If the club was doing this on safety grounds I'd be backing them 100% but they're not. Nowhere in the statement does it say this is because travelling to France is unsafe. They've stamped their feet, screamed "it's not fair", and refused to play a game. The RFL have no option but to award Toulouse the points. SL should have done the same when Leeds and St Helens refused to travel to Catalans last year, but Elstone was too weak to take on two of the biggest clubs in the game.

The much bigger question is what happens when Toulouse win all their away games but are denied promotion because no-one travelled to France and they were unable to meet the 70% threshold. This has got disaster written all over it.

If the Broncos game is not counted as a game & if nobody else goes (not counted as games), would they just need to complete 70% of their away games to meet that particular criteria?

God knows. But I think we can safely assume that if the situation does arise then the RFLs final decision will, as always, benefit the northern clubs over anyone else.

I would of thought it was pretty obvious that one of the reasons (probably the main reason) for the club not going to France is the Covid infection rate. How can any organisation know 6 weeks before traveling what the situation is going to be with Covid infection rates. The government is still not confirming if international travel will start on the 17th May which is just over 5 weeks away.

That's all well and good, but the club's statement was presumably written yesterday and it doesn't mention safety as a factor at all. Simply that it's not fair that we should go and no-one else.

Maybe they ran out of letters in their play set!

Did they offer Toulouse a free polo shirt?

FWIW I think the club made the right decision not to go to France, but Hughes’ letter sounds just like a tantrum. Yes it is unfair but he should really have made the main point safety and the Covid infection rates in France. We know that a 0-24 award to Toulouse probably wouldn’t have happened to Fax, Feb, Bradford or Widnes. Or any Northern club.
That said, and following our performance at Fax last week, I reckon 0-24 would have been a good result. We could have taken a real hammering out there.
So I’ll take 0-24 with no injuries, a chance for some of our currently first choice players to get an extra week rest, and no unnecessary exposure to Covid in France for our players and staff.

I would say RfE that you right in everything that you say.
I wonder what punishment the RFL Compliance Committee will give us on top.

A) Any fine that bankrupts us
B) Banned from promotion for 10 years
C) Relegation to League 1
D) All of the above

That should cover most eventualities.

The club statement quite rightly focuses on the need for all clubs to have the same rules. However, I don't know why DH raises the issue that part time players would only need to request 4 days off from their employers. That suggests he thinks all clubs should have been travelling in which case Broncos should have travelled anyway if he thought that was the right thing to do.

He is never, nor has he ever been wrong. It is understanding this mindset that ensures longevity in terms of unwarranted employment at the club.
Unfortunately, this attitude/mindset has irked a few people at the rfl and as such, the favour drawer marked "london broncos" is empty.
As others have said. A simple "given the state of the french covid situation we are not prepared to travel to a country with a higher infection rate than the UK until such time as we feel secure" would have made the RFL position a whole lot trickier.