Trojan

I've just finished Evelyn Waugh's "Vile Bodies" a satire on the thirties "bright young things." Waugh was very right wing, but is an excellent writer, I always enjoy his stuff. Scoop, and Decline and Fall are really funny. The "Sword of Honour" trilogy are always rewarding, funny, informative, with an excellent plot. Funnily enough the only book of Waugh's I haven't enjoyed is the most famous Brideshead.

Billie's Bounce Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie

I never said Bradford were dead, I said a spell in the Championship would do them good. Before commenting on what other posters have written it would be a good idea to read what they have written first. Whether Bradford are "three times the club Featherstone or Leigh are" remains to be seen. Without the likes of Featherstone or Leigh there'd have been no Bradford in the sixties.

As I posted on another of these interminable threads, should my club be fortunate enough to be included in SL I confidently expect them to struggle, and perhaps be relegated. But so what? It's not the end of the world. provided, you are allowed the opportunity to refresh yourself in the lower division and come back again. Fev came back from an extended spell in the lowest division to (until this season) dominate the Championship. Once P&R is re-established, things should even out and there won't be this enormous gulf that has been allowed to develop between the SL and the rest. If there is one reason to do away with the iniquitous licencing system (apart from its allowing sides who clearly can't compete to continue in SL) it is this gulf. I reckon there are quite a few players in the Championships who like Liam Finn, Kyle Amor and Alex Walmsley gven the chance and the coaching can make the step up to SL.

no I know who they are, do you?

who are my club?

They have been rescued, the fans have contributed money, rescued again, and it's been going on now for about 5 years. Teams shouldn't struggle for 5 years, they should be put our of their misery by relegation. Hopefully they'll come back stronger. Clearly licencing wasn't doing Bradford any favours. If it had been they'd have been up there with the front runners again. I'm old enough to remember the old one division league, and Bradford finishing near the bottom season after season. What was the result of that? They went out of business and had to be rescued and started again from scratch.

If there's no crowd potential for a champion club at Swinton, what chance is there for a champion club just down the road at Salford?

Regardless of where they players came from, the support that funded the drive to success came from Hull

They were a successful club in the past, so were Wakey, so were Swinton, Dewsbury were Champions in 1973 - the past. It's 9 years since Bradford even looked like winning anything. They've been in receivership twice and are in the bottom two of Sujperleague - they have been languishing. If they'd been a horse they'd be in Tesco's freezer section by now. That's not being selective it's what's happening now, today.

The great Hull FC side of the eighties got their boost from an unbeaten season in the old 2nd division, as did Wigan around the same time. A perpetually struggling club like Bradford have been recently does nothing to boost support or for the confidence of players. They need to get into a winning frame of mind. A spell in the championship should do this. If it doesn't then what's lost? As for your examples, Workington should never have been in SL from the start, Oldham were sharing a ground, Halifax effectively voluntarily withdrew, and the opportunity to return hasn't been there since 2007. As I said in my "another one bites the dust" thread, people pick out the statistics that suit their argument and rubbish any other evidence.

Can't speak for Cas, but Wakey promised all sorts to get themselves accepted in SL in 1998. As Stalin said "promises like pie crusts, are made to be broken."

I have what are known as "eclectic tastes" everything from J S Bach to Jonhny Rotten is grist to my mill!

Debbie loves Joey - Helen Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp9zefnOoDY

In Wakey 50 years ago they were dominating the League and Cup, so they hadn't much to moan about. The second live game of RL I ever went to was a cup-tie at Belle Vue with 28000 others.

You spout on here like an expert. But you've done nothing. How dare you criticise someone who's done more for the game than probably anyone who posts on here. If you think Sky give a toss about RL in this country apart from as a filler for soccer, you're living in cloud cuckoo land. You only have to look at their advertising to see which sports they really support, soccer, cricket, Union. They treat us very shabbily IMO. When the World Cup was on their sports news studiously ignored it. They don't do that with other sports. TBH if there ever is another offer from another broadcaster, the RFL should snatch their hands off.

Aren't petty rivalries what the game is about? How about Leeds v Bradford? Isn't that fairly petty? Wigan v Saints, again petty. Or can we substitute the word petty with the word derby? Say some dictator figure came in and demanded mergers between the Wakefield Met sides, the Hull sides, the North Cheshire sides, who would then fill the gaps left? Surely not clubs from outside the "heartlands?" How many times have we tried this, and how much money have we thrown at it, and how often has it failed? What potential club owner in his right mind would invest in starting a new club from scratch with the current structure of no P&R? His club doomed to play in the lower league until someone decreed they could have a go in SL? Not an attractive business proposition.

In Rugby League???? That's asking a bit much. Surely we should wait until the 2014 season is nearly over - say next August and then decide what's going to happen in 2015.

Did anyone say it wasn't?

Cas is about more than Rangi Chase.

As long as there is no P&R then the likes of Oldham, Swinton, Fev, York, Halifax will never get up there. As long there is no P&R the teams at the bottom end of SL have no incentive to improve what they offer on the pitch. I know what you're saying about Huddersfield, I was there when they last won the RL Championship. Forty years in the doldrums, but thanks to P&R they got into SL and got a backer and certainly on the field they are going places. But not on the terraces, forty years of failure means that the fan base is attenuated and repopulating it will take time. The same could be said for Oldham, and look at the players the Oldham area have produced: the Sulthorpes, Iestyn, Mike Ford, Barrie Mac, Kevin Sinfield, and all these at a time when the pro club has been struggling. We cannot give up on the Championship clubs. If we do it'll be the thin end of the wedge.

I've no doubt the amateur game is thriving in the South, and the crowd at Bristol for the recent World Cup game is encouraging. But it has to be admitted that every attempt to spread the game into a new area, even one as near to the "heartlands" as Liverpool has been a total failure. Support for rugby of either code in these islands is patchy, we live in a patch where rugby caught on, and became a pro sport. But in other patches where rugby was popular the RFU saw to it that the "professionalism" virus didn't spread, and that's why IMO we have a problem. In the areas (other than the RL heartlands) where rugby is a popular sport, Union is so entrenched as to be next to impossible to supplant, and in the other areas the mighty soccer rules. I don't like it, I've never liked it, but we have to confront actuality at some point. When Union went pro in 1995, Eddie Butler wrote in the Observer that in ten years they'd be playing RL but calling it RU. He may have been wrong in his timescale, but long term I think he may have been correct.

Mergers in Welsh Union are almost killing their game. There is very little interest in the merged district sides. Many of their best players are playing elsewhere. Since Cardiff City and Swansea entered the Premierships crowds are down dramatically. That's what mergers did in Oz and that's what they'll do to in Lancashire and Yorkshire. As for sides anywhere else, it doesn't take a genius to work out that for whatever reason there is very little interest in RL outside the so-called "heartlands." Interest stops short at the Wakefield border with South Yorks, at the Wigan and Keighley borders with Lancashire, at the St Helens/Widnes borders with Liverpool, at the Humber, at the Manchester City boundary. No amount of promotion or push seems to be able to spread the game out of the heartlands. The merger programme will probably kill it within the heartlands and then there'll be no more arguments because there'll be no more game.

But it's not a serious suggestion. It's not what I want to happen any more than I wanted Calder to happen. But that's the argument put forward on here by those who favour mergers, it makes just as much sense.