i would love the SLE to become a genuine european competition and go from strength to strength and make the owners and players of the clubs vasts amounts of money.
personally speaking though, i would want nothing at all to do with it,as i enjoy watch my team home and away [live] every week which i wouldn't be able to do if it was involved.

Interesting to read the thoughts of Richard Lewis here... news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 326322.stm By far the most significant paragraph is the last for me “And our own figures show that, across the country, more people played rugby league in 2010 than ever before, a trend we are sure will continue"

Interesting to read the thoughts of Richard Lewis here... news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_l ... 326322.stm By far the most significant paragraph is the last for me “And our own figures show that, across the country, more people played rugby league in 2010 than ever before, a trend we are sure will continue"

I agree completely, I've never once advocated sticking clubs in Super League based on geographic location alone, only a moron would think that to be a sensible approach and it's only ever happened once, 12 years ago. The method you are suggesting is exactly what is done, yet when clubs do start to become successful and look like challenging the status quo it suddenly becomes 'unfair' and 'corrupt'.

If a club is being financed by the RFL , then in my opinion it would have to be excempt from promotion , if it reaches the point where it can stand on it's own two feet without financial or quota help , then fine away they go , but I see it as a more long term plan , rather than a ' get them into SL asap ' situation , as we had with the Celtic Crusaders

Celtic Crusaders were founded and financed by Leighton Samuel, not the RFL. It wasn't an RFL intiative, Bridgend was not a targeted area and they weren't fast tracked, it was a new club that started in NL2 as everyone is suggesting should happen. The fact that they rose up the leagues so quickly was due to the fact that they had a backer and so had far more financial power than the majority of lower league clubs, it was nothing to do with the RFL. Fair enough, Samuel turned out to be a bit of a crook and Crusaders ended up getting into a lot of debt and subsequently administration, which they have just left, but does that mean they were unsustainable? Only a couple of clubs would not encounter similar problems if their backers pulled out or weren't committed. If the criteria is that clubs need to be running at a profit and fielding an entirely home-grown side, then there would only be one or two clubs left in Super League.

Yes I know all about Mr Samuels and his founding of the Celtic Cruaders , the locals of Bridgend were quite vocal in their opinions of him , the fact they rose up the ladder was more to do with quota excemptions and the RFL allowing the players to be paid by Mr Samuels for working in his company , therefore avoiding any salary cap problems

Are you suggesting that we dont have a salary cap in the Championships ?

The discussion was that the RFL should finance the setting up of new clubs in the Championships , then we wouldn't have the problems we have seen with the Crusaders , because just as he was promised a SL spot in relative quick time , the same thing would happen again if an outside investor was to be involved

You say he was a crook , I dont actually believe that , he saw an opportunity to own a successful RL club , but the reccession made it unviable

I have not suggested anything except if a club is not being financed by the RFL it abides by all the rules every other club does

think you will find they were fast tracked, by being allowed to run above the cap in nl2, have more overseas players than what the other teams were allowed and the same again when they came up to nl1 it was not an even contest if they had run to the same rules as the rest in nl2 they would still be there in bridgend playing to gates of 500

More than once. What league were Paris St Germain playing in before joining SL?

obviously the mega-disaster of the century by the RFL - trying to fabricate a team from a non-heartland area was proven to be a pretty meaningless experiment so hopefully the RFL have learned their lesson plus the Charlety is probably the most heartless stadium ever created - I can't recall any sporting venue with less atmosphere,just an unwelcoming concrete jungle - access was easy tho' parking the usual parisian nightmare

most french RL fans I am in contact with are dreading the thought of a return to Parisian RL

There shouldn't be any. Toulouse should be next, and they're not that far off. They've got work to do but then it isn't easy.

looks likley to happen in the next few years tho' there are still utterings within the french game that the FFR are still talking about another Parisian venture - Mr Larrat,the big cheese in the FFR isn't the most popular man in the french RL set-up with the clubs though.His proposals to drastically reduce the amount of overseas players in the LER in one foul swoop failed miserably,being outvoted by all the club chairmen !

If all that is true, how come they owed the RFL £800K as has been suggested on here recently?