I am not being unrealistic. I love this game, Rovers & all the small clubs & grounds but the day uncle Mo signed us up to super league & full time pro squads the writing was on the wall. Lots of cubs including ours struggle to make ends meet, the big spenders like Leeds still loose players to Union. the only way forward is to spread the game in large citys that can support teams in large stadia with the oportunity to have other revenue streams other than match days & if the spread is not over large areas of the UK we are stuffed as the real money from TV & sponsors will elude us. The salary cap is keeping the lid on things at the moment but it will have to rise or Union? Australia will take the best players.

As opposed to £12million a year that other clubs in non-RL areas perhaps receive?

Gutterfax the special dispensation thing is a non-starter as far as Quins knocking Rovers is concerned - your club survived on it for many, many years hence you having a strong side between 96-99 with the likes of Matterson, Barwick, Retchless etc.

Please accept my apologies, you're right, had a look on the Cougars website and they won the title in 94-95 but didn't do a back-to-back, sorry.

I don't always agree with Roofs, but he has the honesty to admit when he is wrong. Quite a few other posters could learn from that.

How right you are sir. A club founded in 1980 needed to be built around australians when it joined super league for the first time in 1995, 15 years later and exactly the same applies to a team founded in 1882 when they joined in 2007 125 years later
I mean to say, HKR was purely an amateur set up before 2007 wasn't it?

But his point stands.
It's a pity you have to go asking the RFL for dispensations.
How many overseas players is it? 8? 9?

Dispensation for 1 player, sure more controversial events have happened in SL the last 14 years.

Probably got 8 or 9 overseas players at the moment yes, but considering it's only our 4th season in SL is that really bad? What team has come up and managed to be successful without overseas players

Like I've said before though, the production line is without doubt underway - Welham and Watts are first team regulars (when not injured obviously), Latus has a long way to go but is learning and shows enthusiasm, and more will gradually be brought through, + we have plenty of English players we've brought in like Briscoe, Fox, Murrell, Cockayne, Walker etc.

That do?

His point is absurd. SL was a paradigm shift in the sport of RL. Whatever any clubs did prior to that (and pretty much all were run badly when assessed by the current franchise criteria, extreme short termism on and off the field, no business sense at all) is rendered meaningless when compared to the guaranteed financial resources available to clubs with the inception of SL.

Or if you insist on persuing this line of argument, why choose this particular period of HKR's history to condemn them for playing overseas players? Put another way, in only two years of a 125 year history, HKR have sought dispensation to play additional overseas players. One of which had played all his professional career in the English game for a number of clubs and I doubt anyone would be churlish enough to suggest that the pleasure he gave to thousands of people and his devotion and commitment to English RL was not deserving of one extra season in the top flight of RL.

Proof that franchising does't work

Look at the Widnes v leighs attendance figure, from this weeks games despite Widnes playing poorly and losing to Batley the week before. Leigh took about 800.