With a new team playing in Championship 1 based in Neath. www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... aders.html Well its one less weekend for us all. Easy trip down the motorway to Wrexham. Overall though a total embarrassment for the RFL.

With a new team playing in Championship 1 based in Neath. www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague ... aders.html Well its one less weekend for us all. Easy trip down the motorway to Wrexham. Overall though a total embarrassment for the RFL.

Once again, a total cock up by the RFL & all concerned. It's a shame because the Catalans expansion worked so well! Hopefully they can turn it around in the next few years, but I doubt it.

Oh dear. They were rushed into super league quite clearly. Widnes would of been much more of an asset to super league.

What a joke. RFL, you should be embarressed. This is entirely Lewis and his band of idiots fault. The crusaders where asked to play in Super League, no club would turn that oppertunity down.

It's pathetic though isn't it?
Surely with the record of this happening over and over sooner or later one of these idiots will relise that for expansion to happen this way needs funding.
Unless someone is prepared to say...
right, here is the money that will guarantee us three years survival"...
they should not be fast tracked in.

We met some great people down in Bridgend.
Its them i feel sorry for.


But we remain stuck with idiots running our game.
Making our game look stupid.

Look at the magic weekend.
I know some people just block it out as they do not like the idea, but those of us who went were pretty much all of the opinion it worked better in Cardiff than Edinburgh.
Cardiff they tell us never really got behind the idea and didn't support it.

Well excuse me, thats the job of the RFL /SL not Cardiff bloody council.
Only SL would have had that there for two years for no apparent reason, then start a team down there and rob them of this fantastic opportunity to promote themselves by moving it to the other end of the UK.
Like I say the people running our game are idiots.

Well I can't see it lasting in Wrexham. I can almost walk it for the Wigan game there but I just don't see the depth of interest in either code of Rugby locally.

Yes there is a good RU side in Chester and there is Chester Gladiators RL and various RU sides in Wales such as Mold but it isn't some sort of hotbed area for either code. You won't get many people from Chester supporting a Wrexham based side if they were hoping for any of that either.

Given the expectation is they will lose most of their games as well it isn't really that enticing a prospect for the locals to start supporting them is it?

As there is to be a club in Neath they should have just bit the bullet, demoted the Crusaders back down to NL1 to be the Neath side (as basically they are bust) and just admitted it was too soon for a side from South Wales in SL.

I can't help thinking all this has done is postpone the inevitable and the Crusaders will eventually go bust which to my mind is worse than being demoted to start again in NL1.

Dave

Whether they make it work in Wrexham will depend on the people at the Crusaders. They are near Rugby League land and will have no difficulty recruiting players from Lancs, Yorks & Cumbria.
The local area might not be a hotbed of Union but if they were after Union players then they could do no worse than look around here on the Wirral.
Seventeen clubs, two of them semi pro. Only 30 mins max by the M53. Plenty of talent around and they will play League provided someone talks to them.

As for fans, who knows where they will come from.
Locally perhaps people may respond to ticket deals offered and that would get a few through the gates. The unknown is where will the Crusaders be after the next franchise deal.
Rumours around that Noble has a squad lined up which will be pretty good. The difficulty will be for the RFL is if they make the top 7 in SL which I think is the cut off for clubs adjudged to have "made a contribution to SL".

Five years ago we didn't have any clubs or players in Wales, even after all this we could very well end up with two.
The object of the excercise all along was to develop RL in Wales especially S Wales. There is a massive amount of talent to go at and the overall objective does appear to be working out better than expected.

Surprising what can be salvaged from an absolute wreckage.
The Crusaders into SL has been a disaster. From it all with two Welsh clubs and loads of Welsh talent coming into the game the RFL could end up with a better result than they ever dreamed of.

So will the next franchise round end with 14 or 16?
Will a heartlands team go? A club going nowhere with their ground and poor crowds whilst the Crusders stay in SL.
Or is someone brave enough to bet that next time around Cru will be ditched?

and so the shambolic bandwaggon that is the Crusaders moves to Wrexham, well at least for today!!

A total joke that is making the game a laughing stock. Just a shame the RFL don't have the balls to tell them enough is enough.

The aim is surely that as the Crusaders go bust the Neath side will be ready for SL then Dave?

We talk about the PR disaster but surely demoting the club two divisions would be far worse than just moving htem to another town/city?

Yeah I think they are saving as much money as they can before quietly withdrawing their licence when it expires.

This is very sad for the clowns at red hall who gave them thier licence but fans will save money on going to wrexham so more spends in catalan

What a fooking joke!!

Always knew Crusaders wouldn't get of the ground, the RFL (aka Jokers) should have planned the South Wales entry properly and gone with a Cardiff based team.

That's twice now that it has failed in South Wales, once in the mid nineties after the successful World Cup and again now!!!

Professional game run by amateurs, with this and the way the game is declining at this rate I give Rugby League a decade!!

One the plus side that club is in such a mess it's a perfect way for us to kick off 2010. Professional attitude and a thumping win! No excuses!

I wonder if Nobby knew what he was signing up for.

The whole thing is a total embarrasment, nothing else needs be said.

Indeed. Smash them into the ground!