Spidey

Watching Hull FC beat Warrington is enough entertainment for me

This time clubs have been given enough time and information to know what they need to do, not like 1995 - look at what you could have won

Most definitely. I remember Jim Mills (chairman at the time) walking amongst the crowd after the "soft" protest on the field talking to people with a smile on his face, saying Lindsay had re-assured him mergers were off and teams had a route to SL through the normal way. Nobody at that time imagined or knew it was a top 10 only thing - hence the bitterness afterwards. I'm more or less over it now - it was a massive move for the game and was not implemented as well as it could have been. If known about the top 10 qualifying at the start of the season I reckon we could have seen different teams at the start of Super League and given the stakes seen some bumper crowds as teams tried to get into the promised land, finding out after the fact was really poor

Jeez. Can’t believe I have to do this Fact 1 - The top ten clubs of the season before the Centenary Season (1994/95) were chosen for SL (the centenary season being a stop gap season before SL started so there wasn’t too long a break before migrating from Winter to Summer rugby Fact 2 - London & Paris were added to those 10 as capital teams from England & France Fact 3 - No promotions from Division Two from the 1994/95 season or the centenary season into the top division All this is actually backed up on Wikipedia if you choose to use that as your source. I think what you’re struggling with was the decision on who was admitted to SL in the first place, which was a debate that went on and on on that season, the initial SL announcement was all about mergers don’t know the exact date but I do remember protests on the field for Widnes v Warrington on Good Friday of that season which was pretty late in the season, once merger's were off the decision to as to have the top ten teams - that was well after some teams had though they’d done enough to escape relegation from Division One and Keighley in Division Two thought they’d won promotion Now you can believe this or not, doesn’t really bother me, I am curious when and what you thought actually happened to determine the 10 clubs who got a SL place alongside London & Paris

Having been around at the time I’m comfortable to know what happened. I’ve advised you as such, by your own admission are just going off league tables on Wikipedia- a lot happened over the course of the 1994/95 season from the initial mergers announcement to what happened with the chosen few. I’ve made my peace with it now. But will call out people speaking nonsense about it

Dismissing as not relevant is a cop out, if you’re repeating misinformation

Widnes finished outside of the agreed relegation places agreed at the start of that season (along with others) only at the end of the season the goal posts moved to allow the top 10 in super league along with London & Paris , and promotion from division 2 was blocked from he normal qualifying places

Check that again

@Havenwarrior2021 - FYI this is probably the reason why

Is it 2007 all over again? https://www.wiganwarriorsfans.com/viewtopic.php?t=9964

NRL have been on it for a few years now, watched a few games on my last cruise which was in 2018 Let’s see what happens when we’re in the first season of IMG proper, not sure how rights work for that particular channel

You want to watch NW games that have been going on for a bit. Loads of penalties in my experience- maybe you’re more disciplined down south

Are the enough elite players out there to fill these squads to provide a high quality enough spectacle? Assuming all the overseas players we pack into our game wont be a consideration?

I get it’s a thing in US sports when in practice they don’t associate positions with numbers and they go up to 99 so plenty available. I don’t think it should be done in our game, players can change their number each year, and squad numbers are a recent thing.

Meant St Helens of course