The Phantom Horseman

Yes, there were 24 clubs at the time, but within a year it was decided to remove 2 and put them in SL. Hopefully we'll be back to 21 next year.

I agree that the play-offs are too big, but it was presumably seen as a necessity to avoid two-thirds of the league having nothing to play for in the second half of the season.

If say Batley or Salford miss out on the play-offs having played London, Widnes, Oldham and Doncaster six and seven times respectively, how will we discover in the play-offs that those two teams were in a false position compared to teams above them that had a softer schedule?

No, that was (part of) the underlying logic behind the previous plan, which was to reduce the Championship from 14 teams to 12 in two-year increments. https://www.rugby-league.com/article/62548/betfred-championship-and-league-one-restructure,-2024-26 "A reorganisation to produce two divisions of 12 clubs beneath the Betfred Super League will provide greater consistency and clarity across all three competitions, and also increase the intensity and quality of the Betfred Championship."

Yes, whatever you do, don't blame the system itself!

Meanwhile, we have the ludicrous situation of Newcastle sitting in second place despite not having played any of the other four teams that are in the top 5 all season. It's a complete farce, and it's no wonder that so many coaches and chairmen are calling it a "shambles" or a "nightmare".

Yes, it was an exciting weekend, with five of the games decided by fewer than 10 points. But three of those five games were between teams that were both in the Championship last season, and a fourth was between two teams that were both in League 1 last year. Meanwhile the average winning margin when there are match-ups between teams that were in the Championship and L1 last year is over 22 points per game and that's excluding the results of London and NW Crusaders. So the moral seems to be clear from your logic: keep teams playing against teams that are of similar ability, and you'll get exciting games. Who knew?

Whilst most of Fev's problems came simply from financial mismanagement, it was more the IMG system, not promotion and relegation, that eventually led to the situation which saw them go into administration. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that was anyone's fault but the club's own. But once the IMG system was announced in 2022, the window for Fev ever reaching SL quickly became 1 year, and at a time when they really should have been reining in spending, they threw money at the last chance of going up via promotion/relegation in 2023, because the way the points were allocated (especially things like catchment area) that was the last realistic chance the club was going to have at a SL spot. The point I'm making is in my opinion Fev spent money that they knew they didn't have that year because the door to SL was about to slam shut permanently. The gamble didn't pay off as after finishing the league 12 points clear it all went wrong in the play-offs against London.

Another win for the women's team at Barrow today. Barrow went 10-0 up and were leading 14-8 at half time but Fev ran out 22-14 winners. That takes the team into 2nd place in the four-team Shield but more importantly should pretty much ensure they don't have to play in the knockout relegation/promotion decider against the Championship winners, as they are now 6 points clear of bottom-placed Barrow and it's hard to see where Barrow will pick up 3 wins from their last 4 games.

These are the 2 original threads about the initial proposals about the private equity company land plans, and the AGM that was held to vote on it. They make interesting reading now.

John Davidson quotes from Rhodri Jones (interim RFl CEO): "Interim Rugby Football League CEO Rhodri Jones told rugbyleaguehub.com Long Reads that there is "no guarantee" that a Featherstone club will compete in the Championship next year, but the RFL "feels like there are enough conversations going on that there will be a solution". Jones said the RFL will look to make a decision on Featherstone by the end of this month. "In our head we've always looked at the end of August as a bit of a target to get clarity on what's going on," he said. "I'm still optimistic that we'll meet that. There's still a lot of stuff to go through, but I'm optimistic we'll do that because I think it's only fair on whoever takes on the club; they have from the 1st of September onwards to plan coaches, assistant coaches, players, and then preseason will soon start. "So that's in our head, the kind of target that we're working towards."

One previous memory I have of this rule coming into play is a game between Fev and Dewsbury 10 years ago. Fev took the lead with less than 2 minutes to go, Paul Sykes tried a short kick off which didn't go 10m but Jamie Cording didn't know the rules...neither did the Fev commentators. Dewsbury missed what would have been the match-winning penalty attempt though.

It bounced several times, and didn't reach the touchline. However, according to the International Laws of the game I don't think that would make much difference. "If a team kicks a drop out on the full over the touchline or kicks a drop out so that it fails to travel at least 10 metres forward in the field of play, play will restart with a play the ball 10 metres out from the goal line and 10m in from touch, rather than a penalty kick from the centre of the 10-metre line." However, I think the answer to my question is probably that an Oldham player touched it. It's not 100% clear from the video I saw but it appears that an Oldham player may have lightly kicked the ball before it came to rest. If that's what the referee adjudged, then his ruling was correct: "If players from either team make contact with the ball before it has the opportunity to travel 10 metres a full penalty will still apply."

The team finishing last (ie 4th) in the Shield faces the winner of the Championship in a promotion/relegation play-off. Our women's team is in a reasonable position hopefully as points earned in the regular season are carried forward and we did manage 1 win so had 2 points whereas Barrow didn't win a game at all. Each team plays all the others twice in the Shield so we have 5 more games to go. The current standings (including points carried forward) after 1 game so far in the Shield are Huddersfield on 8 points, Leigh and us on 4, Barrow on 0.

Watching the highlights of the Oldham v Sheffield game, with the score at 28-26 Oldham failed to make 10m with a goal-line drop out and the referee awarded Sheffield a penalty in front of the posts which they duly converted to level the scores. Has the rule been changed back on this? Prior to last season the rule was changed so that if a drop-out failed to go 10m play was restarted with a play-the ball 10m out to the non-offending team. Perfectly possible that I've missed something though.