Could we have offered to pay for say Melbourne or NZ Warriors to come over. If we paid for their flights and accommodation it would have cost a fraction of the 180 grand for the wcc.
That may have attracted a good crowd that would have covered the costs or maybe even made us a few bob.

Maybe next year we should maybe look at not bottling it in the play offs, win the grand final then play the Aussies for real

I think some people seem to forget that this was nothing more than a friendly match, nothing at stake, nothing to win just a friendly ......a friendly at a huge cost to a club that struggles to attract fans/finances anyway.
yes we will never know if thousands of people who won't come and watch us play the big local teams in a game which means something will come and watch us play, to them, a non descript team from the other side of the world but i am presuming the club have considered this and have therefore presumed these people won't come !!.

Whenever the club does something to lose money it gets criticised for whatever it did so you can hardly complain that they're not prepared to risk losing money on something which only serves as a novelty purpose !.

Reports were this was a bond no a cost. When you fullfill your commitments, you get a bond back.

think thats right actually! so infact it wasnt even going to cost us as we would have got the money back, so the cost reasons people have put forward fall down on that score

It would still be a cost to the club. It's still £180,000 that would leave the club and would have to be accounted for. It doesn't matter that you "might" get it back you still need to balance the books at the point the bond is paid out. Besides what were the conditions? Maybe the club couldn't fulfill them. What if one was the match had to be staged and we had a snowfall like a few seasons ago for Eorl's Testimonial? The club would be screwed.

I get it, people are butt-hurt that they don't get to see us play an NRL side that's OK. But the club made absolutely the right decision financially in turning down this farcical circus of a game.

Errrr.... Baloo said at the fans forum ''We didn't qualify''

yes we fluffed it against cats the only way cats cud play in it is if they were to get to the grand final as they were the lowest placed qualifier in the semi,s

no we were the 3rd ranked team due to league finishing position which was what was stated when the wcc was announced and were asked if we wanted to be in but said no so the rfl changed their minds and let wire take the 3rd ranked team instead.

That is what people want to know.

If there were conditions which the club could not achieve attached to this, let us know so we know if the critisism is valid.

At present it looks like they have no ambition.

If we win play offs next year we will be in the same position as far as support etc goes. Would we reject the opportunity as champions?

ha who knows, if we had to go to Australia to play it then we could just say oh let wigan play instead as they have been before and no one knows little huddersfield so we wont bother raising our profile.

Again, the fact that this was a friendly match and NOT the actual WCC seems to be forgotten, obviously if we are the English champions we will play it....but this is completely different, there is/was nothing at stake !!

If it was a competition which culminated in a final then I would consider it but I just don't think it was worth it like Daz says

Yep, Ken Davy was pretty clear, I think in the 4Fs fanzine, if we win the Grand Final we would play, but to pay £ 180k for a friendly against a random NRL side when we will not recoup that money is not a good use of that money.

We can all agree or disagree with that decision, but that was the reason given. Personally I agree, it seems half the nRL also agree.

Ken (the club) should have asked all these moaning we didnt do it to fork out for it and see if they were still happy to go ahead with parting with money for nothing !