From August 16th and the close contact isolation rules for the fully vaccinated being removed, this will likely make this problem of not being able to field a team disappear.

Although Blake Austin might want to sign a contract somewhere quickly before they realise he is going to miss out many fixtures if this carries over into future seasons if his social media activity reflects his vaccination status.

No, not at all. I've called out all the clubs doing it. Now Saints are doing it I'll call them out as well. It was entirely predictable that this would happen after Wembley. The winners would be too hung over to play and the loser wouldn't want to back it up with an inevitable league defeat. I wasn't falling over myself to have a pop at Warrington, you were just the most recent example of it. There's no functional Cas forum on here so couldn't post it on there.

The clubs are letting themselves down. The sport is spiraling downwards and self-interest is the only thing on the minds of the clubs. The damage they're doing to the sports reputation and the competitions profile by not making the best effort to field a team will still be being felt in 12 months time as crowds will be a fraction of the pre-covid levels.

If the Premier League and Rugby Union competitions are similarly decimated and every third Premier League game is binned off due to covid then I'll apologise and pipe down.

I think it’s time to admit that you are an anti-lockdown advocate and, as such, your argument is much weaker as we would have been in a far worse position without them. Of course, you are far more intelligent than the scientists.

You don't know this.



Sky have not gone down to one game a week. Due to the fixture scheduling some weeks we are having 3 games a week, sometimes 1. Not forgetting there normally would have been no televised games last week due to the blank challenge cup weekend, but we got 1. Next week there is a televised game on the Wed & Thurs.

From what I can see Sky is having its scheduling fulfilled.

Saints v Hull KR now officially called off by St Helens, owing to CoVid:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/57903233

Saints v Hull KR now officially called off by St Helens, owing to CoVid:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/57903233

It's a crisis now. Something needs to be done.

Plenty of clubs look like they are trying to cherry-pick their way to the 18-game threshold.

Maybe it should be a case of either play, or forfeit. No in between.

If your players can't take precautions and social distance, then tough luck.

I was in favour of short lockdowns to help the NHS. The drawn out, unenforced, semi-lockdowns we got caused far more damage to a wide range of people than they prevented and they targeted and punished the wrong people. Don't tell me you've been a massive fan of the Government's drawn out handling of covid? rlArticles like this put the pro-lockdown argument into the shade reallyrl 100 million missed cancer screenings?

But that just has no relevance to this does it? I think all the clubs should make every effort to ensure the games go ahead. Is that really a massively controversial thing to say? Like I said earlier, lets see how other sports fair. If it's a massive issue then I'll happily admit I was wrong.

I'd agree with that. I'd be happy for them to award the points to Hull KR and Huddersfield. I think they should announce now that any games that are not completed at the end of the season will be awarded as walkovers or even deductions so you get -2 points rather than 0.

Warrington have announced this week they have 12 healthy first team players in training. So you only need 5 academy players to make a squad. Saints will be the same, although possibly the nature of cup win celebrations meant the whole squad had to isolate. But if that's the case, it should be given as a walkover as we haven't taken the protocols seriously enough.

But what if all 12 of those are forwards?

I don't think its right to put 5 academy players alongside a 12 strong first team squad (those 12 could include younger players such as Wrench, Longstaff, Doro, Thewlis as well). Lets not forget that the academy teams didn't play at all last year and only played a handful of games this year, with no reserve team. You think they should be thrown en masse into a first team environment with no previous exposure to the first team? When we played Salford away last year with a very inexperienced squad, we were still in the main fielding first team squad players, I think there were only 2 academy players in there. We have a much smaller squad this year. It just doesn;t make sense to the play the game, whether it fits your agenda or not.

Some of these fixtures may be possible to play at a later date, but probably not all of them. Sky are interested in getting their allocated matches per season, that is what they are getting. Football (and probably Union clubs to an extent) may well be able to take a hit of players isolating with bigger squads. They also may be able to take the NRL approach of a bubble. As you say, it will be interesting to see the impact there, if cases are as high - but given there will be new rules by then on isolation we probably wont get to see a like for like comparison.

Can you clarify what the protocols say about mixing of first team and academy squads?

I thought they weren't allowed to mix for the obvious reason of increased potential for spread of the virus outside of the playing group. You obviously know better as you've spent the last week suggesting Warrington could have used their academy players to make up the shortfall outside of the 25 Super League squad.

Do please enlighten us.

There can't be any regulations around that as Castleford fielded a mixed squad with about 10 academy players against Salford before the cup final, including five debutants.

There may well be times where clubs literally cannot get 17 eligible players onto the field for a game, I'll add that in as you seem very insistent on that. But it's very clear that clubs are reaching for the 7 player limit at times so they don't have to play. Look at Liam Watts tweets recently where he says they need to stop testing players who aren't ill or identified as close contacts as it gives clubs an excuse to postpone games. That's a current SL player saying 'lets stop giving the clubs an excuse to postpone games'.

Whatever the actual truth is behind each postponement, the competition needs to be stronger on it and get these games played where possible. There was a journalist on twitter who said there are likely to be 24 postponed games still unplayed in two weeks time, with only 6 weeks to go. That's not a good look for a sport that was already hemorrhaging sponsorship, TV revenue and gate receipts. Super League making a warning statement that they're able to fine clubs and deduct points over covid postponements is also an indicator that they suspect rules are being abused.

And Saints are not playing this week because?

They’re happy to have a rest after the challenge cup final and subsequent pee up…..sorry, I mean they have some Covid issues. We might not see Cas again this season going off their record this season and the end of last season. It was a minor miracle all their issues with Covid cleared up for Challenge Cup Final week but alas, they’re back now.

Just because they can under the rules, apparently.