It goes without saying. People have been asking these questions for years but they fall on deaf ears. How good an idea is it exactly to rely on a bank roller or let the players dictate to us their wages?

The thing is we enjoyed the game when it was part time and we would again. Let's not pretend here that stopping over spending would cause oblivion. Clubs are facing oblivion and they need to stop over spending, that's the right way around.

Bradford, well, there are so many unanswered questions. Someone must have known a while before now what they were facing. The cheap season tickets, out bidding teams for players, it seems like they were playing a game. Yes we're facing administration but we're too big and well attended to go down. For me, that's a crime. It's never the fans fault - and I wouldn't dream of getting at them, but just like it is when most other clubs goes through this, it's awful management and they've not been thinking long term at all.

Most professional sports are (at least in the UK) at root, loss making exercises that end-up being underpinned by folks with a lot of money who love the game. Its been like that for the last 100 years, across all major sports. The more you try to make League purely self-sustaining, the more you'll fail. We need to get a grip on reality and accept that rich benefactors are good for us.

Reduce the number of teams in the competition has to be the first step.

Reduce salary cap to 1.2 million. Would solve the financial problems for most clubs overnight.

20 players avg 60k each, sorted.

and we'd have less games with less annual income.....

Ah yes, the "We are too big to fail" argument. How did that work out for Rangers?

You will have a club without a licence and without an application for one. If other clubs had to submit applications and be graded and checked to be in SL, why would a newco Bradford not have to do the same. Crusaders had to start over with their newco in CC!.

If they are admitted to SL without meeting the licencing criteria, those same criteria will have been proved to be meaningless. Other clubs wanting a SL licence who were knocked back or passed over for the newco may well sue. The London Welsh precedent will be cited. To whit, there are criteria you are setting to us Championship clubs which have not been applied to existing members of SL.

Any new Bradford need to be allowed back in at the lower level and work their way up and then apply for a SL licence at the licencing window like all others. Either that or re introduce p and r and let them play themselves back to SL.

Bradford have no " Divine Right" to a SL place unless and until thery fulfill the licencing criteria.

Hasn't a precedent already been set in such a situation with Wakefield though? If nobody appealed then that's basically an agreement that it is acceptable.

No. Wakefield were different. They submitted an application and were vetted and were accepted and issued a licence. That might have not stood if Crusaders did not withdraw their licence application but Wakefiled did actually apply for a licence.

Because the decisions are not left to disgruntled Keighley fans carrying Titanic-sized chips on their shoulders?

Initially yes, but wouldn't the product be better with some of the lower end teams gone. The quality players will be more evenly distibuted, this will improve the product as a spectacle, with more high intensity matches we may be able to win the World Cup or 4 nations. More exposure more money and the cycle continues. Once the national team wins something the exposure comes in you only need to look at RU after 2003 and cricket after 2005 to see this.

Except that loads of the better players would go to Union or Australia, and while noble fans such as yourself would still go to watch League, those fair-weather fans like me and many others would be less interested in low level rugby and go do something else at the weekend. "Good riddance" I hear you say, "we don't need your sort".

...but sponsors would then be even *less* interested, gates would drop too, TV would start switch off and so would income. In two seasons, you'd be on here again asking that we reduce the cap to £500k, as the sport races to amateurism.

It's the same 'myth of cuts' that the Tories are taking us to the doldrums with.