He either said it or he didn't. And it looks like he did to me.

Just been reading this article posted today.
It seems Trinity are still talking to Tony Sutton at the RFL. I hope whoever is leading the discussions can give them a good argument regarding this criteria

Wakefield Trinity Reacts to the Publication of Illustrative Grading Outcomes

Wakefield Trinity welcomes the publication of illustrative Grading outcomes based on the 2023 season. We continue to be supportive of the new method of assessing clubs’ readiness for participation in Super League which go “live” for the 2025 season.

In the light of the difficult times the club have been through, particularly on the field in 2023, we are pleased with our outcome of 12.52 points and a ranking of 11th in the games’ overall pyramid. This reflects a significant improvement from the provisional score of 11.14 indicated to us in August with the improvement being largely due to the strong financial figures contained in our recently filed accounts and progress in our social media reach.

Our results are particularly pleasing because they do not yet reflect the impact of our new East Stand which will be completed next month. We expect the facilities within the new stand to significantly lift our score when it is recalculated in October 2024. Matt Ellis and his new team also have several areas they are working on which are expected to yield even more progress.

The one area we remain disappointed in is that of Catchment. We feel the current methodology is inappropriate and unfair on a major heartland of Rugby League such as the city of Wakefield and we look forward to continuing discussions as to how the measurement of this category might be improved in the coming year.

Matt Ellis, Club Owner, said ‘Wakefield Trinity is a club heading for the highest levels of the game. The illustrative grading scores demonstrate a solid foundation for us to build on in 2024 both on and off the field as Daryl builds a team focussed on success in the Championship. We have our eyes firmly set on a return to Super League in 2025. I’d also like to thank John Minards and Michael Carter for their immense efforts in getting us to this grading, it’s a great position to move onwards and upwards from in the coming year.’

To be honest if I were London I'd put the cat amongst the pigeons and say we're not playing in Superleague next year.

Seriously what is the point for those guys?

The club is entirely right about catchment scores - they don't work.

We'll call it the "Wakefield catchment", but you can't divide the population by 3, nor ignore the "out of area" catchment.

Cas draw fans from the Selby/Goole area.

Both us and Fev draw fans from Barnsley.

The key point though, if any one of the 3 clubs ceased to exist, that club's fans wouldn't simply attach themselves to another local club.

They need to find a better way of measuring the potential "fan capture" of a club.

Bang on and IMG need to take this into account, as there will be fans of Dirty Leeds that live in Wakey/Cas/Fev and other parts of West [iand[/i South Yorkshire.
I wouldn't bother if Trinity didn't exist.

So next year, our score will go up due to the new stand coming online and hopefully some extra easy points for LED boards (would be crazy not to take that easy win).

Our on-field score could go down a slight, but equally, a Championship win/1995 Cup win, will mean our score increases.

Here's a key one though - our centralised income will go down next year = we'll receive less from the RFL (centralised funds), than we would if we were still in SL. Plus Matt Ellis is clearly pumping in more that Carter et al did.

The net result of that is, we will score MORE on finances (revenue as a % of non-centralised funds), than we have previously.

I'll have to guess the figures, but probably safe to say that the RFL funding was 50% of our revenue = that scores 0.3.

If the changes result in the RFL funding being only 30% of our revenue, our score jumps to 0.75.

So potentially an extra 0.45 points that we couldn't have achieved if still in SL. (Though this probably suffers from the 3 year averaging???).

Is this what the previous owners alluded to when they suggested "this year is a good year to go down"?

Does the TV gantry on the West terrace qualify as being big enough? Points wise…
I know we’re not going to be on tv (unless challenge cup game) but the IMG scores will be totalled up again straight after the grand final next year for the 2025 season and this area qualifies for points.

Does the TV gantry on the West terrace qualify as being big enough? Points wise…
I know we’re not going to be on tv (unless challenge cup game) but the IMG scores will be totalled up again straight after the grand final next year for the 2025 season and this area qualifies for points.

Seen a few clubs clubs show the breakdown of their score, wonder if Trinity will do the same.

2024 Most definitely count on all fronts, it will be 2022/2023 + 2024 for all bands in the criteria, Hence IMG have already intimated that next years gradings won't be released until after the grand finals, so to take the result in to hand for the grading for 2025, they have also said they will be updating clubs with an interim grading mid season.

Yes, that looks correct:

"This is for the three accounting (periods) prior to the current year i.e. in 2023, this would be an average of 2020, 2021 and 2022."

That's for this year's rankings, so next year it's 21/22/23.