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.

A Widnes derby against Wigan, Stains & Wire will benefit financially all three clubs greatly as opposed to say Wakefield who bring two coaches and three cars full of supporters West of the Pennines.

Wigan v Wakefield - 14,615 (16k+ versus Widnes)
Stains v Wakefield - 10,717 (13k versus Widnes)
Wire v Wakefield - 10,723 (13k versus Widnes)

Really hope Widnes get back to were they belong.

Cas out, Widnes in.

Its all crap. Promotion and relegation is the only fair way which rewards clubs for doing well imo. That way any club that gets relegated whether it be a new club or an old heartland club they get the chance to get back up quickly. They should reduce the playoffs back to a reasonable 5 or 6 and bring back relegation, that way theres excitment at both ends of the table until end of the season and we dont get no crap teams limping into the playoffs for a good shoeing.

But inevitably the promoted team get relegated because they can't build an SL quality team in time for the start of the season.

Exactly right. Cas & Wakey have had 4 years to get their acts together, it's not the RFL's fault that they've failed to do so.