It was a shocking attentance at the Gnoll, but, even more shocking was that after getting their club a £40k fine, a minority of Cas fans still continue with the homophobic chants???

Truly unbelievable!

His point is absurd. SL was a paradigm shift in the sport of RL. Whatever any clubs did prior to that (and pretty much all were run badly when assessed by the current franchise criteria, extreme short termism on and off the field, no business sense at all) is rendered meaningless when compared to the guaranteed financial resources available to clubs with the inception of SL.

Or if you insist on persuing this line of argument, why choose this particular period of HKR's history to condemn them for playing overseas players? Put another way, in only two years of a 125 year history, HKR have sought dispensation to play additional overseas players. One of which had played all his professional career in the English game for a number of clubs and I doubt anyone would be churlish enough to suggest that the pleasure he gave to thousands of people and his devotion and commitment to English RL was not deserving of one extra season in the top flight of RL.

Proof that franchising does't work

Look at the Widnes v leighs attendance figure, from this weeks games despite Widnes playing poorly and losing to Batley the week before. Leigh took about 800.