LeytherRob

Great news for the club and another step in the right direction for us

Yep, I called it before this season even started he'd be going back home at the end of this year. He's far too good not to, capable of punching holes in defences, capable of 80 minute performances and rarely makes any errors. Not to mention he's only 28 so got plenty in the tank. I've no doubt he'll be getting rave reviews down there this time next year.

I'd be surprised. I think ultimately Nakubuwai was retained due to the cap, I think he would be on a pretty low deal for a quota spot due to high wages elsewhere in the squad and now those funds are being freed up there is scope to rebalance the wages into a better import than him. The emergence of Hughes as a prop option as well as Trout and Norman settling in should hopefully put an end to his bench spells

Weren't they looking at dropping the Championship back down to 12 in the coming seasons over a transitional period? Long term i think they need to start putting plans in place now to have League 1 be a North/South split feeding into a national championship, the same way they have with the Womens game, but it will need new clubs in both north and south and sufficient funding at a realistic level to let them function without having to have a string of benefactors.

To be honest, that's what we want in the short/medium term because it gets a pathway going for newer areas without the risk of throwing a club to the top of the pyramid before it's ready. The more players from a developing area move to big clubs and play SL rugby, the more the players that follow have to aspire to until the pro clubs in their area can develop to a level that matches their ambition.

Going into the 2023 season we had to recruit a lot more than that. I wouldn't worry.

That's generally how we've always operated and except for Catalans which we're really an expansion club, all have failed. See Gateshead Thunder, Sheffield Mk1, Toronto Wolfpack, Paris Saint Germain, Celtic Crusaders. It's a shortcut that always fails because the clubs are built on foundations of sand. Sheffield Mk2 are a better example of 'expansion' done right, building at a slower pace but even that has had to be underpinned significantly by a generous benefactor. The trick is to get the right environment that can attract those types, but also enough to survive for the clubs without. We won't ever get true expansion until we start doing the hard yards and start thinking about where the game should be in 25, 50 years down the line and not where we want it in 3 or 4 years time. Clubs like Midlands, Newcastle, Cornwall aren't going to just take off overnight - they need years, even decades of work to develop the surrounding infrastructure to thrive. Since the RFL is generally too impotent to actually make the decisions to assign the money properly and the small pot we do have is controlled by the clubs at the top of the pyramid, the best way at this point would be to appeal to the their selfish nature - For example you could give a trade off to clubs for salary cap dispensations in exchange for funding of development officers in targeted regions, or even IMG points for any extra curricular development of the wider game.

That data will be captured within the revenue and % of non centralised turnover

The attendance score needs tweaking in my opinion, but i don't think you need to start involving catchment area in there. The main issue for me is that the milestones of 1.5k, 3k and 7.5k are too far apart and there should be additional steps in between the 3 and 7.5, maybe even raising the top tier to 10k which should be the ultimate goal of all SL clubs. As it stands, in terms of the attendance related points available(attendance and stadium utilization) a club getting 4.5k fans in a 6k stadium would be getting more points(2.75) for those criteria than one getting 7k fans in a 10k stadium(2.7) even though the latter would offer much more value to the game.

Agree with pretty much all that. It's vitally important for the game to keep a sufficient level of funding going to the lower leagues. It just isn't feasible for any club to be properly self sustaining in league 1 and if we're going to have any hope of getting true growth of the game across the UK then we need enough funding to give these clubs time to achieve it.

LSV would probably have been a consideration for the Wire/Hudds game were it not for the fact the entire pitch was ripped out immediately following the Salford game. It's going through a full renovation this year rather than the usual yearly reseed, meaning they are replacing the synthetic grass altogether.

Yeah I don't really get the comparisons with the Saints game on yesterday's incident. Yesterday he was all over Thewlis' head and it just looked like Thewlis was trying to push him off. In the Saints game the were more slaps/open hand strikes and he was harder done to.

It’s the nature of sport. Fans were spoilt last year with 3 incredibly close games in the semis and the final but it rarely works out like that. I’d have liked some closer games but at least there was some quality on display even if it was only 1 team in each half. I’d rather watch a game like one of these semis than lower scoring error strewn mess any day of the week.

Connor really is such a liability. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wind up merchant with thinner skin

O’Donnell leaving frees up a chunk of cap space and a quota spot. Given that and the fact that quality 2nd rowers are currently pretty prevalent in elite RL on both sides of the world, he’s far from irreplaceable. Sad to see him go, but it’s been known a long time he wants to go back to the NRL. Got 3 quality years out of him where he helped achieve a lot of goals for the club so he goes with my best wishes. If anything it’s a testament to our overseas recruitment that we’re picking up players that go on to NRL, rather than being picked off by midtable SL clubs as in years gone by and it will only help further recruitment with any fringe NRL players when we can demonstrate the development we’ve given to the likes of O’Donnell, Amone and Lam Jr when he goes back.

I think if you put him with a good organising 7 the sky is the limit for Lewis. For me May is a bad fit to partner with Lewis as he's too unstructured. Hull Kr need someone that can give Lewis as free a role as possible.

KR been really disappointing except for Lewis, too many basic errors and dropped ball that Wigan have been clinical in punishing. That being said, this side Wigan have assembled is incredibly impressive. Pace, power, size, skill all in abundance across the line. Can see them winning the whole lot this year.

Difficult when you have teams in league 1 travelling more each week on average than any other division. The central funding to help these clubs would be a drop in the ocean to SL clubs.

If they are going to invite applications for more clubs, they should at least be properly funded. It's a joke how little league 1 clubs get.

Absolutely, fairly sure the previous longest reigns as coach were around 4 seasons(Murphy 67-71 and Rowley 2012-2015) so to bring it to at least 6 years will undoubtedly be the longest period of stability in Leighs history. All we need now is the green light for our cat 1 academy(due end of this month and club are very confident) and we can start to really build something.

So I've done some digging since I posted this and found an RFL article states that it will be top team in the Northern Championship versus the top of the southern championship to be crowned national championship winners, then the winner will play bottom of SL so a tricky route upwards. Agree though, Leighs women should really be in the SL and we're paying the price for a dissapointing playoffs after only just missing out on finishing top last season. Hopefully we can make it this year to avoid players getting picked off by Wigan etc.

Does anyone know what the P&R is between the Womens SL and Championship this year, is it 1 up/down?

I'm a fan of this idea. This years comp produced some good games in the SL v Champ ties - the Sheffield/Wigan and Batley/Cas in particular but Fev also put up a very strong fight against Leigh. I think the system in the 2010's worked great and produced quite a lot of upsets and interest in the earlier rounds. Leigh's run of beating Salford, Wakefield than running Wire close in the QF in 2015 will forever be some of my favorite RL memories.

Feels like a lifetime since these were released now. Any Hull fans still wearing their Pele shirts?