York's position at 15th and everyone tipping them to be promoted shows you how flawed it is.

They've never won the Championship or competed at the top level, have relatively small crowds and, key for me, no academy.

We've got a well established academy that have produced many superleague and NRL level players including international reps. 2 of the current England team came through it, have a well established community foundation, have played at the highest level, have better oengagement and more fans. However, our ground has a bigger capacity and doesn't have video screen advertising hoardings so are rated lower than York.

No club without an academy should be given a grade B rating if the sport are serious about competing with others on offer to the general public.

I suspect that next season we will hit the 12 A graded clubs in SL mark making it pretty much impossible for any Championship team to get in there. I challenge anyone to go through the grading criteria and come up with a realistic way in which a Championship team can get to 15 points. It is pretty much impossible.

You only have to look at the score that London got this season to see the advantages of holding a place in SL so in my opinion the best thing for Championship clubs is to ride it out and in the RL tradition, IMG maybe gone in 3 or 4 years and we are on to something else. The big question for teams like Bradford is if the money men will stick around and wait that long as we also know there is zero chance that the clubs vote to extend SL to 14 teams so that is not an option.

It all comes down to IMG fulfilling their core job - increasing revenue. And the tv contract is the lever for 14 clubs.

Agreed, if they say we’ve got interest in 7matches per weekend and have a 25% uplift in the contract but because it’s to be shared 14 ways you’ll only see an overall 10% uplift, then it’s possible. But it’s all on IMG exploring the financials with bidders for 7 vs 6 games per weekend.

Think York have the potential to be in SL. Fantastic stadium and reasonable fan base. Would they even be able to go FT though?

They've still a lot of work to do. They're one of the darlings of the RL media so these things don't get scrutinised, hence we've seen journos tweeting how amazing Applegarth (who I really like, but some perspective please!) while Nobles "Comedy value" apparently . We'll see next year.

Think York may have been of the clever clubs with their accounts. A million pounds suddenly appeared in their Asset creditors and also their liability creditors. So not sure whats going on there!

Their owner is a character too.

Yeah York seem to be mentioned quite a bit but they will also struggle to get to 15 points for the automatic spot so everyone has to hope that Salford, Hudds, or Hull completley mess up. I guess there is a chance but I would guess that with the experience of this year and what other teams have done, their points are more likely to go up rather than down. Added to that those 3 could simply choose to spend their funding on improvements off the field it really gives them a ridiculously weighted advantage.

So the Jason Hirst interview said we’re adding another point this month with primacy of the lease and building a directors box in the black seats on the halfway line. Performance we can aim for 0.35 through the 1885 cup and the championship final, and the 9th place from 3 years ago will fall away. I still don’t think that would be enough.

How many points do you get for the LED screen?

0.1?
It’s not much iirc

Will give us more chance than york, in reality what can the additionally do on top of what tgey have already done, cant really do additional work in the stands etc and are nowhere near filling the stadium

Big screen gets you neauwt unless the pixel concentration is high enough, Bullseye. LSV's (despite being adequate for UEFA matches to be staged there) was deemed to fail to meet the necessary IMG criteria and Leigh got nil this time for it.

Does IMG have a sideline in peddling acceptable screens?

Crooked as Trump!!

Ps: It's 0.125 pts (or nothing). The spec necessary can be found on page 30 of the IMG Handbook: https://www.rugby-league.com/uploads/do ... pdated.pdf

Ps: It's 0.125 pts (or nothing). The spec necessary can be found on page 30 of the IMG Handbook: https://www.rugby-league.com/uploads/do ... pdated.pdf

Same goes for the facilities, its either 1.5 for meeting all criteria or 0.5 for not. Some teams were under the impression that you got points for each thing which turned out not to be the case.

For “Utilisation” for the stadium the rules are as follows. As an example, if the stadium capacity is 10,000 and the average attendance is 5,000 the utilisation score will be 0.5. The average for the last three years is calculated and used.

I think Odsal’s capacity is still 26,019. We really could do with reducing that to as low as possible to maximise the score we can get.

This is what I mean Oldham got marked down because they moved into a better ground but other clubs benefited from the council reducing capacity on safety grounds.

Smash up the Rooley Ave terrace and pop side concrete so it's unsafe and get the council to mark it down to a 9K capacity ground. That's if the board have any ambition of being a Grade A club.

You could get it done in an afternoon at hardly any cost. Get the fans to bring sledge hammers and pick axes. Stick on tea and coffee and hey presto we're back in superleague. A fun afternoon out for the kids. Get Bullman and Bullboy encouraging teams of kids to push over the crush barriers.

The bar on the corner looks like it's half rotten anyway you could push that over easy enough and take out half the standing room.

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/sport/ru ... gcGkA7lWYA

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/sport/ru ... gcGkA7lWYA

Can’t se a queue of super league clubs voting for that one!

The ones who have there A already might do

That can't go through surely?

Theoretically down the track could you end up with the following scenario....?
11 grade A clubs and 1 grade B
The grade B club really gets its act together and wins SL, yet finds themselves relegated?

Sounds a bit ridiculous - so expect it to be voted in!

surely solution is fairly simple.

Winner of championship gains promotion only if team in 12th place is also a grade B.

Granted only works while there are less then 12 grade A clubs but in short term makes winning championship meaningful again and once your in SL you have better chance of improving your score to an A grade

The trouble is all 3 Superleague Grade B clubs could easily be Grade A's by the end of the next season. I'd expect Hull and Huddersfield to do it as they are both only a few tweaks off. Especially once the Superleague clubs agree on the revisions to the grading to ensure it.

I think we're knackered. It's a closed shop until they realise TV ratings and attendances continue to go nowhere (with half the Superleague fixtures dead rubbers after Easter) and this latest stupid gimmick is dropped.

How about adding a little more jeopardy? If the Champs GF falls on a full moon in the third weekend of the month, all bets are off and the winning club can nominate the SL club they replace!!!!

Unless of course that SL club won their third game of the season by a margin of 30 points giving them the get out of jail free card that can only be trumped if the winning championship club has a kit man called Nigel?

It's simple, fair and game changing I reckon! The crowds will flock back

Thinking outside the box could we have teams outside the top tier play each other twice. Do it home and away to make it fairer with the winner getting 2 points. At the end of the year you'll be able to see who has the most points and they could go into the top tier.

That's too complicated, it'd never work. The fans would never get their heads round that!