The Blues Ox

London have probably more chance of been competitive keeping their part time players than they have if they were to only sign the full time players that are available.

This is exactly it, some of those part time players that London will keep are way better than some of the full time players that would be available to them.

Maybe they are planning for 2025 and losing those part time players that they have now they would be risking them not coming back in 2025 when they are back in the Championship. May as well keep them and try and come up with a good plan with some extra money in the bank.

Staying part time was never going to be an issue regarding the contracts, there is multiple ways around this even if a SL contract was full time only - which they are not. I'm not sure you understand the new system. London are pretty much certs to go down no matter where they finish in SL and to try and force them to spend up to the cap and put their financial future in jeopardy would have been total madness.

Can someone point me to the part in the grading system where London will do well because they play in a shiny new stadium or Bradford do badly because they play at Odsal? For anyone who wants a nosey its section 4 in the handbook posted above and there is very little there that actually is relevant to the state of the stadium. If anything London will lose out on utilisation(the bigger the stadium and smaller the average attendance the lower the score*) and primacy of tenure. The actualy part on Facilities is set so low that most of the teams who see themselves as contenders will hit max points for this. *as a side note it should now be starting to become clear why Bradford have been artificially increasing attendances and also would not bee too fussed if part of that huge area of terracing got closed off......

More and more likely that he has signed a contract with Fax. I'm torn, he always said he wanted to finish his career at Fax but its a player who will be on decent money in a position that we really don't need to strengthen and that money could be better spent on the pack. I'd like it if he were to be part of the coaching team as well though. The play on words from Widdop's statement has caught some people out though.

Dam that could knacker them, thats huge if right.

I would presume Bradford have a longterm agreement in place that would protect them from this but again they could certainly have rent review periods.

In theory saying make part time players full time sounds like the easy option but the reality is that a lot of the best part time players could easily step up to a full time envirnoment but choose not to because they can earn more money from working a job as well as having a part time playing contract. There isn't the money in the game to change that.

If we are looking at the overall quality this is the way to go. Take funding away from 2 more teams and use that in someway towards the grassroots which is going to mean the best players from those 2 teams gravitate back to the top division increasing the overall quality. The problem we have is that if we reduce to 10 teams the chairman of those teams would vote to split the central funding between themselves and we would continue with the race to the bottom that we have now.

Another obstacle, there simply is not enough players around to support a 14 team SL without diluting the product even further. 10 teams does make sense from that point of view which would force some of the worse full time players in to going part time and spread the talent more evenly through the division.

If they had been anywhere near financially ok then the RFL would not have had to step in in the first place.

It depends on the lease but in this case I would be amazed if the responsibility wasn't with the tenant.

I don't think it affects the gradings unless they make SL but yeah there are a lot of teams catching them up and looks like Hudds are spending some money on some signings as well now trying to bridge the gap to the top teams.

I doubt they will but thinking about it could the RFL decision to try and find a buyer for the lease be down to them finding out that Bradford miss out on the top 12 due to the gradings?

State of ground and home grown do not come in to it although there are some things linked to it but London won't outscore Bradford on them. Results wise at the moment Bradford outscore London on the 3 year average with London averaging just over 6th place in the Championship and Bradford 5th. Obviously that changes next year but that 11th place finish really hurts the Broncos and even if they get above the Bradford score after next season the scoring for each place is so ingsignificant that it will make very little difference if they are behind them in other areas. FWIW I think Fax will likely score above London too but Bradford are a pretty obvious example of a team that a lot of people seem to think will make the 12.

Interesting if you compare Bradford and London, as PH has mentioned on numerous occasions the ranking system when it comes to location looks very much set out to the purpose of giving Bradford a slight advantage over other teams and London will likely score top points in that regard but in other areas I'm really not sure how London could even outscore Bradford and I don't see Bradford been that close to getting in to the 12. I really can't wait till the 1st set of gradings come out, we are going to have a right fallout and no doubt numerous clubs will dispute their gradings and then over the next few months we will see what lengths teams will go to manipulate their gradings.

For SL I think we will end up with 2 leagues within 1 and the bottom part of the league should be quite competitive but like you say the gap between the top teams will be huge again especially as we start to see the top talent from the nearlys flow to the top. Just the mention of Nottingham, they are in a little bit of a tough spot. They did end up making the league 1 playoffs but it was only because Orrell refused to travel to Nottingham for the last game so the RFL threw Orrell out of the playoffs. With the top 4 looking like they will be promoted to a restructured championship it leaves Nottingham who are much better than the remaining teams and too good to play in a merit league that the likes of Fax will find themselves in but not good enough to make the next step up without some serious recruiting. On Fax I heard a rumor the other day that the Bradford coach maybe going there and taking a number of players with them. I'm not sure where it will leave Bradford as they really struggled to put a team on the field at the back end of last season.

Someone been trolling Mick with this one, I remember a few weeks back he was telling people the mock grades were coming out yet at that point some clubs hadn't even filled in the paperwork and returned it to the RFL.

Its going to be a laugh for a few seasons but then no doubt in 3 or 4 years we will have another idea that we will go to. It's just how RL works.

Yes. The idea that a grade B team winning the grand final to gain promotion was rejected.

Perfect timing then that their on the field performance will have the least barring on their final grading. They really could not have timed it better.

I totally agree. SL chairman been in control has been holding back the game for years and I'm really not sure that the damage done is reversable now.

Pretty easy work round even if that were the case.

That was as irrelevant then as it is now though. Its not like each contract is identical.