Yep, I thought virtually every club had some kind of lottery (or variant) nowadays.

People need to just realise that unless one club becomes good enough on it's own then It won't happen, I would love a team from this area of the country, expansion of super league into a rugby league hot bed can only be a good thing, look what happened with Catalans. Barrow have the best chance of doing it and IMO the only thing stopping them is the stadium, if they can get that sorted they will get bigger crowds which will put them above, quins, Salford, Celtic and would justify a place in super league. Before we put them in we would need to put in place some scouting structure to make sure they get all the best talent from the area so they compete on the field and the club does its bit for RL as a whole rather than buying foreign players.

Saying all this, I am sick to death of people saying "we need a RL franchise in cumbria" no we don't, it would be nice, but RL in this country does not depend on it.

My overall opinion though is that I would love for Barrow to be in super league. Eventually I would like to see.

Wigan
Leeds
Hull FC
Saints
Bradford
Warrington
Hull KR
Castleford
Catalans

All playing in modern stadia with averages over 10,000 average gates and the top clubs getting much more than that even 20,000.

Hudds
Wakey
Quins
Widnes
Halifax
Toulouse
Barrow

All fighting out to be bigger and better clubs to get into that top 9.

Celtic
Salford
and the rest of the clubs in the championship and championship 1 fighting it out for a liscence for super league or the second tier, we need more competition to get into super league and the championship IMO.

I personally think Barrow could help shape the future of RL and give the much smaller clubs hope that they could one day be up there in super league.

At the same time none of this will come around without a better product and bigger crowds, time will tell.

merge the top three leagues into two, SL and Championship.

Barrow should stay as they are (they have the finances)
but
Whitehaven and Workington should be merged into a Cumbrian side along with any other semi pro side. for the good of the game.

and lets try to get north wales in on the action in the not too distant future

Utter bollox

Don't be stupid! Why don't Warrington and Widnes merge for the good of the game then? They are rivals, fans do not want to merge, it cannot be done!

Let them sort it out by themselves and the RFL can help them where needed. As it stands Barrow have what it takes to get into super league if they can get a new stadium or upgrade the exisiting one.

The reason is Warrington and Widnes can pull the crowds unlike the Cumbrian sides.
If a professional side can't pull regular 4 figure crowds let alone 5 then what is the point seriously.
2,987 was the record crowd for a local derby Whitehaven v Barrow.

Whitehaven average crowd for the whole season 1,670
Workington average crowd for the whole season 468
2138 combined
flogging a dead horse for the sake of
0.0033 % of the population


is that because you'd fear for the professional status of Leigh ?
average att 1,984 which to be fair is almost the same as 2 Cumbrian sides combined

You clearly have no idea of the geography of Cumbria if you think Whitehaven v Barrow is a local derby. They're approximately 50 miles apart.

By your logic, then Warrington v Bradford is a local derby too.