Very true , but there are some mitigating circumstances , the LSV is not owned by the club and the club has no say in how it is run , it is a council ' facility ' run by council employee's

They seem to have got the worst bunch of ' jobsworths ' they could find to run it

Basically nice shiney council run stadia dont work outside the top flight , this combined with no promotion has decimated the interest in the town

While ours isn't quite as shiney and new as yours Widnes RLFC has a very close working partnership with HBC and we've somehow managed to maintain interest and fairly healthy crowds even in the face of no promotion..

Hence why I posted this earlier





You are the only option outside SL at the moment and should have got the spot last year

wigans crowds originally were poor because their old ground was much loved and it was a shock to lose it. arent their crowds now higher than their glory days of the 80s?

hull fc, warrington and huddersfield all have had the large increases i refer too

yep the RFL have done a bit for non SL clubs lately. a paying TV deal is what im getting at.

given the size of RL vs other sports, unless you plan on getting RL fans from australia, you will have to convert fans of other sports to grow.

thinking australian when it comes to RL means thinking right.

the SL is trying its best to be the nrl, i hope it gets there.

The details of this paying tv Deal? As i understand it the clubs get next to nothing for the Championship TV deal. Im happy to be put right if this is not the case but about the only thing i ever hear about with TV games is 200 Tickets for the home team ( paid for by the Co-op i think ).

The best thing about the TV deal is the added exposure for sponsors i would imagine.

Starbug, why do you never type 'Wigan' properly?

something like 80,000 - 100,000 pounds per club dependant on satisfying certain criteria

Thats part of the main Sponsorship deal with Sky and not a new thing. And for this we get to play in a competition where there is no Promotion, Very few games to help pay the bills.

I mean we have a 11 team league where two can be relegated. One is exempt, no one is promoted and we have a 6 team playoff to decide the winner of a competition that no longer needs to be won because getting there is far more important. The Northern Rail cup final was a more important match then the Championship Grand final will be.

You get 10 home league games a season, If you miss the playoffs then how can a club be expected to run within the black?

And thats if your one of the lucky Championship clubs, its worse in the next division. Here you only get 9 home games, little chance of advancing in the NR cup and you will be very lucky to get a good CC draw to help pay your way. But at least 2 teams go up and Winning the Title means something on both fronts.

1) There's a sponsorship deal with Sky? Really?

Oh – no there isn't. There's the sale of TV rights. Including, in the package that started at the beginning of this season, Championship games. Which includes funds available to Championship clubs, subject to certain criteria

2) Then how come it's only been available since the beginning of this year?

1 ) i meant TV deal, i shall go hang my head in shame for making a minor error.

2 ) As far as i was aware ( again i could be mistaken ) Funds were always available to the National league teams ( as it was ) but since Licensing the RFL have increased the amount going to Championship clubs by way of compensation, they might call it something else but its compensation for having P&R taken away. What criteria do SL clubs have to satisfy to get the full whack of the SL sky money? Again an honest question.

I don't see this as the RFL doing much for the Championship clubs.

Given that your minor error was to claim that it's not part of the TV deal but some non-existent general sponsorship. Yes.

My main Gripe is not with the TV deal, Or its stipulations. We always had central funding of one sort or another. How much greater it is now i will be honest and say i don't really know.

My main problem is there just are not enough opportunities for Championship clubs to make money. There are not enough games, simple. I will give an example of this.

Widnes Will receive £100K from the RFL ( im assuming we meet the criteria ).

We will play 10 Home League games.
Have played 3 Home Northern Rail group games.
One Home Challenge Cup Game
One Northern Rail Cup knockout home game
A Northern Rail Cup Final

Potentially we could have 3 Playoff games and a Grand Final to come.

We Run to the Max £400K cap, We Run an Academy and most of our players are part time. We have the Largest Support outside of SL. And one of the best Named and paying sponsors.

And we are losing money.

I still for the life of me can not understand why we need 2 Championship Divisions With such a small number of games. The majority of the players in these Leagues Wont play Representative Rugby, Wont be playing in the later levels of the CC and have a long Off season ahead of them.

If we have an 18 team Championship With the Bottom 3 teams in CH1 Dropping into a conference Div we stand a chance.

Give the Conf Div a £75K Salary cap and each club £30K a year Funding ( most of which is recovered from the 3 relegated teams £100K for competing in CH1. And you could have a reasonably strong Conference with Bramley, Workington, The Skolars and Rochdale as the leading lights. With the Winner of the Conference Division replacing the Bottom club in the championship.

And make the Rail cup a Straight knockout Comp.

And lastly. Any club can apply for SL regardless of if they have won this or that. if your application is sound then what Difference should a northern Rail cup Trophy make to it?

I have gone way off Topic with this but Clubs are struggling to survive right across the board Bellow SL. I know they are on about reducing the cap to £250K ( not sure how far they are with this ) but that will just make playing RL less of an option for people. Why dedicate yourself and put yourself at risk for a job that pays peanuts by comparison to say.. Driving a fork lift? and could potentially put the latter at risk

Not necessarily something I'd disagree with. But I'd point out that there are 10 home league games in the Championship, compared to 13 in SL. But SL clubs don't have three guaranteed home NRC games (though I admit it's not a competition which draws the biggest crowds).

Less than 8,000 at Bradford today, for a team that has had all that success only a few years ago is shocking

It's not all that shocking really.Bradford's gates have been in steady decline for about 4 years now.It's not like they have suddenly dropped from 14000 to less than 8000 over night.