They finished second in the Championship and made the play off Grand Final. They and Salford were the two best teams outside Super League the year they were granted a Super League Licence.

For me I want us to keep a team in Wales, after all it would be a shame considering Crusaders achievements last year on the pitch and Wales earning a place in next years 4 nations! For me, accepting we are northern sport and nothing will change is not the way we should be looking... Expansion within the GB can only enhance our game, even though you can argue against that! I believe a larger pool of players will also help us internationally! Back to the Welsh, it would be a shame to lose Crusaders I think they were a success this year and long may that grow!

14 teams in SL is too many, there aren't enough clubs who can be viable. I know people talk about Widnes all the time but if Widnes come up they will struggle and struggle and I bet in a couple of years time you will hear about financial crisis at the club again and administration. Then you get calls for a Cumbrian franchise, exactly the same would happen, they would last a couple of years and then go bust. It was hardly 'unpredicted' when Celtic Crusaders came in, that they would get in this sort of mess.

The irony is that on the other side you get people saying Wakefield should be forced out of SL and lose their licence to let an expansion team/Widnes come in, but despite having a rocky ride in the last decade, Wakey have managed to keep their heads above water and survive. The only expansion team that has managed to make it without going bust is Catalans because there's money and infrastructure in France, so if we let a new team in I would be looking there at places like Toulouse, even if they aren't a huge success on the field at first at least the French clubs have got money behind them.

Celtic were always going to be another Gateshead Thunder mind you if Widnes had been allowed up instead I bet they would have ended up going bust as well. Widnes might make it up in the next year or so and it feels right to have them in the top division because of their history but it will be sad to see them come up and just be everyones whipping boys until they go bust again.

the crusaders project was doomed from the start,reduce sl to 12 teams and re-introduce promotion and relegation,easy peasy.wonder where that little halfback with the tache will end up.

Fewer teams = fewer games = higher admission charges = lower attendances

This will not help develop the game!

You could see this coming a week ago when the RFL fiddled the rules.

Wales Crusaders will be in SL next season.

Slight exaggeration....However, I'd sooner pay more to watch quality than to pay less and watch mediocre stuff.

I don't know what Jungle Jim is on about with admission prices going up. When we had a 12 team league playing 28 rounds, from 2000 to 2006, admission prices were lower than they are now with a 14 team league playing 27 rounds.

The most important income stream for the clubs is TV money so more teams = a smaller share of TV money. The difference will have to be made up either by owners or fans.

If we had enough viable franchises to support 14 clubs who could run themselves properly and not be getting into debt or falling into administration then fair enough, but we don't. Also we don't have enough decent players to provide 14 teams. We are over reliant on importing overseas players to get the numbers up. If you didn't have the overseas players here then some of the teams at the bottom would be pretty much NL1 standard.

I think you need to get yourself a new crystal ball there, because it’s talking complete .

Widnes would be a B grade club, playing to the full salary cap, immediately on entering Super League. We may struggle on the field for the first couple of seasons, that’s only to be expected, but they would be one of the most financially secure clubs in SL. The club didn’t amass any debt while in SL last time, and this time they are run far better and have a multi-millionaire backer in the form of Steve O’Connor. The Vikings have a SL attendance average of 6,500 - 7,000 – and that’s with a poor team heading for relegation. During the period we were in SL we averaged at least 1,500 more than Wakefield, Salford, Huddersfield and Harlequins. We also have excellent nationally recognised sponsors in Stobart and are getting more on board at a fair rate of knots. We've also just made £1million profit!

So could you please explain why we appear so weak to you, instead of just assuming that they will fail?

Because, it seems to me, that you know all about Widnes.

There's no doubt widnes will be a much better proposition this time round.

Out of interest, have widnes accounts showing this million pound profit been released yet? Pretty remarkable numbers and they must be doing something right.

They finished second in the Championship and got promoted from Championship 1 the season before due to playing 6 aussies who were illegally in the country.

oh well that's it then.... just because your mate doesn't THINK it will be ready he must be right...
who is your mate then? eamon mcmanus...

I think Wales needs more teams in the lower tiers of the domestic leagues first for it to work. Catalans have more french players in their team now but only because they have two other divisions of french teams to draw from. They need to spend more time and development on this at a lower level first.