As I understand it, the clubs with sub-standard stadia last time around were only scored on the understanding that they'd have their new stadia before the next round of licensing. Saints have (pretty much) done so, Salford are getting there, but the other 2 haven't even got planning permission yet.


rlhttps://www.sportinglife.com/rugbyleague/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME

It's important to remember, though, that the ground is only a small part of the total (ten-point) criteria (one point for 12k+ capacity, one point for "being up to standard"icon_wink.gif.

The Rfl will never ever touch catalan, Quins and celtic.

To be fair to quins they have just started bringing youngsters through to the first team and have very few aussies now, they are trying to abide by the license rules.

Celtic have been going two years, they have had two names, played at two stadiums and are full of aussies and get low crowds.

How are they any better than cas or the wildcats?

I agree...again

didnt Celtic go into administartion and form another club? they had to be financially saved and moved didnt they?

It's either their way of saying "relegation still exists", or the fact that they want to scare a couple of clubs into sorting out their stadia (i.e., the two in question who won't groundshare).

The RFL have really pi$$ed me off with all this to be honest.

I just think this makes the whole application for a super league license a complete waste of time and money!

Rightly or wrongly, Crusaders are "untouchable", along with Quins & Catalans. Expansion is a competely different argument here.

You can't realistically directly compare Championship clubs to SL clubs, as Brian Carney suggested, because too many of the criteria are unfairly biased towards the SL clubs.

Also, in the 2009 franchising, Widnes actually scored higher that Wakey, Cas & HKR (in fact they would have got a B licence, as I recall) but lost out solely because of their financial problems. I genuinely believe that they'll make more of a contribution to SL than Cas or Wakey.

Hardly expansion in North Wales

I don't deny that widnes will make a good contribution to super league, the RFL have kicked widnes in the teeth to many times in the past to deny them a super league licence this time around.

However, i don't agree that quins, celtic and catalan should be untouchable on the grounds of expansion, the rules need to apply to all teams who put in for a super league license.

or south wales as it was the year before.

It wouldn't shock me to see another french side in super league in 2012.

I tend to agree with that, but only up to a point - I think an expansion team needs longer that 3 years to get things set up properly. I'd go along with it now for Quins (who score pretty well anyway), but I think the other two deserve a longer trial period, if only to allow time for their youth programs and marketing strategies to begin to bear fruit.

Both Cats & Quins would outscore Cas/Wakey anyway.

I don't the way the have gone about it, it just seems sad that we could lose good proper rugby towns for the likes of the welsh and french who have everything put on a plate for them by the RFL.

Again we are not losing a team. They will still have a youth set up. Look at Widnes, they are in the championship, yet there younger teams are better than most in SL. I dont think you need to be in SL to bring players through.

People are talking as if a team is being destroyed, they are not, if they go down they could be back in 3 years time.

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Absolutely spot on.