rlhttps://www.sportinglife.com/rugby-league/resultsrl

in the Northern Rail Cup. I assume it's one of the new teams, but which one?

AND

Why is its name not listed?

AND

Where is the other new team?

If you click on the match report it says its Gloucestershire.

A not unrealistic portent towards the future for that club perhaps?

The Eastwood Drifters

A disappointing result for Skolars, only posting 20 points against no opposition. The fact that they managed not to concede will be scant consilation.

I've played in teams that wouldn't score 20 against no opposition with a 16 point start....they shouldn't be too worried!

something weird going on because it happened either last week or the week before with the same club!

Presumably it's because the team name of 'University of Gloucestershire All Golds' is too long to fit on the page. Why they aren't just called Cheltenham All Golds is beyond me.

Yep they weren't named the previous week either. I looked. So what's the story there? Is it just because they have such a long name it doesn't appear on the side, or is there something more to it? But more importantly, why isn't Oxford in the NRC? And what does that mean for them?

It doesn't mean anything, just that they start the season a little later than everyone else, I guess because they were the last admitted of the new clubs and an odd number of teams would have messed up the format of the competition. Looking at their squad, they should be mid-table at worst in Championship 1 (Oxford that is).

The odd number of teams is hardly going to mean a club isn't playing if it wants to. "Sorry we have an even number now so bad luck". More likely they didn't want to be in it which suggests they are playing catch-up off the field in a big way. The good thing about C1 is that there are so many tiny, expansion clubs they can be competitive with each other - which is no doubt what the RFL is going for. Instead of having Skolars, Gateshead and Scorpions getting beaten every week by seven or eight northern clubs, they can promote the better northern clubs and bring in more expansion minnows. It's not a bad plan as long as they finances are sound.

Except it is because it would completely mess up the draw, grouping systems etc and this sort of thing has happened before, new clubs haven't entered the Challenge Cup in the past because of the format of the competition.

But we have clubs in the Championship desperate to avoid dropping into a league of ' nobodies ' , which is why we have seen the wholesale ' twinning ' happening , which has then resulted in fans losing interest in the Championship [ which was just about holding its own as it was highly competitive ]

I wouldn't read anything into it. Probably just a glitch on the site that stops it displaying the name properly. The sky sports score centre has the same problem with Paul Crook (Rochdale half back). He appears as a blank in the team lineup and when he scores just the time of the score is shown with no name before it.

As headhunter said Oxford were admitted last (after Northampton withdrew) and so chose not to enter the NRC to give them more time to assemble a squad and get up to speed before having to play their first competitive games. By not entering that they get an extra month of pre-season. South Wales Scorpions did the same when they formed a couple of years ago and IIRC they didn't enter the Challenge Cup in their first year either for the same reason. They are still going. Oxford will probably be the best starters of the three new clubs due to picking up a fair chunk of Oldham's 2012 squad.

The team with no name were 'outed' on the BBC text service and their website without hinderance