Bar Sheffield, all the bottom eight have a similar record. It's not inconceivable (especially with reinforcements) that the Bulls could beat them all, allied with a win or two in the remaining regular league games, and the entirely possible scenario of one of the teams above the bottom two going into free fall, they could stay up easily.

Not saying that will happen, but staying up would not be a sporting miracle. Lose against Swinton and I'd say would be miracle territory.

I think the idea of championship clubs having their own deal is one way round, but BT have never given any impression of being interested though Premier could beI guess.
In terms of a SL deal I doubt very much that Premier have the clout to outbid Sky and, as before, BT don't seem interested.

Whilst I agree with most of that, what I don't understand is why the RFL couldn't hammer out a deal with Premier.

Sure, during the negotiations, it will have been made difficult by the Super 8s. If Sky have SL rights and Premier have Championship rights, who shows Middle 8s? You'd have to work out a deal for both to show, with one having priority over match choice. But to just give Sky it all and totally neglect to ask the question "Are you actually going to show any Championship games other than a stupid festival weekend" is p!ss poor. Or they asked the question, were told no they're not showing it and didn't actually care. Either way, they totally shafted Championship teams for reasons already outlined regarding sponsorship and exposure.

Premier said they were interested in showing Championship. Sky clearly aren't. So how the rights end up with Sky could only fall down to money. But since Premier were never given the chance to bid, it's hard to use that as a reason when you don't know how much they could have bid.

Yeah, but with the middle 8's you've got 12 matches every weekend to pick from. Surely some sort of agreement could be reached. For example, Sky get the MPG and Premier get the Shield Final

I suppose, in this age where every company you deal with is, "our so-and-so partner", that Sky, with a much higher financial input would be the 'senior' partner and they probably got the rights on those grounds - it should, though, have been sorted out well in advance, after all, the eights were factored into the equation from the start and not something stuck in, in a rush, at the end.

I understand that Sky are changing the way their sports channels are arranged by having separate channels for different sports; two for soccer, for instance and one for rugby (including union). Not sure if this means we will only PAY for rugby, by selecting that channel, though I'd still have concerns they may still stick some games on another channel. It could also be that they may have more room for extra (championship?) games. At a guess though, I think they'd probably go for another couple of union magazine programmes if they found any spare capacity...

Or combine the two? - that would get the punters in.

Stick an octagon in middle of Odsal pitch.

There is so much potential for our sport to get on the bigger stage