supporters pay for their season tickets, or like Huddersfield who at one stage got 2 for the price of 11, or indeed Wire who get away transport payed for.

2 for the price of 11 doesn't sound a great deal. Sounds like Hudds do well to get any season tickets sales!!