IT was a great relief to see the Championship fixtures published last Tuesday and, in many respects, it was an even bigger relief to see the High Court finally end the misery of Salford City Reds (2013) Limited, the company which until then controlled the Salford Red Devils club.

Several consortia are now vying for the right to resurrect the Salford club, no doubt in a new guise, and the RFL has set out a timetable to achieve this aim.

If they are serious about their intentions they have to lodge an application to run a club by this Thursday and the RFL will announce its decision on who will have the right to enter a new club into the Championship on Wednesday 17th December.

The two leading consortia have apparently both been given reassurances by Salford City Council that they will be able to agree a deal to play at the Salford Community Stadium.

It’s a very tight timetable but a necessary one when you consider that the RFL have, for some reason, scheduled Salford to host the opening game of the season against Oldham on Friday 16th January.

Given the situation the Salford club finds itself in, surely it would have been sensible to give that club a bye in the first week of fixtures.

In fact I would extend that suggestion to Featherstone Rovers, who will have their own court appearance this Wednesday, when I hope they will be able to secure an adjournment on a winding-up order so that they can at last start preparing for the new season.

Both Featherstone and Salford could have been given byes in round one, with the two clubs perhaps being scheduled to meet two weeks later in round two. Imagine the reception for both teams if that was their opening match, whether played in Salford or Featherstone.

The RFL officials who put the fixtures together seem to have an acute lack of imagination.

And I think it would have been a very good idea if they had fully explained how the fixture formula was created that led to the final fixture list being published.

Having said that, I’m delighted with the fixture format of the new merged competition.

It’s a good combination of fixtures being graded, combined with local matchups.

It will avoid too many one-sided matches and it will give every club the chance to make progress up the league table.

And that is surely what we all want to see.

Getting the Championship on TV

For several years now we have had no televised Championship Rugby League.

Sky Sports had the rights to show Championship matches, including the Summer Bash and the play-offs, for the seven years between 2015 and 2021.

That was when the then RFL CEO Nigel Wood negotiated a £40 million per year deal with Sky that included both Super League and the Championship.

From 2022, however, the Sky deal included Super League only.

The idea was that the Championship could negotiate a separate deal with a willing broadcaster.

Premier Sports stepped forward with a two-year broadcast deal for 2022 and 2023.

Premier showed a live match every Monday as well as all seven matches from the Summer Bash. The deal also includes the broadcasting rights to play-off matches and the Million Pound Game.

Unfortunately, however, Premier Sports became part of Viaplay late in 2022, with the channel being renamed Viaplay Sports for the 2023 season. And that coincided with an apparent loss of enthusiasm for its Rugby League coverage.

In November 2023, it was announced that Premier Sports had bought Viaplay out in the UK and would rebrand the channels back to Premier Sports.

Premier Sports then offered to broadcast every Championship game of the 2024 season, but the money offered was risible and the clubs turned them down.

Now that the clubs have merged into one competition, I wonder whether that interest might be revived for next season.

And of course we will then come to 2027 and the new Super League broadcasting deal.

If the RFL does a deal with Sky Sports or another broadcaster, will it include the Championship as part of the deal?

If I were the RFL, I would be tempted to answer that question positively, although I would want to ensure that regular Championship matches would feature on the sports channels, unlike when they had the rights previously.

Gradings past their sell-by date

The Rugby League Council meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) is expected to amend the IMG gradings system to ensure that more weight is attached to performance on the field, rather than other factors.

The clubs are likely to demand the end of the criteria relating to catchment areas, which currently counts for as many as 1.5 points of the total of 20 points.

Performance currently counts for five points, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the 1.5 points for catchment are transferred to performance.

And there are likely to be some changes to the finance criteria, which the Salford debacle showed were totally useless in determining suitability for being in Super League.

But the question that arises in my mind is why the gradings system should have any role in determining which clubs should be in Super League.

If we are to continue using gradings, surely it would be better to do what has already been done for clubs outside Super League, which is to link their central distribution of broadcasting income to their grading score.

To put it simply, that would mean that a club that scored 20 points would get a third more distribution than one that scored 15 points.

So the incentive would still be there for self-improvement in all the areas referred to by the gradings.

But we wouldn’t have the craziness of gradings determining promotion and relegation.

Support growing for try differentials

I was interested to read some comments by Leeds Rhinos owner Paul Caddick last week in which he said that Rugby League is in danger of becoming too dull and that the game needs some incentives to persuade teams to adopt a more adventurous attacking style.

And Paul made a suggestion that I have also made before, which is that a try that comes from a play-the-ball in a team’s own half of the field should be given an additional point – five points rather than four.

Of course he is absolutely right.

My guess is that this is one of my ideas that will gain more and more traction.