Rowan

You may be right Rovers13 that I am missing the point - or is it just that we have different points. I don't have a solution other than an 8-team League One is not it. Unless they are willing to play each other three or four times, otherwise the only solution to losing money on matches is to play no games at all. I know this sounds like a report from the dark ages in some people's minds but until 1973 we had one division of 30 clubs and they didn't have to play each other home and away before the play-offs to make it work. And if even Australia can draw up a fixture list of 24 games for 17 clubs it can't be all that difficult to accommodate 22 in one division.

Sorry, Jill - my mistake

If it is an expansion division why will it have Swinton, Oldham, Rochdale, Hunslet and Keighley in it next season? Birmingham and North Wales are hardly an overnight trip so it is only Cornwall who are truly expansionist and if we can'r accommodate one or two long trips a season then the game really is in a mess of its own making.

I am not sure that the clubs decide the make-up of the divisions - otherwise why would any club want to have a third division in the first place. The RFL governing body surely have enough clout to organise the game below Super League to draw up a fixture plan to suit the majority, An eight-team third division benefits nobosy.

Congratulations to the Raiders ladies team who have just won promotion to the Women's Super League group one with a 14-8 win over Leigh Leopards in the play-off final at York. A trophy for the Craven Park cabinet

There is not a lot more to be added to what has already been said except that if the RFL (and that means the member clubs) really wanted a club in London they would do something about it. If that means special measures for a period of say three years with a Development/Commercial/Media Officer paid from central funds in charge then give it a go. Otherwise the question is the RFL serious about the game outside the "heartlands".

Great relief and a well-deserved win but I would hardly call a 9-2 penalty count against us as good discipline.

Toulouse 34-10 - not as bad as some folk feared.

TV specialists - first Bradford now Haven - Certainly not camera-shy these Raiders. Great result.

Don't want to start any conspiracy theory but can the fact that Salford City have pulled out of any move to the AJ Bell have anything to do with the fact that the money man behind the football club - Singapore businessman Peter Lim - is also owner of struggling Spanish Football club Valencia who have fallen on hard times and cash is short? According to a BBC report Mr. Lim who bought Valencia in 2014 (his friend Gary Neville became manager there) has not been seen since 2018.

The reason I remember Tattersfield in particular was that I played one of my very few games for Corby Pioneers which I helped set up in 1969. Pioneers played in the Southern League but fixed up a friendly with Rossington Hornets. Memory can play tricks but I vaguely recall that our match was a curtain raiser to a Yorkshire Cup-tie - Doncaster v. Wakefield Trinity - and we got a good hammering (about 80-15 as I seem to remember) and as we kicked off late it looked as though the game would have to be cut short to accommodate the 3-15 kick-off for the Cup-tie. But Trinity's Neil Fox stepped in to suggest that, as we had travlled a long way the main match could kick off at 3-30 instead. Oh, and I almost forgot - I did my shoulder in when I tackled the Rossington winger and as he got up he accidentally trod on my shoulder. My own fault. I was full back and we were already losing by about sixty I didn't even have to make the tackle. It was my last game so I took up refereeing instead.

How could I forget the Willows? I think Widnes ground is o the site of Naughton Park - it's just a posher version

Gone grounds (at least those I can remember having been to them) include Station Road, Central Park, Knowsley Road, Tattersfield, Wilderspool, Fartown, Hilton Park, Athletic Grounds, Boulevard, Craven Park (HKR). There's probably more but one of the results is that most of the clubs concerned now share a soccer ground where they have to play second fiddle.

Great day out at Walney Central where they were opening a new beer garden facility at the clubhouse and drew in a big party crowd for the game against neighbours Hindpool Tigers. Cents won 28-14. It was a Second Division match in the NWML - a far cry from the club's days in the National Conference and then the short-lived Cumbria League but signs were there that they are coming out of a slow decline and there were plenty of fresh faces in both teams. With Barrow Island and Millom still in the NCL, the Furness area has six teams - Walney, Hindpool, Dalton, Ulverston, Roose and Askam - in the NWML and the Barrow and District League and only last week they provided 11 of the 17 players in Barrow Raiders 44-4 win over Widnes.

Can somebody explain to me what this "licence" is that Mr. Perez obtained from Hemel to allow him to put Ottawa in League One? I never realised RL operated a licensing system and is there one available every time a team drops out of the League? That said, and as someone who was once involved in an expansion club many years ago, I wish Neil Kelly and his team all the best for the future.

Whose money are they spending?

Surely it is only in the third tier semi-professional Rugby League that somebody can come along, willing to spend their own money to bring the sport to a place where there are not a dozen or more clubs already scrambling around to attract the same customers only to be told it can't be done and anyway we don't want you breaking into our private little world because you are too faraway. Of course it may flop just like a few others in the past and League One clubs will have to fork out a few extra pounds to travel to Cornwall (they wont have to travel twice ALLTHE WAY up to Cumbria next season. but they are not about to raid the diminishing player pool (at least not by much) so let's give it a go and give Perez and Co a chance. If all the doom merchants get their way and it does fail in the end it is hardly going to be earth shattering - just confirmation that the game is for North of England and Southern France and that the elite (currently called Super League) is nothing more than The Trans-Pennine and District League.(plus French guests).