Quote kinleycat="kinleycat"You will find many on here that are completely opposed to the franchise system, both now and then.
Our previous owner fed the RFL a diet of bull doo doo at the time, and if we are to suffer for it, i cannot argue with that.'"
You weren't vocal enough I can tell you now. People tend to support systems they benefit from and your fans were very much in favour of the system which protected you for three years.
Quote kinleycatBut the Franchise system is multi faceted, and in all those facets, we are significantly better than at least one club, the only point we do not secure is the geographical one, which is clearly there to add weight to quins and crusaders bids.
A point of order on the administration bit, that was removed by the RFL when crusaders hit the buffers, as they would clearly have had to remove them, so it cannot be now used against us or used to compare this franchise bid with the previous one.'"
The system was multi faceted back then too, it didn't stop the RFL from simply picking and choosing their teams from a shopping list and leaving us out based on an administration caused entirely by a crooked previous owner. It's not something which can be used to throw you out, but it will be used against you, I guarantee that. The RFL will protect their interests, you might not like it, and you wont be the only ones, but you aren't the only ones to lose out to it and you should accept that this is the way things are ran and you are simply not making the RFLs decision difficult enough. You're still in the stadium you said you'd be out of, your team is woeful, you've been through administration and your crowds are not concrete.
You think Salford are worse off, and in many ways, they're a shambles. Crowds are terrible especially for a north western team, their team has been rubbish. But they're about to finish building the stadium which could make them prosper, and so their potential has not been realised yet. If they manage to increase their crowds on the back of this like Wire did then they could be much bigger and playing in the BBCs new back yard. There are a lot of ifs in there and it could still go to the wall completely but until that's been established they will be in.
Crusaders and Quins are being protected and they have been for years, my club knows that more than anyone. We could have saved our skins by relegating quins way back but our then Chairman Tony Chambers abstained from voting the year we went down. Crusaders were no where near ready for SL when they were brought up but funnily enough we had nothing but pontificating from super league fans and people telling us we were merely bitter and to accept the decision. We were telling people about their inflated crowds, their artificial squad, their owner, how they simply were nothing more than guesswork from several over optimistic people but of course everyone knew better, until they had two spots of admin and had to move hundreds of miles away from their original site.
Well, now its your turn. Or Cas' turn. Or both. It's not necessarily fair but it's the way things are. There will be no legal action, and you will not be some championship behemoth too big for the place, you will simply slot in next to fax and feath and learn that you and everyone else is no better than them and there really is no reason to justify keeping you in SL indefinitely at their expense. Such is life, you'll learn the lessons the hard way. I don't like it either so keep your chins up and work the best you can within the system like Steve O Connor did. It's the only way.