Quote Tipster Ste="Tipster Ste"It sounds to me like Widnes are having an off season next year like we have this year. They have the all important tick for the application and will probably spend big for the 2011 season to ensure good crowds and publicity just in time for the franchise verdicts!'"
Quite possibly very true Simon
But looking at recent events coming out of South Wales and elsewhere with the 'successful' clubs handed out "Franchises" I can't help but feel clubs would be foolish to trust or follow anything the RFL decides.
Put bluntly any further franchise applications should at a minimum come with a firm but polite warning of court action if what happened in July last year occurs again.
RL HAS to get back to best team on the field winning things and progressing or it will start to fail (check this seasons final attendances for proof - and then rememeber the spin put on them from last season).
People don't like being "sold a pup", The RFL and its indirectly sponsored franchises in South Wales (already now on the "road") and in Toulouse need to be because those clubs are a success, not just a pin in a map expansion policy.
Clubs like Widnes and Leigh need to be playing with 100% effort from all at the club week in week out to the best of there abilitys to entertain the people who have payed to watch a spectacle, not pandering to Richard Lewis's and the RFL's expansion experiments.
