Steve Slater

If we get 1 new club into SL from the middle group of 8 every year, or at least every couple of years, and we get close games with decent crowds it promises to be a cracking competition. Salary cap differential might be the decider 75% of the time, but injuries will also have a great bearing, one of the reasons why Fev & Sheffield are not doing as well as in previous years, regardless of off-field matters. Big money signings can't win games for you from the treatment table.

Sorry for being a dinosaur Parky. When I played all the best youngsters this side of the Pennines came from Fev, Cas, Hunslet and Shaw Cross, and that's where the likes of Leeds, Bradford and the Hull clubs recruited from. As far as Fev and Cas goes, soccer was rarely played in local schools and kids grew up steeped in the game. You couldn't walk around town or up Station Lane without bumbing into half a dozen RL internationals. Of course, those were the bad old days when GB last won the world cup!

No it won't, but if you ring fence the "also-rans" of Super League you condemn the rest to a lifetime of obscurity, and areas that have been famous for producing talent will have fewer youngsters playing the game. We need to find a way of bringing more through the gates at all clubs, not just at the top. That way, the player pool will grow.

The hard facts are that there are only 8 or so "Super Clubs", the rest are no better than Fev, Fax, Leigh etc. It's not the fault of the Championship clubs. Will we ever get more than 8? Because I've a feeling that if one club steps up to the plate, another will fall into mediocrity.

I don't think the Big 6 will allow it to happen? They could have turned London into a success story by letting them have bigger slice of the Sky money and a bigger salary cap. New clubs outside the heartlands will never be a success, unless they can compete at the very top and win trophies. If that happens, some clubs in the current Top 6 will fall away and we'll be back where we started; an elite group and the rest making up the numbers.

Prior to Wakey getting into SL through the back door in '98, Fev were much bigger than Wakey for the 25 years since Neil Fox moved on. All the evidence suggests they would be much bigger again, if given the chance. Stop comparing them to the Big 6, until the Big 6 turns into the Big 12! And if you know when that will happen, I hope you live to see it. I don't think I will!

Have you read it correctly??? It's the not-so-super clubs that finish in the bottom 4 that will have to fight to avoid relegation, not the likes of the seemingly perennial top 6! Some SL clubs can't perform too well in the Cup when they've got 4 times the salary cap, and the advantage of the overseas quota. If they've only got twice the salary cap we will see one or two upsets!

You talk as if no-one wanted expansion; It's been tried, and tried, and tried, but we can't get it to work, and the only way it would is by artificially making the expansion clubs successful by giving them more money and ensuring they get the best players. But the likes of Mr Lenighan will never let that happen, they wan't clubs like London in Super League only if there's no chance of them sharing their trophy success! So it's back to Plan B;. give the Championship Clubs a semblence of a chance before there's none of them left.

True, the district is asymetrical; Wakefield gets all the investment, but the majority of the council tax payers are way over to the east. We don't want the same to happen in Rugby League! The district would have been better off if it had been named like Kirklees; something like Osgoldcross & Agbrigg after the old Wapentakes. But it is stupid to talk about nominating Wakefield to represent the district.

It would have stood a much better chance of success than the proposal for "Calder", and somewhere near to Pontefract Racecourse would have been the logical site for a new stadium, with or without Trinity! (Not that I was in favour!) Before we talk about mergers or preference of one club over another, maybe it would be useful to commission a geographically study of Rugby League areas and its peoples by one of the northern Universities?

Why Wakefield? The District may be named after the City, but the bulk of the population in WMDC is centred around Pontefract, which is approx 2-3 miles equidistant from Cas, Fev & Knottingley. Wakefield is stuck out on a limb far to the west of the district. - Study the map!

If fans were to vote on the future of Rugby League, in my opinion those fans that attend every game, home and away, should receive twice as many votes as those that only attend home games. There are some real stalwarts amongst the game's supporters and their wishes should not go unheeded.

So you wouldn't go watch Sheffield at Fev when Rovers weren't playing if you could get in half price? I think that good few hundred would!

What's the case with Rotherham Titans? Have they said no, or isn't it suitable?

Play the big games at Bramall Lane, and play out of town for the smaller games. If, for example, they played the smaller games at Fev, and let their season ticket holders in for half price, the money they got off Fev fans would pay for free busses for Eagles fans to travel from Sheffield. Might even get more away fans, cos Fev is nearer to most. Wakefield is also another option if you want to slum it.At least it would give the Eagles time to get another stadium ready!

His type of player gets better with age. He played at Fev in 2005 when they were relegated to the 3rd tier, and he wasn't bad, but nowhere near the creator he is today. Everyone says he's slow but he always seems to be the one tracking back to save the day when the opposition makes a break. I think it's because his rugby brain reacts that split second faster than the rest, and while he still has the speed of thought he can go on playing at the top of The Championship well into his thirties.

If Wigan hadn't been relegated they wouldn't be where they are today - It was the best thing that ever happened to them. Likewise with Hull a couple of years earlier, both clubs were a poor reflection of their former selves at the time. In all sports relegation can be a great springboard on which clubs can come back stronger. Before Super League relegation was no big deal, the best clubs always knew they'd get back within a year or two, but what changed all that was the one-up, one down scenario which made a quick return not as certain. All Super League clubs thought they had to avoid it like the plague, so they had to get rid of it!

We would have been happy to call ourselves champions last year if we had won the GF from 6th. position, or if we had been promoted to SL in 1998! It's too late to argue about it now, all we can do is to campaign for the League winners to be crowned as Champions in future years. That way Barrow would have won two titles last year, the championship and the "premiership", if we reverted back to what we called it in the good old days. Is it also true that if Rovers had failed to reach the grand final (for example due to an injury crisis) they would not be eligible to apply for a Super League Licence? If this is true we need to campaign for another change in the rules. After all, ours is a balanced set of fixtures, unlike Super League. If the league leadership holds no credence, what's to stop a club running on a low budget for most of the season and then spending megabucks on short-term signings just for the play-offs?

Halifax are a really talented side, probably more talented than Rovers, who have been the best all season because they were fitter than the opposition and finished the stronger. They have beaten Fax 3 times this season through a stronger second half performance. This game was completely different in that when Fax were trailing with 20 minutes to go they were still fresh, and when they started to play catch-up rugby they were not as tired as usual and their passes stuck, and everything they tried came off. Some said that Fev were tired, but I think it was because Fax were NOT tired.

I think that the RFL were asking for trouble by not providing a smoking area or/and not allowing pass-outs from the stadium. I don't smoke, but if I did I don't think I could go without a ciggie for 6 hours or more if I wanted to watch all three games. With intervals between games of over half an hour pass outs should have been allowed, even if it meant stamping everyone's hand. That aside, I don't see how anyone could think that the result wasn't affected by the 45 minute break? Every time we have played Fax this season we have blown them away in the second half. There was no second half on Sunday, just another first half.

At least it's better than Widnes, where there is no standing area. The worst thing about these grounds is that you are penned in like sheep. I laugh my face off when Super League fans slag our ground off when they come for Challenge Cup fixtures, yet they stand behind the sticks and change ends at half-time, even when it's free to sit in the main or family stands. I don't think the RFL are bothered though, they think that fans prefer to sit in an empty soccer stadiumso they can marvel at the architecture.

I agree. Surely it makes commercial sense as well as being the fairest way to decide the "championship". If the game was replayed at Headingley, Odsal or Huddersfield you would surely get enough paying spectators to make a decent profit. IMO there are insufficient fixtures in the season anyway, so an extra game would be a bonus to the fans. There are no more games left so there wouldn't be a fixture clash or issues with tired players having to contest any further games. I remember going to the Hull - Widnes Challenge Cup Final replay at Elland Road in 1982 as a neutral and thought it was a great success. The golden point is probably Sky's idea, because drama like this makes great television, even though the most important game of the year could end up being decided by the toss of a coin!

I think the reason we didn't go for a drop goal was because we were 18 points up, and looked like scoring more tries. We didn't learn the lesson from the game at the Shay this season. Fax came from a mile behind to gain a bonus point by playing with gay abandon. All their risky passes and off-loads stuck. It was pretty similar this time, also their heavyweight forwards had benefitted from a longer rest and Holroyds high kicks were creating havoc. When the score went to 22-10 Rovers might have tried a single pointer but Fax's try only 2 minutes later put paid to that. With a gap of only 6 points maybe we should have tried, but they were watching out for it by then. What gets me about our approach to drop goals is that Briggs regularly makes 60 yards when dropping out from under his own sticks, so why doesn't he try one or two from 40 yards out where there is more space? If the ball went dead, a 20 metre tap wouldn't be so bad from the position we started from, and missed dop goal attempts can often create more pressure for the opposition, and sometimes lead to a try. Congratulations to Fax however for such a gallant fightback. At least the RFL will be worried now. Rovers would have been east to turn down for a franchise, but Halifax now have a much stronger claim than darling Widnes!

Is the family season ticket open to grandparents and their grandkids? If so this is excellent value at only an extra

I bet the RFL would prefer Sheffield to win next week, and also the Grand Final! Then it would not be so embarrasing when they announced that the franchise was given to Widnes.