Halifax don't deserve a licence. I have said that repeatedly on here - we are just not a viable option and our fan base is poor. I have no argument on that score. My query is with the licence process and the assessors who clearly did not do their homework on Bradford. Gloss over that all you want Smokey, with your trolling and your childish jibes and the argument that licensing is not supposed to stop clubs ruining themselves is insanely wrong. That's exactly what it's supposed to do!!

Fact is there aren't enough quality clubs to give true meaning to the title "Super League".

Silly monkey? Indeed.

In fairness to the assessors we don't know what their actual remit was or how much access they were granted to in-depth financial information. With small organisations like RL clubs it's relatively easy to hide underlying problems. So I'd say the process clearly failed but that doesn't necessarily mean that the assessors failed.

More worrying IMO is that Bradford's demise seems to have been hasted by reliance on a business plan that pretty much anyone should have been able to see the holes in. Whoever passed that as fit was either clueless or wildly optimistic.

Licensing was never supposed to stop clubs ruining themselves, it wouldnt be possible for any system ever to stop that.

If the 'assessors' were picking clubs who were guaranteed never to go bust, then we wouldnt have anyone in SL, not Leeds, not Wigan, no-one. The fact is no sport in the world has clubs who are guaranteed to never go bust. Not the Premier League, RU, NFL, NBA, NRL anything. There is an element of risk in all of them. We are a smaller sport than them, our margin of error is smaller, so our risk is higher.

If 'stopping clubs ruining themselves' was 'exactly what it's supposed to do' i wouldnt be in favour of it, because it would somehow manage the dual failures of not only being impossible, but also a pretty unambitious aim.

In part, I agree with you. Licensing can't do that. It's not the governing body's job to stop clubs going bust. But herein lies the problem. They can't have it all ways. They need to be clear what licensing is supposed to achieve. If they make the claim that its about financial stability, then they should expect to get slated when it apparently achieves no such thing. If it's not, don't say it is in the first place. And since the RFL is supposed to be about more than SL, an assessment of what licensing does or doesn't do needs to be taken across the game as a whole. The problem with the RFL is the incredibly fluid definitions of what they're supposed to be achieving. People with any sense can see that, generally speaking, they're making a right mess of things, but they can defend almost anything - with your support of course - because nobody can pin the beggars down to what they claim to be trying to do for the sport in the first place.

And as for the whole hiding behind the auditors in the licensing process, they've got to do better than that. 90% of whether a clubs plan is going to work is down to whether their plans for getting people to turn up will work. Auditors can't make that call, it needs the good judgement of people who understand both RL and sports in general. The RFL have to take responsibility for the failures such as Crusaders. Ultimately it's just poor judgement. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, yes, but eventually people have to stand up and admit "you know what, I'm not very good at this"

Is he?
rlhttps://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/mar/08/london-broncos-build-hull-krrl



To me, that's him paying lip service to David Hughes, but actually not being prepared to do anything about it........YET.

London will in all probability be left with no benefactor after 2014 or at least a reduced financial input from Mr Hughes.....I really can't see anyone being interested in further investment without assurances of being given time to build the club up....so forme, the RFL will needto take a major holding in the club or guarantee them a licence for 20 years so asto attract a business minded investor.

London will probably drop out....they won't be ejected by the RFL.

I get why you want to see the RFL being able to be 'pinned down' on things. It makes it easy to judge them and easy to make an argument for or against them. i.e these are their aims, here are their successes and failures.

What i dont get is why people can't see the very obvious reasons they can't do that. The RFL have a high level control, but they arent and shouldnt, have day to day control, they arent down there in detail, they arent in the nitty gritty of the clubs and they never can be.

Our clubs are private enterprises. They have capital injected from independent and private business, there is a limit to the control the RFL can exercise.

Crusaders are a perfect example. The RFL had a rich man, willing to put his money in, who had experienced some decent success, who were growing, who were in a strategic expansion area. Lets be realistic, what more could a sport like ours expect? Whether heartlands or expansion, do we have anyone with the will and money ready to bring a club (outside SL) up to SL level? Did we under P+R? are the owners in the lower leagues offering a low risk proposition?Everything the RFL do is a calculated risk. Some of those wont come off. We have to look at at everything in the context of risk/reward.

The risk for Crusaders was they go bust, someone elses money gets wasted and we replace them with Widnes. A bit of bad PR.

The reward was an expanded game in Wales, a new regularly competing nation, a new club, a wider geographical spread and a brand new player pool.

Now it be silly to pretend that Crusaders, as a club, as they way they were run was a success. Lots of failures there, lots to learn from. However, their legacy is going from next to no recognition to a much wider knowledge of the game in Wales, from almost no-one in wales playing the game, to 2 new lower league clubs and a much improved amateur game. From only having some ancestral players to players like Lloyd, Kear, Dudson, Flower playing in SL, as real welsh born and raised and trained Rugby League players.

Now if the RFL set out an said 'we want an welsh team in SL' the fact we dont would be used as a stick to beat them with. They would ignore the success and growth we had seen in Wales and focus on the fact we didnt succeed in a fairly ambitious aim. We should, ask, what else could the RFL have done in Wales? They dont own crusaders, they cant be responsible if they were run poorly. They can put in place systems for minimizing that risk but it will always exist. They didnt have the choice between Crusaders or a better run Welsh team, or Crusaders and a guaranteed success in the heartlands. They had a choice between Crusaders and all the momentum they built up, or Widnes a club which went bust less than a year before and losing all the momentum and potential in Wales.

People say they want 'organic' growth, clubs going from a group of passionate fans of the game setting up an amateur club, to a semi-pro club, to a pro-club. Working from the grass-roots up and blame the RFL for 'rushing' things and forcing it. What they dont take in to account is that in 118 years of RL existing. That has never happened. Not once. It is only under the leadership of Nigel Wood and Richard Lewis that a club has even gone from amateur to Semi-pro. London Skolars and Hemel. So the RFL didnt have the choice between 'organic' growth and 'forcing it', The Crusaders owners werent sat there happy to invest in the grass-roots, happy to wait and spend money competing in they lower leagues. They had a choice between 'forcing it' or it just never happening.

Similarly with Bradford. They are a club who have shown they can compete at the top, shown they can win things, shown they can be sustainable, shown they can get big crowds. Was that a guarantee Messrs Caisley and Hood wouldnt ruin the club? Clearly not. But there choice wasnt between a Bradford club run well and a Bradford club run poorly. It was a choice between a club which had been successful, sustainable, got the requisite crowds in Bradford or a club which hadnt for a long long time, a club which had gone bust numerous times since they had last won something, a club which imploded in SL, a club which hadnt ever got those crowds in Halifax. Thats the choice they had, and they made the decision anyone sensible would be. Bradford were, even knowing the struggles they had, a better bet than Fax.

Two things.

We do not have an improve Welsh amateur game. It was better before Crusaders existed than it is now

Secondly this was not a risk free deal. Crusaders got three years of Sky money and were lent 700k that the RFL will never see again.

They were never more than Championship 1 level , ever , it was a complete joke , did you ever visit them ? , Brewery Field was no more a SL club stadium than Dewsbury , the RFL colouded with them to break UK VISA regulations

It was a complete joke and a complete embarrassment

Bradford City beat 3 premier clubs on the way to Wembley , does that make them a Premier quality Club ?

Just my opinion , give us yours if you want , then we can all have a laugh

Nah, you're clearly having enough fun for all of us anyway...

Whats your reasoning for this?
Was a charge on the racecourse ground paid back when sold the the Uni wasnt it. Secured against the ground and not the club. Thats certainly how it was reported when they pulled out.

If you want to make libelous statements with no evidence, and which were specifically denied by the UKBA go ahead. Im not sure the poor spelling will be a valid defence in court.

Brewery field, whilst not great, could at least, house more than 3.5k people.

You've never been there have you ?