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wiganermike

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  1. Every club is in need of improvement regardless of what their current grading is. The system isn't aimed at any particular grade of club at all. Some people are just focusing on the group of clubs around their own in the rankings as that is what is likely to most immediately impact on their own club. That is understandable as those fine margins involved could seriously hamper the efforts of affected clubs to work to gain the 3 or so grading points that would secure an A grade in future, should those fine margins result in them missing the SL cutoff. I suspect that is why IMG immediately began to speak of a 14 club SL when they released the indicative scores as the margins between 12th and 13th are so fine while there is a clearer gap between 14th and 15th. Locking clubs 13 and 14 out now could see two clubs that could grow into A grade clubs never get higher than they are.
  2. It is supposed to be the number of people actually in the stadium that is the attendance figure used by IMG. So someone who bought a ticket but didn't attend wouldn't be counted as attending when it comes to deciding the attendance score for grading.
  3. No. The finishing positions do not determine whether a club moves up or down between SL and Championship, the grading scores of the clubs do. The 12 clubs with the highest grading scores will make up SL in any given year. The relative finishing positions only count in so much as they provide a performance score that contributes to a club's overall grading score. The clubs that make up SL in 2025 will constitute the 12 clubs that achieved the 12 highest grading scores. The scores released today are only an indication of where each club stands relative to others and whether they are likely to make the cut for SL in 2025 should nothing change. The scores that will be released next year will decide the 12 clubs that compete in SL in 2025. Using the indicative scores we have now, if the order in which the clubs have been ranked was to stay the same when the next set of grades are calculated, then after the 2024 season London and Castleford would be relegated (as they would fall outside the top 12 highest grading scores) and Toulouse and Wakefield would be promoted (as they would be among the 12 highest ranked clubs based on the grading scores). It wouldn't matter whether or not any of those had finished 12th in SL or won the Championship GF as much as it has in the past. It is the grades and whether that puts a club in the top 12, not the finishing positions in the league table that determines if a club will play in SL (or not) for the following season.
  4. The (B graded) club in the Championship wouldn't need to win the GF or finish top and the threat of relegation doesn't apply only to the team finishing 12th in SL. Once the grading system kicks in, from the point when the grading scores that will apply for 2025 are released next year, then any B graded SL club (regardless of finishing position) is under threat of relegation if any B graded Championship club gains a higher grading score than them. Any B graded Championship club that gains one of the 12 highest grading scores out of all clubs will move into SL for the following season as a consequence.
  5. Isn't that what York did after the original club folded in 2002? The Knights couldn't get things ready in time (or were told they weren't ready) for the 2002 season but the newly formed Knights applied to join the league and were accepted starting in 2003? If I am remembering correctly they had a year out before the resurrected club joined so there would be precedent for it happening if Newcastle are able to organise something even if it was for 2025.
  6. The grading system as it appears to operate (from what has been published) certainly is set up to favour those clubs that are in SL/have spent most time in SL in the preceding 3 seasons. The really unfair element in this is the absence of any weighting mechanism to the metrics being assessed. An attendance of 3000 in a SL match and an attendance of 3000 in a Championship match are not equal achievements for example. Things like attendances and sponsorship income are likely to be higher inherently as a consequence of being in a higher league but the system doesn't seem to account for this in any way. If there was a weighting ratio applied to the metrics being assessed then it wouldn't matter that the mechanism for a Championship GF winning B club replacing a B club finishing 12th in SL isn't in place. If there is no weighting applied to give strong Championship clubs a fighting chance of moving up (as it appears is the case) then IMO there should have been the mechanism in place for the Championship GF winners to replace the lowest finishing B club in SL. I would prefer a weighting system during assessments to allow a realistic chance of Championship clubs gaining promotion via grading score alone. This would then avoid teams overspending in an attempt to finish top as would happen if winning the GF was the only hope. Hopefully this aspect of the process will change as we begin to use the system as it appears from the information we have seen that this system may well lock out all clubs including those that IMG/RFL might have hoped would climb into SL under grading.
  7. You could be correct in that they may have been considering this approach anyway, opting for continuity and an already bonded squad rather than upheaval and potential disruption to team cohesion by recruiting a whole new squad in essence. I was responding in my post to some criticism of London's reported plans for squad building and operation next year that had come from some other posters. The change in systems though does put London in a situation whereby they can no longer just finish 11th and be safe in SL as used to be the case. Given the consideration of a 3 season period, during which London performed poorly against a few of the metrics being assessed; and its bearing on the likelihood of them retaining their place in the top tier , it is certainly a possibility that the situation London find themselves in, whereby it appears very unlikely they will be able to retain that place, then it is certainly plausible that this knowledge (or assumption) would have figured in their thinking and planning of their approach to next season. If my own theory as to which seasons will be used to formulate the grades that determine the make-up of SL in 2025 is correct then the seasons that decide this (2021, 22 and 23) will have already happened. It is a commonly held view based on what we know of the grading process that it is easier to get a higher grading points total in a season in SL than in the Championship (even if finishing 12th). London may then have considered that they won't be able to stay up no matter what they do, so chose to save up cash to spend in 2025 to give them a better chance of having a later assessment period made up of a promotion season (2023), a SL season (2024) and a potentially successful season back in the Championship (2025) from which they can aim to get a higher grading score and aim for a sustainable SL place from 2027 onwards. It could also simply be as others have suggested that London had secured the bulk of the squad on contracts for a season in the Championship and surprised even themselves by winning the GF, but have decided to honour the contracts already agreed which happen to be for a part time basis.
  8. London will be going into next season knowing that due to the change from conventional P&R to the IMG system it is unlikely that there is much they could achieve that would see them retain their place in SL. It therefore makes sense for them to retain most of the successful Championship squad in readiness for their likely return to the Championship in 2025. The alternative involves replacing the part time squad with a new one only to have to replace that with a new part time squad in 2025. London can't really be blamed for taking the approach they have to next year. If they do return to the Championship then any money not spent in 2024 can be put into building the club in the Championship with an aim to regaining a SL spot in the next few years (at which time it is more likely to be sustainable as it will have been earned under the grading system). If London do unexpectedly do so well that they are graded in the top 12 and stay in SL then they can look to go FT then as their place will be more secure than it is likely to be next year. It is the change in systems and its likely effect on London that has forced their hand on this. Given the particular circumstances they are doing the sensible thing.
  9. Yes I think that the indicative scores will be calculated using 2021 and 2022 seasons only. I suppose we will only know for sure when the scores are published assuming some clarification is provided when they are made public.
  10. I would expect 2020 not to be used as most clubs didn't have a 2020 season and those that did didn't have crowds for the majority of it so to include it would skew things too much.
  11. They wouldn't be ignored it would just be that any uplift in York's hypothetical grading would happen after a gap of a season, as a season needs to have been completed prior to it being counted towards a grading score. So a GF win in 2024 would improve the grading in 2026 rather than 2025. As imperfect as it may seem it is impossible to predict how a season will end with any certainty. Taking 2023 as an example a prediction made in early season would likely have had Warrington winning SL, Fev winning promotion and London getting relegated to League 1. As we know though the seasons of Warrington and London changed course dramatically. The system is likely to be contentious enough as it is without it also relying on supposition and predictions that could end up being way off reality.
  12. No. The grading scores that decide the SL 12 in 2025 and the indicative scores that will soon be published will only share 2 common seasons out of 3 as the process involves a rolling group of 3 seasons being assessed. If my theory is correct the indicative scores would use 2020 (if that season is used), 2021 and 2022 and the scores (released during 2024) that decide the SL 12 for 2025 would use 2021, 2022 and 2023. There may or may not be much difference in the two sets of scores but they should be different to some extent.
  13. It's just my theory on how things will work. As things have stood with automatic P&R through winning the Championship GF and finishing bottom of SL the club going up doesn't know they are going up and can't begin recruiting SL standard players until mid October. Should any promotion/relegation have to wait until an announcement by IMG/RFL/SLE post-season then that threshold is pushed back even further. This would make it still more difficult to assemble a strong enough squad to compete in SL (and attract the increased attendances, tv coverage etc. that go along with having a better, more competitive team). The same applies to the club being relegated having to choose who to retain/release and setting budgets. As the indicative scores due to be published don't have a direct effect on anything it doesn't matter that they are only published post season. Moving forward though, to avoid having the situation be made worse for any club being promoted to SL than it has been previously, in terms of ability to compete with other SL clubs in the transfer market, it makes sense for the grading scores that will affect the next season to be released prior to the season's end. The licensing announcements were made in mid season so I would expect a similar sort of scheduling under the IMG system. If the scores that will affect 2025 are calculated and made public during the 2024 season then it would not be possible to include anything related to any of the metrics for the 2024 season in those calculations. A look at the early season performances of Warrington and London in 2023 and how differently their seasons ended compared to how they began illustrates how prone to errors making projections could be. Therefore it makes sense that the 3 preceding seasons will be used to grade clubs and not the current one. In your example it would be impossible to predict that London would do what Leigh did, that Wakey would perform poorly or that York would win the Championship GF with any certainty so the performance metric (and its effects on other areas of the business) could not be included before the end of the 2024 season.
  14. It would only undermine the system if IMG graded London as outside the top 12 and then decided to keep them in SL anyway. The situation that London face is the reason why some posters have suggested that a sensible approach for them would be to put aside as much of the SL cash as they can so as to put more in when (likely) back in the Championship in 2025 where its impact will be greater. London's situation is not helped by their low supporter base and their poor on-field performance in 2022 as these will count against them in the grading calculations at least until the 2022 campaign is no longer counted in the grading.
  15. I would expect that will largely be an issue just as we transition into the IMG system as we have had this year where London were able to get promoted purely based on on-field performance, immediately before a complete change in the paradigm for gaining (and keeping) a SL place. When we move from 2024 to 2025 we may see 1, 2 or even 3 clubs that have earned a SL place previously dropped to the Championship under the new system. Once that initial threshold has been crossed though movement is likely to be minimal due to the way the criteria are set. There are clubs in the Championship that could grow enough to overtake some of the lower scoring SL incumbents over time but any SL club under threat of being overtaken and losing their place is likely to be able to see it coming over two or more seasons as the score of clubs 13, 14, 15 begin to catch up with their own. Only financial implosion is likely to cause a sudden drop and loss of SL place without it being apparent to all that they are on a downward track over a few seasons. Clubs gaining promotion in future will have done so based on their grading score so will not face the same issue as London will next year.
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