Why do people keep making the Bulls joke? There's still need to be another club if they went down.

Chester withdrew their bid pretty much as soon as North Wales Crusaders joined Championship 1 I suspect as they would have been competing for the same largely Warrington based players.

Medway never even submitted an application but were told they were accepted anyway. Naturally they didn't accept as this is their 2nd year of having an open age team and they play in a local league. I'd have loved to see their reaction to the news.

Oxford were going to be team 4 but promptly folded.

Coventry, I won't comment other than to say I don't know if they'll join or not as yet.

As for which are viable, Hemel are very solid off the field though I don't know if they'll get a good enough team on it. Rebels are a 1980s style soccer club planning to ship in Yorkshiremen with bad relations with the local amateur clubs. Hopefully they'll over time become somethimg better. The All Golds IMO primarily exist to give a rich lawyer in Cheltenham a home town pro team. The RFL would have preferred Bristol. They have some good junior development started but not sure students are good enough for Championship 1 but think they'll have a lot of young Leeds players.

So as of this moment, we still only have 3

In a word yes. No guarantee there'll be 4.

It could be 3 or it could be 4.

This is very accurate!

Yeah basically what I've heard minus the bits about Coventry (would be a conflict of interest for me plus I'm not prepared to comment on an ongoing process) and generally what I hear of Rebels is very, very negative so I've taken out the more controversial parts.

Northampton Rebels have unsurprisingly folded so only 8 or 9 clubs next year.

Folded, as in dissapeared? , or just no longer in a position to step up?

Northampton's withdrawal from Championship 1 confirmed.... www.code13rugbyleague.com/2012/0 ... um=twitter

Northampton's withdrawal from Championship 1 confirmed.... www.code13rugbyleague.com/2012/0 ... um=twitter

Step up from where? They don't currently exist.

Yes sorry, just realised, they were supposidly an offshoot of the football club

What is quite incredible is the way Mr Rimmer is seemingly talking this up as a positive in the press release



So with essentially 2 weeks till the end of the season, we now have just 8 clubs in Championship 1 , it really is just quite ridiculous

The RFL should look to bring in 1 new club every 3 seasons, they should finance these new clubs properly, provide proper tangible assistance, but they should be exempt from promotion until that extra assistance is no longer needed

How do these idiots get and keep the jobs they have?