Given that around 75,000 NHS staff members are unwilling to take the vaccine never mind the booster, they will have great difficulty punishing anyone for not doing it.

One has already paid for that bed via taxation.

If thats the route to take lets go the full hog and start billing those who choose to smoke drink alcohol, take drugs and via those things end up needing emergency care.

Agreed.

We will be lucky if positive cases are significantly reduced before the new season starts and with players already back in training, it's difficult to see that RL will get a "clean" start to their season.

It was certainly mess last season and the damage done to the games reputation and the knock on effect with Sky, there needs to be a bloody good plan in place, so that we can avoid the nonsense of last season.

If a club cannot raise a side, for whatever reason, they should forfeit the game.
This is a really simple mantra and it puts the onus on each club to keep their house in order.

Of course there will still be some issues along the way and lets hope the general situation improves rapidly for fans, clubs and all involved with the game.

superleague should have thought of this weeks ago, back when they were planning the fixtures - yet again they've made it impossible to rearrange fixtures due to a congested timetable and stupid loops. play each other once home and away. leave some breathing space and an extra nines comp to fill the tv slots.

Yeah it was entirely predictable. There are going to be new variants and waves of existing variants for probably the next 10 years (Unless Omicron or the next one does turn out to be dominant among variants and as deadly as a cold). As with the Government and their policies, any restrictions to normal operations must be judged against 'can we keep doing this for the next 10 years with no/acceptable consequences?'. In the same way we simply can't have more lockdowns as the economy (and mental health) wouldn't sustain itself, we can't have swathes of games cancelled as the gate receipts and Sky money won't be replaced. Games have to be played at a sufficient level to fulfill the TV deals in RL, there can be no exception to that.

Your suggestion of removing any loop fixtures and having a reduced season with room for covid postponements here and there is the best suggestion I've heard. You can always fill gaps in a calendar with events if the covid picture next year is much different. Worst case scenario is overreaction to Omicron delays the start of the season, teams call games off all over the place, Sky pull out and the World Cup doesn't get played.

So change the rules to accommodate. Omicron is no more a killer than standing on a nail. Continually using data on how many have contracted the variant is irrelevant ignoring the figure who have died from it. Lateral flow tests can’t be guaranteed, but a home PCR test can..

Rules need to change.

Nice and easy in principle but, all clubs need revenue and obliterating fixtures to "make space" wont fill the club coffers.

However, it would be eminently sensible that the loop fixtures should be cancelled before others.
The huge difficulty here is the unpredictability of both the virus and the clubs' ability to deal with it effectively (in terms of managing their players and staff).

RL looked poor, with all of the postponements and short term fixture changes.
However, football in the UK seems to be coping even more badly and relatively speaking, they have loadsamoney.

It will be an interesting start to the season and the one certainty is that, the World Cup has to go ahead.

There is no doubt omicron has had an impact and is slightly more infectious than delta, but the Premier League situation is predominantly due to politics within football. The players are spoiled rotten and feel left out over lockdowns. They wanted their furlough opportunity like the rest of us and they feel like they've been overworked as a result. A lot of the top managers do not like the number of games we play in the PL and particularly the Christmas/NY schedule. They have done nothing but moan about it for weeks and are always keen to point out that the players are exhausted and that there is an enormous welfare issue going on. The players hear this and believe it. They all conveniently ignore the fact they have 25-30 man squads and a vast assortment of academy players and could rotate their squads if player welfare was a genuine concern. But none of them ever do.

So clubs have been cancelling games once they've had 2 or 3 covid positives. The PL is arguably weaker than the RFL and will bow to any pressure from the big clubs particularly. They changed the rule so clubs can now include 'covid and injured' players, so they will always get to the limit if they want to.

Super League will have the same problem. You can bet which clubs it'll be too. It wouldn't surprise me if come August, Cas, Hull KR and Leeds are 4+ games behind everyone else.

There's a fair bit of conjecture there Mr Saddened.
Although I agree that there is a power struggle within the Premier League in particular, having fixtures postponed will only exacerbate the issues surrounding fixture backlog.
They may allow some breathing space in the short term but, this will come back and bite them at the business end of the season and I really cant see them doing as RL did and suddenly moving to win %.
Tbh, not being a huge fan of the round ball game I dont know what is in place to allow for postponements and rearranging fixtures.
If injured players can count alongside covid cases, they could end up in a right mess, especially if clubs abuse the situation.

Hull KR not being able to fulfill the fixture list to that extentwas largely down to 3 successive opposition in May/June I think it was pulling out. We hadn't played a game for about 6 weeks at one point, before succumbing to covid problems ourselves. We also played an away fixture at Catalans which in the end didn't have to be played, so wheres the angst against Rovers come from here? Or did you just look at last year's table and assume?!! Are you forgetting your beloved Saints conveniently pulled out the fixture a week after the Challenge Cup?
Cas I get as your point but I don't particularly get why you've highlighted Leeds either.

Clubs have squads of 30 players so whats the problem? Close contacts dont have to isolate anymore so as long as you have 17 players out of 30 who dont have Covid, no reason to postpone.

The 48-0 idea is a great one and will stop those clubs from last season who had 2 positive tests (their 2 best players) looking for a postponement.

Quote: ChampagneSuperRovers "Hull KR not being able to fulfill the fixture list to that extentwas largely down to 3 successive opposition in May/June I think it was pulling out. We hadn't played a game for about 6 weeks at one point, before succumbing to covid problems ourselves. We also played an away fixture at Catalans which in the end didn't have to be played, so wheres the angst against Rovers come from here? Or did you just look at last year's table and assume?!! Are you forgetting your beloved Saints conveniently pulled out the fixture a week after the Challenge Cup? Cas I get as your point but I don't particularly get why you've highlighted Leeds either.'" nope was KR https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/ ... t-positive cas played 3 more games than saints and 2 less than Leeds so cant see where Saddeneds' point against those teams come from!

Quote: ChampagneSuperRovers "Hull KR not being able to fulfill the fixture list to that extentwas largely down to 3 successive opposition in May/June I think it was pulling out. We hadn't played a game for about 6 weeks at one point, before succumbing to covid problems ourselves. We also played an away fixture at Catalans which in the end didn't have to be played, so wheres the angst against Rovers come from here? Or did you just look at last year's table and assume?!! Are you forgetting your beloved Saints conveniently pulled out the fixture a week after the Challenge Cup? Cas I get as your point but I don't particularly get why you've highlighted Leeds either.'" nope was KR https://www.skysports.com/rugby-league/ ... t-positive cas played 3 more games than saints and 2 less than Leeds so cant see where Saddeneds' point against those teams come from!

I think there was only two clubs who didn’t call off games from their end last year.

I think Leigh actually went a month without a game due to other clubs systematically using what was in force.

They do if they're not vaccinated.