phiggins

Nah, I'd only be pressured into putting an extension on to make the house wide enough

We don't know if the competition sponsor has been sorted and just not announced yet. We still have a national team sponsor, they've been on the shirts this world cup, so assume a replacement for that deal won't be named until after the world cup, or when the next internationals have been announced.

I'll just sell the house to the RFL for a significant profit

"I'll give you £6m a year but you have to put London in" "no" "Ok, put London in, and I'll give you nothing" "Deal" I'm just off to put an offer in for Nigel Wood's house.

The NRL said London straight away, even when we were still looking to do a deal for 2027. There was no way of getting them in next year without going to 15 at the time that red line was introduced. That needed to be done 12 months ago. Now we're looking at the NRL deal taking effect in 2028, I'm not sure what the motivator is to still get them in for '27, but if it was purely in the interests of not being in danger of relegation, it would not have got anything like 11 votes in favour.

I think the game has plenty to work on. And that will still be the case if the NRL deal goes ahead, and would’ve been the case if we’d walked away months ago. But we’ll make matters worse if we make changes and sell media rights based on the NRL deal happening and that deal ultimately doesn’t happen.

I’m less worried about fixtures, bye rounds etc, thats just logistics that need to be worked through. What concerns me is what level of confidence is there in the NRL deal following, albeit for 2028? If that doesn’t go through, and we’ve moved to 15 to accommodate the London requirement, as well as tied ourselves to Dazn and disregarded the offer from Premier, we could be in bother.

I think that’s fair, but I would’ve found the decision to abstain more understandable if we were having this vote months ago. Unfortunately we’d got to the point of now or never, and there isn’t going to be the opportunity to get more information and vote again so it really is yes or no. Didn’t make any difference in this vote but I wonder how the abstaining clubs would’ve felt had their vote would’ve swung the decision in line with their view. At least Cas and Wigan turned up though.

Agree. He’ll look stupid if we do sign him, but I’d say it’s unlikely given the player’s current contract

Congratulations to the Leigh Ondon Broncos. Commiserations to London. Not convinced on the second salary cap resolution on u23s. Think it needs to go further to encourage signing younger British / European players over filling the quota.

The grading process didn't really make that definition, it gave a scoring system on a series of pillars, where you could be terrible in one area and make up for it in others. Really, there needs to be a minimum requirement defined across each section. Licensing created some minimum criteria to apply for a license, but the granting of licenses was a mess. More people might be satisfied if we do it properly.

But that is because there is such a vast difference either side of that line, so any clubs close to that line will have a focus on being in the right side of it. Might be greed or self interest, but for privately owned businesses, each with their own employees, suppliers etc. So while an owner may be acting in self interest, they will also be acting in the interests of various other stakeholders that are affected. This won't end until someone comes out and defines what is required to be a top flight / full time club in terms of resources required on and off the field. As well as that, we need to find a way to increase funding to the second tier, as we need to close to gap between the two, so players, coaches, officials and maybe even clubs can make the step up.

I'm struggling to understand how we've got here. V'Landys added his red line. Super League said we couldn't get London in for '27. V'Landys insisted. Yet we carried on. And we're even having this vote this late, despite any NRL deal not kicking in until '28. Would be good to know why PVL's pre world cup deadline wasn't met, despite apparently overwhelming support for a deal. And why we're rushing this through for next season, a year ahead of any deal taking effect.

Tom Forber to Saints from Wigan

FIrst game next week