Hull Kingston Bronco

No, if the new system had been in place then Neil Hudgell, Rob Crossland and others could have spent their £12-15m a lot more efficiently to build Hull KR into a sustainable top-flight club. Yes, that’s how much has been spent. The old system was hugely inefficient.

He thinks there should have been greater weight placed in the gradings on some sort of outside assessment of each clubs ability to continue to trade at present levels. There may well be something in that, although I'd argue that it would involve a huge degree of work, and would still rest on a human assessment of whether a clubs Directors were telling you the whole truth or not (so an inherently meaningless exercise, at significant expense). Unless you want clubs to put a bond up. But what's more interesting is the choice to focus on that, rather than make the much more obvious other conclusion: Over-spending to achieve promotion on the previous simplistic first-past-the-post model was dysfunctional, and this is yet another example of the damage it caused.

It's not a strawman. Quite the opposite. Featherstone's issue this month is a result of the old way of doing things. Spending money a club doesn't yet generate on a squad of players, in order to financially dope their way to promotion rather than qualify on merit - be that fair sporting merit, or a wider measure of value-added to the elite comp. Pretending that the issue instead is an IMG one, rather than the fault of the current system IMG's model replaces, is Gaslighting.

I imagine at least 10 of the clubs in Super League rely on Directors loans in order to underwrite their next 12 months. In all cases their audited accounts will include a comment from the auditors that this is a need going forwards, and that Directors have said they'll support the business. So now you want IMG to guess whether they change their minds at some point in the following year? That's what happened at Newcastle. And do you want IMG to predict whether the Directors will be unable to manage monthly cashflow to ensure they can make regular payments in that following year? Because failing to do that is what has happened at Featherstone. In your search to lay the blame at IMG's door you're twisting yourself into some many knots I guess it's Houdini you've got in mind rather than Meg Featherstone's issue is the result of doing things the old way: Spending money the business doesn't generate, in order to use financial doping to get promoted. It's what we're moving away from with IMG. Not a moment too soon it seems.

Nah, it's the factual way of looking at it. Unless you're expecting Mystic Meg to be on their payroll?

The gradings assess backward-looking financial data, which is all they can do. They can't predict the future decisions and behaviour of Directors or Owners.

They obviously didn't have enough working capital in the business. Pretty unprofessional from the club Directors. Their statement explaining events is absolutely laughable... "The club can confirm that there have been delays in dealing with this month's payroll. This was inevitable when faced with significant financial losses the club experienced following our play off semi-final loss." In what universe does that make any sense? They clearly didn't have enough cash in the business to pay the workforce, unless some additional income came in during October as a result of a promotion that was never guaranteed. Bear in mind also that the football club will have a number of other outgoings in-month which it could kick down the road by a few weeks, which presumably they have done (as not paying staff would be a last resort) so the size of the hole is far bigger than the wage bill. I feel for the supporters and the players, who always end up being victims of negligent club owners.

Ah well, fair enough. But like you say, at least now the club will have the resources to do the right things.

I hear you, but all Balanced Scorecards require compromise to enable the simplification needed to make them function. Make it too granular and you have too many numbers to have a simple narrative. You're trying to distill the essence of a subject, and measure something that will broadly correlate to improvement albeit lacking some nuance. The "how to improve" detail is the stuff that should be being done in the background, whether by IMG supporting clubs, or by clubs engaging a 3rd party to support them in order to move the metric.

Not if you believe digital fandom growth is 1. An upstream indicator of the ability to grow new audiences and so future attendances, and 2. A downstream indicator of attendee engagement, so linked to your ability to retain present attendees If you incentivise it through points, you show clubs it is important rather than just tell them it is

I was at all 3 games as a 16 year old. Even then the rugby league media were all doom and gloom about how long it had been since we’d beaten the Aussies in a series. How little perspective we had then! Crowds like that are still achievable if the game was run and promoted properly in this country. Club crowds, and especially memberships (where you know precisely who and where the customer is), are larger than they were back then. The audience exists.

I think this is a really interesting point though, hopefully Wakefield fans can see how prioritizing the development over the squad will be better in the long term? There's a pretty clear pathway for Trin to be an A-grade club, or at least a strong B, and so get back into Super League in a year or two. You'll have lost one year of watching Super League, but gained a much better 'platform' to build the club on even more in the future This is what 'Framing the Future' and then 'Licensing' were meant to achieve, but didn't have the teeth to.

To be fair the last set of plans I saw looked A-grade? The issue, as always, is the funding. I've never quite understood why none of the plans involved moving the Railway End back to allow a full pitch though

That's a good point, now there's a great rugby ground. Been to a couple of matches there, not a fan of the 15 man game but like anything with a ball and some bars it can be a good afternoon out.

Hull KR have 10,400 capacity stadium, with 4,500 seated, 10 exec boxes, two restaurants with views of the pitch and another supporters bar that also has pitchside windows. We did have temporary seating at the south end, and would still if we wanted, but replaced that with what's probably the best pre- and post-match experience in the sport. Welford Road it is not, and yes there's stuff on all 4 sides of the ground! PS... it also has a 100 metre pitch, a radical innovation!

I love the 3-sided ground, Craven Streat is brilliant and I hope they never stick a stand there Although to be fair we do still have a southern terrace, so a full four sides, it's just that its almost in Rotterdam and you can't see the match even through the binoculars you used to need, because of the street food vans and bars in the way these days. Personally I've asked Paul Lakin to still put Hull FC fans there for the last two home derby matches, but he said that would be a step too far. Missed opportunity in my opinion!!

Yes, and we've already had their MD going on fan podcasts saying words to the effect of "all we need to do it stick 500 temporary seats on top of a terrace in order to get the points". That's not quite the intent behind this whole exercise!

I can't speak for the others, but I know Hull KR weren't lucky, we just decided to do stuff - We laid a brand new, full size pitch before the promotion season, replacing the postage-stamp sized one within the dog and speedway tracks. Cas haven't managed to lay a full size pitch at Wheldon Road since 1926. Bradford invited the speedway back in so don't even have proper in-goal areas in 2023. - We extended the East Stand and roof before promotion. Wakefield have barely roofed any of the West terrace after they knocked the old stand down in 1986. - We built a temporary stand for away fans in time for our first SL season. - We replaced that with a brand new North stand and hospitality suites, generating funding from a variety of sources to get it done. It was a real battle, but we'd been told SL required it so we found a way to get it done. Castleford have had the same amount of time, and over a decade more of Sky TV money, and all they've ever bothered to do is occassionally paint the place. Oh, and give it a succession of daft names without seemingly spending the sponsors' money improving the place. Licensing should have dealt with it, but at least now finally the IMG gradings might.

They also see it as "cost effective" to keep stadium-hire money in the game. Rather than try and sell 25,000 or even 30,000 tickets in London and more than recover the overheads involved. No ambition, and even when they do still retain some ambition, no desire or ability to execute the plan required to succeed.

If the World Cup and the last 2 weeks haven't proven that to a few people, then nothing ever will. But typically the RFL will use a decent crowd at Leeds to paper over the cracks in their strategy... when a "decent crowd in Leeds" used to be 35,000 in Elland Road as well.

...and to think in that series I was on here (or somewhere like it) bemoaning the lack of ambition shown by taking the 1st Test to Wigan, instead of Old Trafford or even Wembley as we done to launch major events with Australia previously! I said back then that a lack of ambition is infectious in business, and you risk spiralling ever downwards if you don't spend your time instead looking up, and pushing to grow. I hate to say I told them so but, well... I told them so!!

Cool I’ll have a look, cheers. Been meaning to try Headingley hospitality for a while, especially if it’s the restaurant that has a view of the cricket ground n’all.

Brilliant

Work experience boys are not journalists. Just ignore the wazzock, I do.

Yup, exactly. Scheduling two matches on sequential Saturdays just 14 miles apart is so weird as to be perverse. Madness. That’s before you even look at the fact one of the grounds’ clubs has one of the lowest membership bases of any Super League side. Real amateur hour stuff.