What on earth has happened to the "sport".

The whole IMG idea, while potentially improving facilities, is ripping the soul from the game.
Success should never be about numbers of plastic seats or tweets, it should be about what happens on the field (results).

As for Cas, their ground improvements ain't gonna happen by the end of next season, which , under the new points system, could give them a huge problem.

It isn't about the number of plastic seats.
The criteria is about raising the opportunity for more income to strengthen the game.
Right now most teams rely on a benefactor who could pull out at any time and Sky money which is reducing fast.
Teams will go to the wall quickly without other revenue streams.
All the criteria is focused towards achieving that as far as I can see.

We know ourselves, even when we had a team to compete at the top in 79/80 we were getting crowds as low as 2k.
The stadium wasn't appropriate. There was no facilities to advertise, the press would come already thinking it will be difficult to make it sound good.
Teams weren't moving forward and certainly wouldn't have installed a fancy digital advertising board around the field, but the revenue generated from that 'can' be massive, selling by the minute rather than for the season.

Clearly league position and quality of rugby should be first objective, but if you don't do the others it will just fall apart.

I agree to a point.
However, since the start of SL, most clubs are now plating in new or, massively improved stadia.
I've no issue with minimum standards to be part of SL. However, RL is a sport and success should be measured in the field of play.
For anyone as cynical as me, once we start promoting clubs based on "other criteria" it makes the game itself unimportant, which is the opposite of what any sport should be.
We could have the lunacy of the top club in the Championship not getting promoted and a club from 5th spot taking a spot in the top flight because of ground improvements or having a new wealthy backer.
Sorry PT but, it's fundamentally wrong.
I'm all for IMG and or the governing body helping clubs improve their business but, we need to be really careful about what is happening with the game.

McGuire has turned down Cas.

Agree entirely. Minimum standards are fine and should be enforced and acts of insolvency should be rightly punished. But when how many clicks somebody's tik tok videos get or whether your advertising hording light up is potentially worth more than what you do on the field then it's no longer about sport and that has no interest to me and many others i've spoken to. If clubs and the RFL think this will be some kind of silver bullet i think they are in for a big shock.

I agree, I find incredible that teams with a couple of million £’s of debt don’t get deducted numerous IMG point in their gradings

They do if they don't have the assets to back it up.
Our balance sheet is strong so we get finance points for that. The ones with big loans (they all have covid loans) that are paid for by benefactor and don't own stadium will have a negative balance sheet and lose points we gain.

The most perverse one for me is giving points for having a benefactor plough their own money in & not giving anything to clubs who manage to stay afloat without doing so.

The only certainty with the IMG process are for those clubs receiving an A rating. There will be a large number of clubs falling into the B category and yes they have produced the point’s structure but like anything this is subjective. If for example two clubs have exactly the same score one in SL and one in the Championship fighting for the 12th place is there some sort of golden point to decide which one gets the final place.
I actually believe we have only one shot at this because the longer we remain in the Championship those in SL will get stronger both on and off the field until it is closed. If I am honest the whole IMG idea makes this season for all clubs not receiving an A grade irrelevant because it is better to concentrate on the off field points which have greater benefit than a successful team.
We were ahead of our time with this idea unfortunately one season early. I suppose not everyone is as confident has PT hence they clutch at anything a club’s ground, owner etc. if we fail then it is down to us because we know like every other team what we have to do this season. We now have an advantage with our new owner who has genuine financial muscle so I would suggest we stop looking at the perceived failings of others and look forward to the positivity both on and off the field which we have been starved of for several seasons.

The only reason I have confidence is because I've looked at the numbers in detail.
It is achievable......and not much is subjective. They are straight up auditable facts. Attendance is one of those that is harder to audit but it only matters at the threshold. For us we are between 3k and 7.5k average.
There's no point cheating on that. We are a long way off the 7.5. There are better stats to go at.

His wife may not want to leave London, but he's going to HKR!

That would get rid of all the A grade Teams lol

Perhaps "Daddy's" assets are frozen.

One of the reasons I'm interested in how Toulouse Olympique scored so many points by IMG this past few seasons especially since I'm no expert on the scoring criteria, just the basics.
They've been on the verge of bankruptcy all season and even with this new guy that's stepped in, the owner apparently still has to pay 200k by March 2024 according to seriousaboutRL. They play out of a nice ground but it's Toulouse's RU, so they don't have primary tenancy but they probably scored well on the Catchment area. Fandom we had them beat, same with Performance even though ours has been crap it's still better than there's. Finances, even before ME took over I bet ours was far superior to theirs. Then there's the stadium and catchment, as we know we won't get our points for Stadia till next time or when it opens, can't remember and how they judged our catchment is a joke. Anyway, I'd like to see all of them released to see who got what.

The catchment is worth a whole point more than us and because they won the GF their performance score is very close to us.
The finances are a year ago so it might not have been so bad then, I don't know.

But yes I'd like to see the breakdown