IT’S hard not to sympathise with the supporters of some of our Championship clubs when they get into financial difficulties.

We have already witnessed Salford and Halifax being reborn, while Featherstone are taking a year out.

And on Friday night we had North Wales Crusaders pulling out of their trip to Doncaster amid some uncertainty about their future.

The Crusaders have now lost most of their players to other clubs.

They are scheduled to visit Goole Vikings this Saturday and it will clearly be quite a task to put together a squad that can fulfil that fixture.

The current owners apparently want to get out of the club and there are people who would like to take it over.

But it isn’t clear what is happening in relation to an ownership transfer.

And there is also the problem of Oldham, after that club’s owner Bill Quinn decided to stand down, citing health reasons for his decision.

Again I’m sure that there are other people who would be happy to take over the club and I believe they would also take it back to Boundary Park.

Despite my comments earlier in this column about the difficulty of football and Rugby League clubs sharing stadiums, there is realistically no other home venue in the town of Oldham that the Roughyeds can play at.

I hope they manage to work out an arrangement for their return to Boundary Park.

Meanwhile I still think that the Championship in its current guise is a fine competition.

Next year it is likely to be operating with a salary cap of £250,000 as a maximum, which should allow most of the clubs to avoid the financial troubles they have been experiencing recently.

Sustainability is the key for the game at that level.