We need to be certain of one thing here, The championship is a dying competition.

Now you can point the finger at the clubs down here all you want but a large part of the blame lies directly with the rfl, As a competition there feels like there is nothing to play for anymore. For the first time in years i have missed Widnes matches for no reason whatsoever, I was stood on the terraces at Canal street in the 90's watching us play in front of 1500 people against Leigh while getting murdered by everyone, But it felt like it mattered. I was there when we got beat by Cas at Headingly and it hurt like crazy, before these last couple of years every defeat hurt like crazy. Now, i dont care, Winning does not matter, and when we go to SL it wont matter. Were here to massage the egos of the men at red hall and try to protect the few lucky teams who were in the right place at the right time. As a club Widnes will have to tow the party line or lose out, franchising is, and always will be a farce. A blind man could see that the crusaders has been a poorly handled joke from start to end culminating in tuesdays farce, And yet again the RFL are in a large part to blame. How does a club win a franchise and they fail so miserably in nearly every way if the franchise system is anything but a sham?

How can a club like fax be expected to compete for a franchise against a sl club, fax who will have a largely part time staff are expected to put together a bid to compete with other clubs who will have a full time team working on it with far more finances to spend making it a waterproof bid. Widnes managed it thanks to a rich owner, Without that you have no chance.

The championship is a league with very few games, With large patches of inactivity through the season. Merge the leagues ffs, Make the northern rail a straight knock out comp. Give the clubs down here regular games with multiple local derbies, Make the competition worth winning. Stop sky from bleating about every important game as a tick in a bleeding box, to you me and the fan at home it devalues every competition our teams play in.

Give the clubs a set goal, Achieve this and you are in SL.

Get a crowd average of 3,000
Have a stadium of 14,000 with 5,000 seats
have a turn over of £1.5M
Set up and run an academy
Stay in the black.


Achieve this and you will be given a chance at SL, Garunteed. Not many would make it, but at least its there, the carrot is dangled and its up to each club to make the grade. This would result in a stronger competiton across the board. So SL might have to expand as clubs become strong enough to get in, maybe. But as it is, games in the championship mean nothing.

Lastly, When in SL. If you enter Administration you should be expelled. You have clearly failed to do what your bid said you would, on those grounds you can no longer be trusted to deliver on any part of your franchise promises and should start again at the bottom.

People may mock this post, or disagree with everything i have put here. but the game bellow SL is dying, As a sport we cant afford to lose one more club, never mind another 19.

This thread isn't about franchising in SL or the wrongs or rights of it , it is about the lack of thought ,care and attention shown to the Championship competitions and the clubs in them

We should not have to wait to see what happens in SL , to have the structure of our competitions decided

It shows a lack of respect to those clubs , their owners , players and fans

That lack of respect will show in the lack of interest from fans , sponsors and owners if it continues

I don't know whether it's down to franchising, negligence, or just my particular clubs fortune over the past few years but I am quickly loosing interest in rugby league at this level.

The running of Championship 1 is a shambles with large gaps in between home fixtures and there no longer seems to be any big matches during the regular season, which offer a pay-off for supporters who have attended the less attractive games.

The fixture list and the teams are bland especially when you know your going to be stuck in a league with the same 10 or so sides for the foreseeable future.

Do not lose interest just yet. The Dons just moved into pole position for the 2nd promotion spot. You already have a great SL standard ground and are located in an expansion area in a decent sized town. Now IF YOU COULD GET SOME MONEY OR A SUGAR DADDY, who knows what your team could be in a few years.

Rugby Union-If Cornish Pirates or whatever they are called had won the end of season play offs they were not going into the top div due to the ground being substandard

There's a bit of a difference between operating a system of promotion/relegation where promotion is also dependent on certain off-field factors (which both the RFU & football do) and our system of licences (which is more akin to county cricket - a fairly random bunch of teams who happened to be at the top at a particular time have their top-flight status preserved for ever, with only occasional changes). Cornish Pirates are hosting the Cornwall v Devon RL county fixture, BTW.

Franchising is irrelevant to the point of this thread, though. The clubs in the championship and championship1 don't know whether there's going to be any promotion or relegation this year, how many clubs will be involved, what the format of next year's competition will be (one division or two, for example?) That's really not a very satisfactory situation. The C1 clubs, in particular, suffer from a poorly structured setup.