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Indeed. The attitude from Rowley, particularly over the off season and into that first round was shocking.

5,191 at the French Grand Final and (allegedly) 3,555 at Toulouse vs Barrow.

We would like to thank all our matchday sponsors yesterday who enjoyed a super day and ANOTHER Town win! Massive thank you to our main match sponsors No Name Travel Ltd for your club wide support and well done to Alan Brown for detailing the heartbreaking story of why we wanted to support the family and Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team as our charity partner in 2025. We aim to help as much as we can, save the date - 13th July v Midlands Hurricanes when we play in a special jersey and have a great charity day! 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀! Congratulations to Spencer Fulton on a brilliant defensive display and picking a well deserved man of the match award from Mike at MdMcdonald Roofing Congratulations to Zarrin Galea for a true WOW moment on 80 minutes when he went from his own 40 and sealed the win with a memorable try to win the Champagne moment award from Flower Craft of Barrow. For us, well that makes it wins from games 𝗪 10 - 8 Whitehaven 𝗪 34 - 24 Rochdale Hornets 𝗪 32 - 12 Swinton Lions 𝗪 62 - 0 Newcastle Thunder 𝗪 46 - 6 Keighley Cougars 𝗪 24 - 16 Goole Vikings FOR 208 POINTS AGAINST 68 POINTS Good in attack and good in defence!! NEXT GAME v Dewsbury Rams this Sunday, 3pm. Early bird tickets & savings are available NOW & kids go free as we do as much as we can to keep costs down for all, but we need your support through the turnstiles. https://ticketpass.org/event/EXZVYO/workington-town-vs-dewsbury-rams 𝗪𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝗪𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗚𝗔𝗠𝗘𝗦 𝗪𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝟮𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗼𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽 - please support it #UTT!!

that’s it. The RFL were shown proof of funds, and we had people within SRD and their fan base complaining that they weren’t quick enough to ratify the takeover. Leading to what appears to be a protest squad announced for round 1 and Rowley’s gaslighting.

I’m not sure what you think the fit and proper person test covers Harry. It’s very limited in what it is looking at basically are you banned from being a company director,do you have any live convictions,are you involved in any other RL club. On top of this they will probably test for proof of funds for any new owners. That wouldn’t mean much though as they arent in any sort of position to make them spend that money

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Very good performance. I was concerned early as we were up against it with the wind and struggled to get out, we needed to defend well and the players really dug in during that spell. It makes a huge difference having two guys on the field at half back with so much experience to take hold of a game. Drinkwaters kicks were holding up so Craven took over and managed that first half perfectly, we were able to score basically every time we went forward. Musgrove if he stays out of trouble is obviously too good at this level. Davies was much better this week in his more natural position and Lannon had a strong game too. Fantastic debut for Pons who looks like he'll good at both ends of the pitch. You are left wondering what could have been last week if we had Pons and Agoro on the wing, they made a huge difference. Can't change that now of course.

Genuinely a bit emotional with Gary Linekers last MOTD. He's been a brilliant presenter, definitely the end of an era.

Everyone has summed the match up pretty well but no one has mentioned the highlight of the match . The bit where Ferres was so busy giving the finger to the crowd , He stepped back into His own player forcing Him to knock on......the man is all class !

How far into Spain is Valencia? We got a full club waiting to go .. cough

I’ve not got bored of Catalans and Toulouse yet. Lets keep the focus on continuing to build them up and giving them every chance to capitalise on their opportunities themselves. Id love to see 16 team top flight with sub divisions inside it (a French one of four clubs), but as a conversation it doesn’t bear much resemblance to reality right now.

Which clubs would be in it? It’s played in a few villages in the SW of France. French rugby league today is absolutely incomparable to English rugby league before SL. It’s a nice idea but I’m afraid it’s dreamland stuff.

There wasn't a fully professional league in England for the first hundred years of rugby league, but about 5 years of investment from Sky created what we have today. Yes, it would take money, but there's no reason that a professional league in France couldn't take root if someone was willing to back it.

France along with New Zealand offer RL the greatest opportunity for genuine expansion.

Or more specifically a professional league in France. Would be a lot easier to setup than potentially buying out or investing in super league what with all the politics involved within the English game plus there is recentish history of the French trying to setup something similar which had early success.

There was a time when rugby league belonged to every fan of every club, and the Challenge Cup final belonged to every rugby league fan, and over half of those attending were fans of clubs not actually competing; rugby league fans enjoying the ultimate day out for their sport. For reasons worth exploring, many, many fans of the sport no longer feel fully invested, actually feel disenfranchised. The final is now not much more than another club match. Exploring why this feeling of unity and belonging has evaporated could be interesting.

You and the club just can't stop playing the victim, can you? No-one (apart from, it seems, some SRD fans), want SRD to fold. They took the mick out of the competition for years, but now it's caught up with them. The script was written by SRD themselves. The script I would have written would have had them only spending the money they earned. I think you'll find that's a dull, unsexy, but rather under-rated storyboard.

I don't know why you bother still. He knows all of this, but ignores it, better if he's always a victim so he can post more.

The fans "want their club back" but did they agree to sell their shares in the first place?

Its strange isn't it how different Whitehaven is from Workington. Workington fans I've always found to be great. Always have good banter with them and a drink after the game.

Are you being serious ? I don't think that the RFL could have done anything more in trying to help Salford stay in SL this year . How many other teams have received an extra £ 500k payout before the season starts to keep them going , and then on top of that , several early monthly payments in order to pay the players . Not sure how this equates to the RFL 'binning them off' , either slowly or otherwise !!

It's completely possible. Just needs willing investors. A couple of occasions in recent years a pro league was planned but fell through for whatever reason. There was the original Super xiii concept which was supposed to integrate new clubs based on football clubs in Northern France and then there was talk of launching a new league on the back of a RL World Cup in France. Even recently when there was elections in French RL there was recently a candidate promising a new pro league, so there's talk of this all the time in France RL circles

It's Tequila changed to Fa'atili in the song the fans sing for him.

I really do think it’s time for the RFL to be proactive and just bin them off and give the other teams a 46 - 0 bye for the rest of the season. Let the players sign for other clubs with no salary cap or quota restrictions. If there’s enough will then resurrect them in League 1 next year and let them climb back up. That’s probably what’s going to happen anyway so just have done and give the opposition players a rest for an extra week, which might be of benefit come Ashes time. If there’s a problem with the Sky contract, show a Championship game cos they are a lot more entertaining than watching a scratch SL side get pumped by 70 odd.

I think if the NRL was serious that creating a professional league in France would be easier with much more upside than investing in SL.

You at best could get maybe 6 FT Pro French clubs at the moment (Thinking Catalans, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Albi plus maybe an Avignon or Limoux?) After that you'd be looking at new clubs in cities like Lyon, Bordeaux, Paris etc. Perhaps Villeneuve could morph into Bordeaux, but the rest would pretty much be new from the get go, and even then you're struggling to get even 10 teams. Ultimately for this you'd need a broadcaster to come in and back it for a decent amount of time too.

Can you put some meat on the bones of your thoughts.

There is never going to be a professional league in France the idea is frankly absurd, and no it wouldn’t be easier to set up than investing in Super League.

Just binned off a load of off topic posturing that doesn't belong on a rugby league forum. Take it elsewhere, folks. If it kicks off again on here, you'll end up getting kicked off yourselves. Back on topic, please, if that's possible.

PITCH SIDE | Behind-the-scenes V Goole Vikings https://youtu.be/TnXyCVrfrX0

There's no plot but there are ingrained attitudes within the RFL that non-heartlands stuff is inferior. And it definitely holds the game back.

What, Alex Murphy is interested now?

Been a great day as felt cheated after the last title win with it all being in an empty stadium. Brilliant for rhe fans and everyone involved in the club.

To be fair I thought this guy had a decent game today. Perhaps got a few calls wrong, but the game is fast and mistakes happen. At the end of the game he came over the fence and was chatting to friends but then was having a chat and laugh with some fans. Fair play to him.

My understanding is that the top four of League One play the bottom four of the Championship across four rounds, with each club only playing the four teams in the opposite division. After the four rounds are played: 1st and 2nd automatically go up to/remain in the Championship 5th to 8th automatically go down/stay in League One 3rd and 4th play the equivalent of the £1m game to decide who goes up/stays down. Hope this helps!

He wouldn't have been much good, too busy fiddling with opposition forwards.

One thing I would say is that there will still be a large number of neutrals at the final. Probably still in the ballpark of 25k neutrals I'd suggest.

You should have stuck with us, the club is an exciting place right now

I watched the match yesterday on YouTube, it was a really strange one, Oldham were clear winners in all areas and yet Halifax weren’t actually that bad, I’ve seen teams play much worse and win - for that reason I’m resisting the urge to call it the Halifax tripe train. Some tough matches coming up though (Widnes away, Fev away, Oldham home)!

Do you mean the special measures that were never adhered to by Salford nor enforced by RFL . Even now Salford are allowed to use the £1.2M salary cap restriction and only apply it to their starting 17 , ignoring the salaries of the rest of their squad .

No, Catalans and Toulouse which are decent citites, combined 650,000 people. Albi and Carcassonne have over 100,000 people combined. Not massive but really not to desimilar to some SL and big championship teams.

France is pretty well served for team sports across the country. I'm not seeing anything here beyond "rugby league is great" [it is] "therefore just play it somewhere and people will watch" [unproven and unlikely] and "once we've done this really simple thing, the money will roll in" [RL's belief that it is one little trick away from success].

Its dream land stuff but imagine filling an Old Trafford sized stadium mid-season, for a competitive England v France game. It would make the RFLs accounts look very different.

First half of the Whitehaven game was close, but mainly because Haven threw everything at us in the first 15 but then seemed to fizzle out a bit, which gave us room to go ahead. I get the impression Mark told them to up the ante in the second, and 26 unanswered points says it all really. We won 9 games out of 20 last year which was a record, and it's incredible that we could have 7 wins from 9 at the halfway point if we beat Swinton next week. I have to say though that a fair few of the travelling Whitehaven fans (credit to them making the long journey) were amongst the worst I've seen at the Alex. Didn't stop abusing the officials for the full 80 minutes and some made a point of coming towards the tunnel to shout at them as they left the pitch each half. There's no doubt there were some questionable calls for both sides, but the rugby league call of "get em onside!!" wears thin when you scream it literally every play.

With 23 teams in Champ/C1 it would mean that you cant play everyone H & A, so for example you dont play 7 teams at all , which when designed at start of first season it could be seeded so bottom of C1 dont play top Champ teams, Fixtures done by position numbers not team names. so works easy every season. Not playing 7 teams means you would still play other 15 teams H & A like we used too pre SL start.1995 This current season started on 23/Feb. and ends on 7/Sept prior to play offs During this we will only have 18 matches [9 home games] - during this period we will have had 11 blank weeks, ELEVEN blank weeks THEREFORE almost 3 months of blank weeks - which means we could have played 15 teams [30 games] in this same timespan, This is Probably to difficult for RFL to organize - but somebody clever could sort the fixtures out.

Do you agree with me that if aSuper League club can't afford a once a trip to France they shouldn't be Super League?

You can still see the inherent skills and abilities though, he ran good lines, positioned himself well for both his try’s especially the 2nd one, looked good in contact, found his front, defended well by getting his footwork right to position his body for collision, wasn’t out of place physically for an 18 year old, he has good size yet still looks athletic, wasn’t overawed by stepping up, he was prepared to work hard and put himself about. He did all of this with a measure of quality that betrays his young age. These are all great signs and bode well for the future or in other words “He looks a good prospect”

For want of repeating myself, many said Toulouse must win the GF because they will bring so much to SL. Well what did they bring? Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t one of the reasons to have French representation in SL was to try to strengthen the French national side? Well that hasn't been a success as they are worse than ever. I have no issue with having them in, but let's not make out they are something so special that we can't survive without them.

The championship/League one thing is. Bottom 4 of the championship will play the top 4 of league one (so extra 4 games), top 2 go up 3/4 in a play off game winner goes up. Originally to get both leagues to 12 teams. As for Sl, there's no guarantee that there won't be a change between 1 or 2 teams. But it won't be on the field it will be img that decide who. Although there us talk of SL becoming 14 teams next year.

Bradford v Widnes 3,311