Griff

Aye. Last three in the Alliance were Dewsbury, Batley and Oldham if I remember right.

The betting firms look hard at big winners. Eventually they'll establish a link.

Here, players and staff can't bet on any Rugby League worldwide.

Are players allowed to bet on Rugby League in Australia ?

It's not just incentive - there's little or no possibility. A reserve league for Championship clubs would need opposition clubs.

The Vegas project is about improving gambling revenue from the US. Spreading the game is much less an issue.

I'm getting a haircut in case I'm on TV.

It wasn't really bad luck that these teams didn't get promoted. Everyone knew there was no promotion.

OK - please yourself how you take it.

It wasn't a non sequitur, though, was it ? It was completely relevant.

I actually think that the problem is that, in our haste in trying to make the game attractive to watch, we've made it a bit too easy to score tries, with the better clubs taking more advantage of this than the clubs at the lower end.

London will be spending a lot more than double the clubs at the bottom. But, of course the clubs with the higher income will spend more on players' wages. Why shouldn't they ?

I'm sorry you feel that way. I was as disappointed as anyone to see Featherstone's plight. I see them as one of our main rivals, to be honest, along with Halifax, who have also had their problems. It's a heavy price to pay for a few years of glory. Nevertheless, it's foolish to overlook the lessons to be learned. Featherstone looked to be in a strong position - owned their own ground, plenty of people through the gate - yet catastrophically failed financially. If Featherstone can fail, anyone can. No blame attaches to anyone outside the club's management. You shouldn't take offence personally when the obvious is pointed out to you. I hope the club recovers. There is still time to make the starting grid in 2027.

Sure - you could easily tweak the existing plan by having everyone play every other team, then adding return fixtures based on the Circle of Clubs. Would that make things better ? Would it be fairer ? Would there be fewer blow-outs ? Who knows ? The big flaw is still that Salford were ranked first, London 8th and Newcastle 20th. Compare those to their current form. The new salary cap may go some way to alleviating that but it won't be a complete solution.

To expand on what I said, and ignore the hyperbole, we merged Divisions 2 and 3 because clubs were dropping like flies and we no longer had enough clubs to service two divisions outside Superleague. Four months of a season of a division of 20 is not enough of a sticking plaster to repair that damage. It would be suicidal to return to, say, two divisions of ten and it won't happen. As regards the fixures, we came up with a system that made some attempt to weight fixtures against teams of similar ability and all that happened was that we got folk whining about how unfair it all was . Most - if not all - of the blow-out scores have involved teams in times of financial famine or plenty. You can't really legislate for that. Who wants to start guessing the strength of next year's squad when placing them on the Circle of Clubs? We've got a ten club play-off system. If you can't finish in the top ten of twenty, I don't think you're going to get much sympathy for having a tough fixture list. Our priority should be to protect vulnerable clubs as much as possible. That's not to say that it always will be possible. Featherstone still have a considerable number of obstacles to overcome before their return. It is not guaranteed that they will. But the fans need to demonstrate that there's a demand for their club.