CASTLEFORD TIGERS’ appeal decision over its IMG grade has still not been made despite claims by RFL chief executive Tony Sutton that a conclusion would be reached in “days” rather than “weeks”.
The IMG provisional gradings were released last Wednesday at 10am with Castleford issuing a statement prior to the release explaining a potential 0.75 points loss due to miscalculations from both the club and the RFL.
The Tigers released a statement saying: “On Monday we were given a grading score with just a headline number for the four categories. Each of the categories were as expected, as was the overall grading score. As a result of this, we did not challenge anything ahead of the 1pm Deadline on Tuesday 24th October.
“At 7pm yesterday evening, I received a phone call from Tony Sutton, CEO of the RFL to inform me that the RFL had made a mistake on one of the data lines in finance. This meant they were taking half a point off us which moved us down to 13th. At that point, we realised that the finance score was incorrect. Within an hour we spotted a missing data line that we had not submitted.
“I sent all of the supporting evidence to the RFL expecting our error to be amended as the RFL’s error was and we believe other clubs’ scores were amended. We were then informed later yesterday evening that due to the lateness of the information the grades would be published with the RFL’s amendment, but without ours and they would also allow us to appeal and they would be announcing that as part of the grading story.
“We are extremely disappointed with the RFL’s decision as both ourselves and the RFL made an error but the RFL error masked our error on the scores which meant up to 7pm yesterday evening, we believed our score to be correct.”
In response, RFL chief executive Tony Sutton said: “Castleford are the only club to appeal. After the data submission deadline, Castleford submitted the information last night,” Sutton said,” Sutton said.
“We think it is relevant to give that consideration and review particularly the tight scoring given around 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th and the margins.
“I don’t want to go into too much detail. I have spoken to the club significantly over the last 24 hours and again today. We have outlined what info we would want to see where we will assess the question they have raised.
“I’m not going to put a struct timeline on it because I don’t know the amount of work we will need to do. I will measure it in days rather than weeks. I think we need to draw a line under this part of the process and move forward for clubs to assess where they can grow and get more points.
“We don’t want to drag it out. I will likely have the submission in full from the club in the next 12 hours.”
However, a decision on the appeal has still not been made, a week on from the event.
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