Yes it was a surprise to me that the RFL didn't step in and buy Don Valley to help the Eagles to carry on playing in Sheffield -they have after all supported the development of the game in Englands 5 th largest city fairly consistantly over the years - consistantly poorly that is.

Hi Angelic, that article was subsequently proven to be dripping with untruths. There never were any vultures as the ground was already owned by the BMDC with an RL covenant on it. What later emerged was that the RL had secretly loaned Peter Hood £700k without insisting on a shareholders meeting or even a basic audit and at the time of the sale of the lease the Bulls had not made one single repayment. The RL effectively seized the lease to secure its debt and made the various attempts at rescuing the club from administration almost impossible.

Why they lent money to Hood who was utterly inept, is one of the great uncovered scandals of RL. The RL should have bought the Don Valley stadium though and put a similar amount of effort in as they did in South Wales in my view.

Don Valley was a dead duck. Nobody in their right mind would have bought it as it would never make any money. It was a terribly designed stadium, and after the World Student Games (what it was built for), there was simply no afterthought as to what on earth the city of Sheffield was going to do with this white elephant.

I'm just hoping now that work begins on the new ground soon.

Well said.

Hi M@islebugs,
I recall reading your articulate posts during the saga involving the RFL,various owners,administrators etc.plus the announcements and wondering why the same assistance was not given to Wakefield.
With regard to South Wales that particular crime also had RFL fingerprints and a smoking gun - not only the parachuting in of Brian Noble and Jon Sharpe - who,when he left,was given a nice new job at the RFL - but the former in-house RFL solicitor Rod Findlay also had a position at that club.
I do wonder if the RFL troubleshooters,led by Steve Ferres,were responsible for finding the replacement owners for Leighton Samuels and they uprooted the club from Bridgend to Wrexham and then handed the club over to individuals even the soccer fans warned against.
Anyway,I think they say follow the team forget the regime.( Or similar.)
I hope your new signings fail to be moulded into a successful side for the first Qualifier and the outrageous partisan statement from Blake Solly comes back to haunt him - a bit like the final administrator - rlThis Wilson Fellarl
rlAlso Lost Outrl

It's a bit unfair to say that Don Valley was "terribly designed" and there was "simply no afterthought what ... Sheffield was going to do". It was designed the way it was because those were the requirements of the World Student Games, with the field events area between the main stand and the finishing straight. The intention was that that it would then be used as the main northern athletics stadium, taking over from Gateshead which had much poorer facilities. Unfortunately that was not the way that the British athletics establishment decided to go, so there was no attempt to build up an athletics fan base which would have justified the 25,000 capacity (again a requirement of the World Student Games). Even though the spectator facilities were good enough to handle 50,000 plus crowds for the Stones etc., it was clearly not an ideal stadium for rugby.

The new proposals are much more realistic, so here's looking forward to a decent run in these qualifiers, a good full time season in 2016, and qualification for Super League in our nice new stadium in 2017.

I shall have to give a counter-argument.
Who is to say that the RFL will not haul up the drawbridge after this campaign,should their favourite clubs be promoted/retained and they then invent a new Licensing criteria?
I am reminded that there is no time like the present and that tomorrow never comes.
On another forum there is a suggestion that some of our players do not wish to be full time and will be leaving the club.Getting promoted for them should be a great incentive.
There is nothing to suggest that 2 of the Super League clubs are/will be solvent ( going into the future ).
If something similar to rlThis Is Mootedrl it would be nice to finish as high up the Qualifiers table as to be eligible.
Would struggling at the bottom of the league ladder assist in higher attendances in the first year at a new stadium?

Apart from that - while Saints are fighting back - I don't want to be at Odsal and have to endure Robbie Hunter Paul getting on the PA at half time and bragging about how many points he thinks the Bulls should score in the 2nd half,as he did earlier in the year.

I would just like to point out that without Marc Green taking over the club, Bradford would not be anywhere near the level they are currently at. In fact, it's pretty safe to say that there would be no major RL club in Bradford without him.

As for next year's format for the end of season, I think a lot will depend on how the three 8 competitions go. I know Steve Ferres at Bradford has complained regarding things like the marquee player rule for SL making it even more of an uneven playing level than it already was and I'm pretty certain there's been similar grumbles from Leigh. I mean, really the only way to make the middle 8's a fair competition with a chance of promotion for the championship clubs is if those clubs are allowed to spend a comparable wage amount to their SL counterparts. Now, that might give rise to boom and bust ideas, however if the RFL police it properly and have rules in place such as the club must be able to demonstrate that it's income would allow it to match say an average salary of this years bottom 4 SL clubs (which should be easy to work out given the live cap policing going on) then I think there are clubs at championship level who would benefit and have a much better chance of breaking the glass ceiling into SL

Ten To Watch In The Qualifiers - the18thman.com/2015/08/01/ten-to ... ualifiers/ Sheffield Eagles hooker James Davey features in my latest article for The 18th Man.

Ten To Watch In The Qualifiers - the18thman.com/2015/08/01/ten-to ... ualifiers/ Sheffield Eagles hooker James Davey features in my latest article for The 18th Man.

Strangely as it seems,this first of 7 'Grand Finals' has the cost of admission cheaper by a few quid than it was for adult admission prices for our regular season game at Odsal in May.

It is only £20 - the same as at will be at The Select Security stadium,the all-seater one,at Widnes,the following week.

Gonna be a good month,August...