This would be the Gateshead thunder who have 7 overseas players would it? playing by the same rules are they?

its clear where you prejudice lies, you might aswell be honest about it you fool no one

We will have to see whether they lose or generate cash over the next 3 years - possibly the credit crunch was not the best time for this move, but who could have predicted that.

Championship 1 get a share of TV revenue, the TV revenue is based on what SKy decide it's worth, which is influenced by having a French club in the top tier.

A team exempt from relegation is not wrong, if you're ann oyed about the travel costs for a Championship side, what would it be like for a Championship 1 side? If they could be relegated you'd be complaining about that too! Anyway, this isn't something we need to discuss until they actually use their relegation immunity.

Celtic in the Championship in 2009 is very much crystal ball stuff from both of us. Would the big money have walked or would he have stuck it out for another 3 years? I reckon the latter, you disagree, we will never know. Not really worth arguing about.

Not ' over the moon ' about it no , I was aware they had this many yes , are they paying out for recent SOO players on amatuer terms ? no

But to tell the truth all I care about at the moment is the survival and future growth of all the clubs we already have in the Championships

Maybe I have more sympathy for a club that has ' done its time ' in the lower league , I will not apologise for it , it is expansion of the sport much more than Toulouse or even Celtic for that matter and if they eventually do find a big money backer and go on to SL then fine

As long as the clubs in the ' lower ' league are in good financial positions then no problem

We have already seen ' the word ' of the RFL in the transparent Licence decisions , and to tell the truth I no longer care if Leigh ever get another shot at SL as long as we see a better more constructive approach to the NL/Championsips

I wont be holding my breath

I wouldn’t be shocked at all by it. In fact I fully expect it to happen. I expected the licence criteria to be robust and honest. I expected Widnes’ application, put together at great expense to the club, to be either thrown out for being a new club with only 7 - 8 months financial records, or accepted and judged fairly. Widnes’ financial part of their bid would have to have been robust, but a £500,000 guarantee seems just about as robust as you could get. Yet they failed Widnes for only having 7 months worth of financial records. The question asked by many, including Halton MP Derrick Twigg in Parliament, was why didn’t the RFL simply tell the club not to waste it’s money applying this time around, as it is impossible to gain a licence after only 7-8 months in business? It just makes no sense at all!

Now, I’m not just having a whinge about why Widnes didn’t get a licence. I am largely over the anger, but it illustrates perfectly why I have little faith in anything the RFL say. There is a clear agenda of expansion, even if the RFL lack the courage to come out and say so directly.

The initial offer of a guaranteed place in SL 2012 – for an NL/Championship side that meets the criteria – looks, to me, to have only been put forward by the RFL to placate the top four or five clubs, with SL aspirations, in order that they accept the new Licence system, which banishes them all for a minimum of 3 years from SL. At least, so they thought, they’ll have one more shot at it in 2011.

Once the RFL made that promise it meant they either had to demote a current SL club or expand SL to 15 clubs in 2012. Either way, a very difficult choice would have to be made. So this would mean, if they want to carry on with an expansionist agenda, it would be far easier to promote an expansion club by using the ‘Guaranteed Championship place’. The fact is there may not be one current SL club that deserves to be demoted in 2012. In that case they would have to expand SL to 16 clubs in order to accommodate both a heartland and an expansion club. I doubt there will be enough talent and money for that to be a viable option. Perhaps SL could be expanded to 15, at a push, but not 16 imo. I think they would expand to 15 to accommodate an expansion club, but not a traditional club, especially with Toulouse and Gateshead in the Championship.

This time the RFL had the luxury of being able to promote an expansion club along with a heartland club. If they wish to do that again, they’ll probably have to kick two current clubs out, or kick out one club and expand to 15. Unless a couple of current SL clubs go pop, over the next three years, I pretty sure that two clubs will not be kicked out. So that leaves option 2. The RFL have already admitted that they may have to expand the league to 15 clubs, in order to comply with their promise, but I think they may be basing that on the possibility they may have no club they can demote in 2012. Imo the only reason TO didn't get the same deal as Les Catalans instead is because of these possible complications.

Imo a Yorkshire club will be booted out of SL 2012 and Toulouse will take their place in a 14 club SL, providing they don’t go into financial meltdown. Even if you think Toulouse will bring some benefit to the Championship, in the form of interest and finance, the massive cost to the RFL of transporting 11 clubs back and fourth from the South of France for three years will vastly outweigh any such benefit, (not to mention the on-going problems many amateur players will have getting time off work to travel to France over the next three years). I don’t see this money being on offer after the next round of licences and Toulouse will either be promoted to SL in 2012 or end up back in their own French league.

If I’m honest I genuinely thought that Toulouse were a far better bet for expansion than the Crusaders, and was surprised when they didn’t get the nod ahead of them. I can only assume that this is the only way the RFL thought they’d have a chance to get them both over time. I’ve no axe to grind with either club, I hope they both do well, I just don’t trust the RFL. Experience has shown them to be dishonest and totally ruthless with the future of smaller, heartland clubs. Unfortunately this gets lost in a barrage of name-calling. Anyone who doesn’t agree with the way the RFL are managing expansion is nothing more than a xenophobic old flat capper to some people on these boards.


I hope you are right, and the RFL do the honorable thing, but the word honour and the RFL just don't sit right to me.

Then good riddance to SL

Much as I dont like this tactic

Would you like to provide a link to anything mentioning Toulouse and extra SKY money for the NLs/Championships ?

Or even a mention of SKY money and the NL's / Championships ?

As for the travel costs , they would be the same

As for the relegation issue , there should be no restrictions on movement between 2 divisions of the same competition , many supporters of expansion have argued that very point on these boards many times

I actually think that Toulouse in the same league as Widnes, Leigh, Halifax etc, could be a good thing in terms of the next round of licences. Lets face it if Toulouse were in their own league, the RFL could have put them into SL without question and without direct comparisons to UK clubs. IF Toulouse consistantly fail in the Championship, it would be almost impossible to include them next time around. Haven't the RFL also said that despite Toulouse having an increased quota for 2009, by 2010 this has to reduced to the same as UK clubs? Maybe the RFL are getting worried about strength of the English game and are hoping Toulouse will fail so that they can concentrate more on Engilsh clubs developing English players. When the playing strength of the national side is as low as it has been for some time, are they worried about what might happen if they are seen to be aiding the French development instead of looking closer to home?

The biggest problem regarding the next few years is the percieved lack of level playing field. If there was no salary cap and one club can afford better players than others, thats fair enough, but if you get one club who spend what they want and others are told you can't bring players in because of the cap, then it can only lead to accusations about favouritism. All the major candidates should be in the same league playing from the same set of rules. If Gateshead or Toulouse finish top 2 in the next 2 seasons, each with a large percentage of foreign players and one of them gets a licence then the other clubs and their fans will quite rightly say "here we go again, another Celtic job"

As Starbug has said for some time now, the gimmicks and helping hands needs to stop. Celtic with their near full team of foreign players over the past 2 years has stopped other sides getting promotion into NL1 and also to the NL1 grand finals - not really off the back of hard work and that they earned it on merit. It was purley on the basis that they have rich backer who was allowed to sign whoever they wanted. Imagine if in the premier league, the FA said right we want East Anglia club to do well and increase particiaption levels in that area. Everyone else can only spend x amount of money and can only sign certain players, but Ipswich can sign whoever they like. It sounds ridiculous and would never happen in a million years. It makes a mokery of the competition and is possibly turning some fans away from the sport because of it. As Starbug has also said, if the RFL are that desperate to get certain teams or geographical areas into SL, then the RFL should just come out and say that and put them straight into SL. Because of what happened with Celtic and the way they went about things Starbug has rightly said why even bother putting them in NL's in the 1st place? Its not as if they managed to build any sort of fan base - I guess the NL's were just used as a dummy run to make sure they had the background staff in place and had a few players to take with them into SL so they didn't have to sign a whole new squad from scratch. Its not a very nice feeling to think you're club is playing in a biased competition or that you know that no matter what your club does or says it won't make a difference come decision time.

I mean Widnes had this to announce yesterday

Well At least you have admitted that your moaning and whining has nothing to do with what you actually think clubs can or will achieve, but on your jealousy that Leigh cant and wont achieve what they have,
Keeping Celtic in the championship, as you yourself have said on many many occasions, would not only be pointless from Celtics point of view, but in your opinion, bad for the league, Gateshead on the other hand, who are doing the exact same, and have been for longer, with much less success, are somehow a benefit and ‘real expansion’. Which you seem to think means not quite successful

As for including Toulouse in there, its complete, unadulterated idiocy. Toulouse are nearly as old as Castleford, they aren’t expansion, they are simply putting a pathway in place to get to SL from areas we are already strong, They will have fewer overseas players than Gateshead or Skolars, they have a fantastic academy set up which rivals anything in the championship, and have great links with the local business community. Toulouse have spent nigh on 80 years in the ‘lower’ league, they have done their time

Needing to put down a £500k bond is hardly the showing of a credible business is it?How could the RFL have told Widnes their bid would fail having not seen theirs or anyone else’s bid? Had they done this, Im sure we would have seen many Widnes fans using this an example of how the RFL was persecuting them

The RFL have been fairly open and honest about the need and will for expansion

So why did they need to add Toulouse if it was all part of this conspiracy? They could just promote Gateshead, or London, or a Scottish/Irish side which enters, and wasn’t the offer of a place to join what was then NL1 made at the same time as the offer of a place to a championship club that meets the criteria?

But if they are going to 15 they can promote Toulouse, worst comes to the worst they fulfil their promise and make SL go to 16! The problems regarding player pool are much less pronounced when one of the clubs in French who aren’t going to be picking from the UK player pool



transporting 11 sides, once, isnt going to cost a whole lot of money, and certainly not more than the french federation have already been able to pull in selling the TV rights in france

as for amateur players, that really isnt Toulouse's problem, if a club cant raise a side to travel then maybe the second tier of RL isnt for them

1). I believe that Gateshead and TO have a slightly increased overseas allowance, but that it will be evened out next year. I can see what you're saying and I think that in the cases mentioned (especially TO) I would agree with the feelings of the other fans.

2). NL1, now the Championship, has always had a problem with marketing itself - it was always viewed as the training ground for SL, or the "almost in" SL. This is the fans' view though, which does need remedying. IF fans view TO being added as making the comp a biased training ground, as opposed to seeing it as adding value to the competition, then it is very difficult to find a way of packaging it as a viable stand alone competiton.

3). I expect that youth development will count double in the next franchising round.