First off, possibly not but I think they'd have enough to survive at a better profit/loss ratio than they are now, if we take the Crusaders example, despite being a losing team they get great crowds for a C1 club. In Londons case I think they'd enter the Championship in a much stronger position and as a perfect breeding ground for London youngsters, even if they then were to be cherry picked by SL clubs. The fundamental problem would come when financially all the best talent in the area is being cherry picked by union clubs but is that not already happening? who knows.

Secondly I meant with the finance they have in place, were it to be a P/R season, I don't for one minute think the results thus far this year would have been stood for and they'd have strengthed in the back room and playing staff by round 10. Powell, as much as I like the guy isn't up to it and he's made huge mistakes in his conditioning of the players, similar to that of Lowes' a couple of years back. With P/R I think a new coach would be in now with a couple more players

2 leagues of 10 would be the best way to with 1 up down

That'll confuse 'em

Did they not finish second in that season ?
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but even myself as an advocate of P/R wouldn't suggest 2 up 2 down.

How would that have helped the Bulls and going back to the title of the thread how would it help Fax ?

Because the RFL were funding the Celtic Crusaders by filtering large amounts of money through Leighton Samuels company disguised as ' Community Development Grants ' , the Celtic Crusaders were operating as a full time squad , even the 17 players cars would have taken up half the salary cap in NL 1 , let alone NL 2

And lets not bring up the ' Visa ' issue again shall we , there were some very twitchy bums at Red Hall when that broke

The league was expanded by 2 teams, so naturally the top 2 "teams" in the NL would be promoted to SL.


So what would have stopped that happening under P&R? Crusaders would still have been in SL regardless of whether there was licensing or not as they finished 2nd in the NL.

So you are ' OK ' with this ?



You dont think it was a ' tad ' unfair ?

You've just completed a full lap there.
I said earlier that SL was expanded and that franchising was brought in to expand the game and allow the Crusaders to come in and although they would have been promoted IF we had 2 up 2 down, at the time this was not the case.

What??!!!

No Franchises? no Licenses?!?!?



Then what are we all going to talk about?!

..........On field performance?



...dont be daft!

I'm not ok with P&R based only on team performance, no. That only works when there is a far smaller gap between leagues.
Am I ok with the RFL helping out a new club with the potential Crusaders had, in an expansion area, yes. In the same way you think the RFL should run and provide financial assistance to London Broncos.


No I haven't, I was meaning if there had been no licensing and under a normal P&R system, with an expansion of SL the top 2 NL teams would have been promoted at the end of the 2008 season. Crusaders were the 2nd best NL team.
So the argument that licensing was either designed purely to admit Crusaders, that somehow Widnes or Fev would have been in SL if it weren't for licensing or that licensing led to Crusaders problems is just wrong.