Derwent

Delighted for Keighley’s owners….

Brassic is back for its 6th series on Sky, and it’s as good as ever. One of those shows that just cheers you up when you watch it.

Nope, it was announced at the start of this season in the same press release as the P&R system for this year. Though I did hear a funny story about it - the announcement didn't detail the make up the Super 8 and the RFL sent a memo to clubs saying it'd be 3 from Championship and 5 from L1. It took one of the clubs to point out to them that if there were only 3 in it from the Championship and 3 were going up then they'd end up with exactly the same number of clubs in the Championship. It was explained to them that only way it works is for there to be 1 more Championship club in it than promotion places available so you lose a club from the Championship.

Next year there is a "Super 8s" system for P&R between the 2 leagues - top 4 of L1 and bottom 4 of Championship in a mini-league. Top 3 in the 8s into the Championship for 2026, bottom 5 into L1.

Those of us of a certain age will remember when clubs used to get fined for this. The last significant one that I can recall was Saints in the early 2000s - I think they were fined about £25,000 for deliberately fielding a weakened team. I believe it was the infamous "we prepared to play Tarzan and ended up playing Jane" game against Bradford where Long & Gleeson both got banned for betting against Saints.

Not to mention that the bills would still need paying for the Rec for a year with no income. Rent, maintenance, insurance, utilities, business rates etc. You can't just shut the place for a year and not pay any of that stuff !

So, season over. The fact we conceded a penalty while we had possession to give them the match winning penalty just about sums us up this season. One to forget and consign to the dustbin of history.

We certainly can’t compete with them in the cheating stakes….

There hasn't been any announcement. You are basing this on a rumour reported by a bloke called Mick Gledhill (The GameCaller) who is a Bradford fan who does a bit of local radio. Anyone who is aware of Mick knows that he has a long history of getting things completely and utterly wrong, and only recently was accused by a referee of telling downright lies about something he reported as absolute fact on his Facebook page.

The game has only once ever had the money available to fund a proper expansion strategy, and that was from the first Sky contract in 1995. We got £87m which was worth around £200m at today's money values. But the game just squandered it, with a lot of it going to pay "loyalty payments" to players to stop them joining the ARL and then of course player's wages multiplying by several factors. There were extremely average players pocketing large 6 figure sums simply for agreeing to stay in the British game. That was the game's one and only opportunity, to take a slice of that income and invest it in the future and they failed to do so. The opportunity has never presented itself again.

In a nutshell we need to spend the limited income we have better. What that looks like is open to debate as it’ll be different things to different people. But ultimately the return on investment we currently get is absolutely awful by whatever metrics you use to measure it - financial, social, active engagement, communication etc.

My mistake, got him mixed up with Sam Campbell

Sam Ackroyd is in the squad, he’s on loan from Halifax.

According to some people in the know, Haven players have trained tonight. Whether they have a full compliment for Sunday is unknown, but the fact players are training at the Recreation Ground is a positive sign.

The Who - Who Are You ?