The Phantom Horseman

The problem is, as much as there is an element of pulling up the drawbridge here (you can expect fans of bottom-half SL clubs to be all in favour of moves such as this which weaken the prospects of potential challengers for their place in SL), both this move and the salary cap suggestion come at a time when the Championship is at its weakest point for many, many years and thus very vulnerable and not really in much of a position to oppose these suggestions. I mean, it's not as if we (Fev) can put up much of a fight as we don't even have a club and along with a few others we're seen as poster boys for how over-reaching ambitions have caused financial problems. To answer the question, for me it would depend on whether or not we retained independence over any "parent" club and control of our identity. I put up quite a few posts on the General forum many months ago pointing out what was happening at York/Newcastle, my concern there was the true nature of the agreement between the clubs hadn't been disclosed, it was clearly advantageous for both but Newcastle literally had nothing to lose so it's not surprising what fans they have welcomed it, but they are absolutely a feeder club in every way and this was never actually announced. If we ended up with an arrangement similar to our previous DR ones where we had control over who played for us and retained our identity then I could live with that, I know we all hated DR but it was still our club. Personally if we re-emerge as a club I'd be surprised if the new owners would want to sacrifice overall control after putting the necessary large sum in to acquire the club. But all that is still a long way away!

Well I wasn't really wanting to bring political allegiance into it as that's not what this forum is for, more the fact that Maureen is a lifelong dyed-in-the-wool Fev fan who lives and breathes the club and would have been sure to speak up for the club at the Council, whether that's true for the new councillors remains to be seen.

Yep - the top 3 clubs from last season all got promoted compared with the normal 1 promoted team, 6th-placed Fev disappeared (at least for this year), 5th-placed Halifax were liquidated and are a shadow of last year's team, and even 4th-placed Oldham have had some well-documented issues, have lost their director of rugby and chairman and clearly aren't in a position to spend anything like the money they did last year. Meanwhile the team that came down from SL are still very much in recovery mode from their own series of financial crises and certainly aren't a top 6-calibre team. One way or another, the Championship is unrecognisable from the comp of the last 10-15 seasons.

He plays for/played for the Castleford Tigers PDRL team.

The best thing about that post in my opinion is the phrase "Work is being done by RFL executives to get Featherstone back up and running with the governing body working closely with the administrator." That suggests (hopefully) that the administrator is going to remain focussed on the best outcome to save the club (as well as doing his job for the creditors), rather than just deal with the highest bidders which could be asset strippers.

Which Championship clubs? Should Wakefield have been aiming to be another Newtown in 2024? Or Leigh in 2022? How about Hull KR in 2017? And Bradford and York when they were in League 1 in 2018,? These pesky British Championship teams need to know their place...

Not to me though. Again, what is this answer you think I should know and I clearly don't?

Do I? don't underestimate my ability to miss out on something that's obvious to others on here!

Or alternatively, the new scenario is ridiculous.

I'm probably missing something because I'm not sure I understand this. Until this year all the Championship clubs used to play each other, now this year they don't, no?

Having watched a fair amount of footage from the mid-1960s and earlier, the introduction of the tackle count which specifically (I believe) meant it was no longer smart for the marker to try and kick the ball at the PTB was a huge step forward. The PTB area is of course still a long way from being perfect, but it was an abject mess when it was a free-for-all.

Can I nominate local newspapers? Once a bastion of in-depth coverage of local RL teams, injury updates, in-depth match reports, coach interviews etc, now so many of those very useful sources are in the hands of big corporations filling all their supposedly local papers with generic one-size-fits-all or clickbait stuff.

I'd go for a compromise and retain it for defusing a "bomb", but not for when the ball is kicked dead. Reasons - I think there's sometimes an element of skill from the defending team in catching a high kick over their own line (rather than just being rewarded for poor play from the opposition), and also personally I don't find it an attractive option to watch from an attacking team close to the line - it usually comes following a sterile attacking set and often seems to have a last-resort feel to it.

Things I didn't expect to see from our 2024 squad: Greg Eden returning to SL in 2026. I know injuries etc are tough there at the moment, but, er, good luck with that project.

I suspect the rules still allow for sin binnings for those situations and also for repeat offences, and perhaps the issue is as you suggest we're not seeing them enforced often enough.