What has Wood done that needs to be applauded?
Difficult period? The Welsh farce was purely down to bad decisions being made at the RFL, as was the Stobart deal. The troubles at Bradford (3 owners inside 2 years), Wakefield, London and Salford (nearly) are not his issue, yet he involves himself heavily in 2 of them but ignores the other 2. The NRail cup is no more, he has tried to placate the Championship Clubs by buying them with SL TV money and binning licencing, something a majority of SL clubs now seem to have an issue with and the premier comp in Europe is still without a naming sponsor 3 years after Engage announced they were offski!
I for one a thrilled that IL and the dissenters have chosen to have a go during the RLWC.....Wood will quite happily take all the credit for what has been a great comp and try to use this as a position of strength.....I suspect he will have to back down on a number of issues or face being in charge of a sport that is missing it's top 13 English draw-cards....he can then fight BARLA for control of what's left of the game below Super League.

Which perhaps only shows the standards of those running industry then. Let's be clear: making people redundant while retaining your own sizeable pay packet is easy. Fiddling around with organisational change rather than bringing in much needed funds is easy. Blaming a system put in place by your predecessor rather than trying to make it work is easy. Appeasing factional interests rather than looking at the bigger picture is easy. I don't personally feel any of these should be applauded myself.

50% of one department of the Coop in your present neck of the woods have been made redundant today. I am sure they are applauding the decisions now being made in that organisation. I can only wonder what hard working servants of the game such as the Senters think when they wander to the dole office about the tough decisions made about their lives by people still in place retaining a six figure salary, while overseeing commercial failure, a disastrous drop in funding and infighting which may haunt the game for years to come.

I'm no fan of Woods particularly over the Crusaders farce and I think the NRC should be kept.

But that said most people seem to think "making cuts" is a sign of a poor manager. In fact it is a sign of a difficult economic circumstance. A weak manager would simply dodge making the decision and leave it for the next guy to clean up the mess.

Is there a case for adopting a region in the same way that Catalan opted for Catalan rather than calling themselves Perpignan? I've seen cars with Catalan Dragons stickers on as far away as Carcassonne. You know, play out of Barnet and call yourself "Southern Broncos" or something like that, or Southern Saxons? So that it represents the whole of the south of England against the north, and might act as a rallying cry.

It is a shame it's going belly up. London in its current form wasn't working and had no sign of it ever working. It is still a sad day though because it means that something intended to spread the game hasn't worked.

WHY? is the "cash just not there" because under his control, there has been a complete failure to attract major financial sponsors, while Rugby Union seem to have no problems! in industry for that alone the CEO would be out of the door quickly! or if that CEO was a man he would tender his resignation.

The RU have had problems, the Celtic League didn't have a sponsor for about 3-4 years.

There is but when one is avoided for years then the other becomes unavoidable.

Fans of the game certainly wanted the RFL to bail out Crusaders (cost 700k) and to buy Bradford's ground, at the time, they probably didn't have the money for either. Now we are paying the price. Yet the fans say that the RFL should also be running Broncos, something that cost David Hughes a few million a year.

It is said that RL must be a great game to survive the people who run it but if the fans ran the game, it wouldn't have made it into the 20th century let alone this one.

Is the emphasis on The RU HAVE HAD Problems? while The RFL has had them seriously for the past Two Season's! Compare the sponsorship paid by Aviva for sponsorship of the RU Premiership compared to NIL for the past two season's in Super League! add to that TV fee's BT paying £152 million for three seasons with RU!

Celtic League? are you making reference to what become the Pro 12 League? if so 'Rabobank became sponsors in 2011 for 4 seasons, on what was reported as an increase on the previous £500,000 per season by Magners. But lets just see how The RFL goes next season in attractive a major financial sponsor, as it will be 3 years without a major financial sponsor of Super League!

I will always give credit when it is due, and Sally Bolton has done an amazing job in running The 2013 Rugby League World Cup, but she rarely gets credit, except from those clubs etc involved with her, someone at The RFL wants to take all the credit.

The Celtic League was set up in 2001 but only got a sponsor in 2006. That's five seasons with no sponsor before the world wide recession.

You are not talking about the same thing nor are you correct to say the fans want certain things. It is some fans. There were many posts from fans wanting both Crusaders and Bradford thrown out, just as a quick view of the VT thread shows there are plenty who want to see the back of London.

Equally some fans just want the club supported taking into account the difficulties of being outside the heartlands without necessarily wanting good money pumped in after bad.

When the Lenegan share issue was resolved David Hughes made a speech on the pitch saying the RFL had agreed that it shouldn't be left to one man to advance the game in London. The RFL would assist on development and marketing. Earlier this year the RFL shut its media, marketing and development office in London and it would appear again expecting a struggling club to pick up the tab. Now there are rumours circulating that they are not going to assist with the academy either. No wonder he has had a gutful.

I cannot see how this is sensible long term planning for the good of the game in the UK let alone something to applaud.

Btw if the retreat is unavoidable because consolidation has been avoided for years, isn't that the fault of those in management who should be planning for the future. We have been in recession for five years now. Surely someone at the RFL must have noticed before this year.

Well yeah but the Crusaders and Bradford things were more than just a "We're in a recession now". Hence why I say we are now paying the price.

Sorry but are you trying to say that the RFL's present problems are due to supporting Crusaders and Bradford. Weren't those debts iae guaranteed by charges against the respective stadiums (and already repaid in the case of Crusaders)

No.

Crusaders have not paid their debts and the debt is never likely to be paid. The 700k might be secured against the stadium but that means nothing.

Bradford pay rent. The RFL won't have had anything like their initial outlay repaid.