The Grinder

Stupid question on my part I suspect, but which similar offences?

which 6th place team is going to beat you in the play-offs then?

Just FYI the Fev pitch is 100 meters long and 67 meters wide, having been brought in a meter from the maximum size, I believe under instruction from the RFL. It was extended when the new stands where put in place. Now if you want to talk about slopes ...

Phil, At the time all the teams were one league (there were no divisions), and what TV money there was (which was very little) was shared out across all the teams, and the reason that we had a top 8 playoff to see who was champion due to the imbalance of fixtures. I assume you're not implying that we go back to that, because the SL teams will not give up their TV monies to make that happen. So I guess you're suggesting that a single division with conferences would work below SL, if that is the case then please refer to my previous post (conferences / group games are the same thing), the chairperson/CEO/whoever is in charge at Widnes/Halifax/Oldham will not want to swap home games to Bradford for a home game to Newcastle, for example. And this will be the same across the championship. All it would achieve is a dumbing down for the top championship sides creating an even greater gulf between SL and the lower leagues. IMHO that is.

Welcomed by the league 1 clubs but not the majority of the championship clubs. Even if SL went to 14 teams (which will not happen until TV money increases significantly) that would leave 21 teams and a 40 game season over 42 weeks without consideration for cup games and play-off games which would take the season to about 50-52 weeks, which is too many games/weeks. if SL stays at 12 teams this gets worse with 23 teams and 44 games over 46 weeks plus cup/play-off games. So that means group games of some sort with a lot of teams missing out on some home games against the better supported teams like Bradford/Fax/Fev/etc. and games against Newcastle/Midlands/Crusaders/etc. with very little draw at the gate, meaning lost income for the championship sides. Which just adds to the cycle of less money, poorer teams, less of a draw at the gate, less money ... I just don't see how a merged championship/league 1 division helps the sport overall.

Are you sure that’s true? I for one would not want to be a referee.

So the RFL can say how wonderful a success the Challenge Cup Final is at Wembley with the extra 5k-10k Championship fans at the game, who would not have gone without the 1895 cup final being there.

Hi Fevnut, We have already won 4 times at Wembley 1967 v Barrow 1973 v Bradford 1983 v Hull 2021 v York So if we were to win this year it would be 5 wins out of 7 visits (though I'm not counting any chickens yet). Losing in 1952 to Workington and 1974 to Warrington.

I can’t get the link to past here - but see the “2025 Betfred Championship and League One fixtures released” news item on the RFL site: October 18-19 – Super Eights 3rd v 4th Play-Off. so even if a L1 side was lucky enough to finish 3rd in the “middle 8s” they would still have to win a playoff game to get promoted. Talk about it being stacked against the L1 sides.

And with an 8 team play-off (middle 8s or whatever you want to call it) allegedly to stay in place for promotion/relegation between L1 and the championship going forwards it will make it really hard for a L1 sides to get promoted in the future. This is because you have to have a championship ready team in L1 to get into the top 4 in the play-offs, including the sudden death 4v5 game.

Looking at the operational rules (section D2:53) I believe up to two pre-season / warm up games can be included as part of the suspension) which would mean that Conner is available for the Halifax game with Huddersfield pre-season game counting towards the games in the suspension.

I've not seen the incident, so will not comment on this it's self. All I was pointing out is that the rules have changed in this area, whether this is for the better is very much debatable, personally I prefer rules to be black and white and not open to interpretation by the officials. Though I would say that just as pre-season friendlies are learning experiences for the players they will be for the Refs as well, as they get to grips with rule changes. However as this incident demonstrates (as I alluded to in my initial post on this) this rule change will generate many debating points in the pub after the game about whether players are a passive player who is not influencing the course of the game or not. I think there is a big argument to say that any player within 10 meters is influencing play by the sheer fact that they are there.

This one of the rule changes for 2025, see details here: https://www.rugby-league.com/uploads/docs/Law Changes - 2025.pdf Snip: >>>>> Offside Kick Chasers Referees and video referees will now differentiate between active and passive players when awarding penalties for offside. An active player will be defined as one who takes part in and/or influenced the course of the game. A passive player will be defined as one who does not influence the course of the game. >>>>> So it becomes like offside in football, at the discretion of the ref as to "...who does not influence the course of the game..." going to be lots of complaints about that during the year.

It had crossed my mind that the extra .25pts (or whatever it is) for winning the championship final might be enough for Toulouse to be graded higher than C@s, probably not but maybe a reason to hope for a Toulouse win.

Hi Colin, when you got your season ticket it was discounted as an OAP since the concessions still applied to season tickets. However up to this announcement there have been no concessions on single match day tickets, which has affected anyone who couldn’t afford a season ticket or that only comes to a limited number of games.