Reading from other official RL sources, Toulouse also have a new owner who is very rich, he has started to look at all NRL players in order to place them above all other championship sides.
Toulouse have the stadium & fan base, the city has 1.5 million population, it is a regional capital.
They scored higher than wakey already.
Therefore it is not a given that we are favourites to win promotion irrespective of results.
I am not sure about how many NRL players they are allowed ie, restrictions we have ?

They can buy the whole Penrith team if they want in the Championship.

They are a bigger challenger to us than Cas I think in IMG terms.

It’s was never a given from the start that we are guaranteed promotion , there’s a hell of a lot of water to go under the bridge before we get to that point. But I’m sure we will leave no stone unturned to grab that super league place from the rest of the pack

They can, but they've still to fit them under the salary cap.

Think Cleary, Fisher Harris and Luai would bust SL Cap.

Yeah, it's close at the moment but I don't recall anyone saying that this was going to be a given at all. Firstly though we haven't been given our points for the new stand and facilities etc, we are also primary tenants, unlike Toulouse should put us above them when it opens.
I remember ME not being happy at all about how our catchment area got designated. Plus if I remember correctly because it can seriously confusing at times, I think I remember a PT post where he said they'll lose the points from when they won their place to SL or something along those lines.

Our attendance looks like it could potentially move a few decimal points up, as long as we get some decent traveling fans from the likes of Bradford, Featherstone, Leigh, Widnes, etc that'll want to come and check out the new and improved home stand LOL.

In the Championship you can sign up a team of NRL players if you can afford them and it's under the cap and they want to play here, they can sign players from down under just like we've signed a few in a relatively short time.

I think all anyone has been for a change is hugely positive about next season and if anything journalists and other fans have almost made it seem it's a given we're gonna be up next season, they've put us as favorites because of our already decent score plus the wealth of the owner and all his plans that he's spoken about from improving the west side to the Social/ Online engagement which we've seen already after a few weeks.
Ateotd we just have to keep picking up the relatively easy points on offer from IMG. Then as long as the team doesn't make balls up of next season it'll be hard for Toulouse to overtake us when the 2025 scores come in. That's as long as we're up there in the finals and hopefully winning them.

I kinda don't mind Toulouse being competitive with us.
I know it sounds great to think we'll walk through the league but the crowds need a but if chance in the game to keep coming

Just looking at the Bradford squad. They are no mugs either.
The top 5 I reckon are a pretty tough opposition.

Our attendance score won't change at all.

Why's that then? is it anything to do with the average over 3 years? I'm guessing even if we average 5500 next year our score won't change till we get back into SL.

We don't have the ground capacity (or indeed the fans), to take our 3 year average to the next threshold, in one season.

On the flip side, our score can't go down either.

Indeed. Using the average attendances you posted we'd need an average this year of 13,629!!

Don't we just need to get 15 IMG points for an A grade and we are back in SL.
The one thing i think that needs changing on IMG scoring, is this catchment area thing. To me, why was it set at 130,000 ? have IMG explained why this particular figure, how did they arrive at 130,000 which gives the 3 WMDC clubs a huge disadvantage,and costs each club quite a lot in lost points. None of the other SL clubs i don't think are as affected as badly as we are. The population of our Metropolitan council area in January this year was,according to google figures 353,802,so with population growth currently averaging around 5% yearly, by the end of 2024 our population should be around 360,000. divide this by 3 and our clubs have a catchment area each of 120,000.
Wakefield CITY [not counting outer areas like Ossett etc.] population is 110,000 according to 2021 census,Castlefords around 45,000 and Featherstone 18,000,yet we all get equal points for catchment area, i.e all 3 clubs in WMDC are classed as a "Small catchment area"

Absolutely agree with that. At the last membership shareholders meeting, John Minards did say he was in communication with Tony Sutton at the RFL (think that’s his name) regarding this very matter. Unfortunately, John doesn’t appear to be connected with this matter now, and I don’t know if anyone else within the club has taken up this batton. I do hope someone has, if not, then Trinity and the other 2 clubs are disadvantaged as there is no way they can increase this IMG score simply because catchment area numbers are beyond the clubs control.