Bull Mania

Console. I'll be getting it, however with a digital only console, i can't see it available for pre-order from playstation network.

But John Davidson said Bradford York & London were being catapulted into SL and Toulouse cast aside. He retweeted angry RL twitter fans and everything! In all seriousness this is the sensible decision. Give teams and the RFL time to make a 14 team league properly.

Funnily enough, James Child mentioned on the forty20 podcast last week Widnes were one of the clubs mentioned as being in the 14 which surprised me. The fan base seems very disenchanted with the way things are at their club at the moment.

Win tomorrow and we go top. If the difference of us losing and Oldham winning overturns a 49 points deficit, we will find ourselves 4th tomorrow instead. Tomorrow makes or breaks our season IMO

For me, 14 is definitely the way to go long term. There are issues with having French teams in our comp as well as positives. I've always maintained two French clubs in a 12 team comp would hurt SL. But 14 teams, Toulouse & Catalans could work well. Which is why I'd be disappointed if this happened. The top 14 clubs in the IMG graded table should make up SL (So presuming Toulouse, Bradford & York) I'd put London on notice and say they've got 12 months to get their act together (for all the twitter outrage from RL media about Bradford possibly being in SL, London are about as far away from being an SL club as anyone in the country) and then if they put foundations in place, grant them an SL place and replace the 14th graded with them.

Look at the stuff he's retweeting "BrAdFoRd In SL iS a DiSgRaCe" funnily enough not much tweets about a team third from bottom of the championship possibly being being in SL, because ya know, twitter likes. He's got the reaction he wants. He's as bad a Gledhill. He's got two go too's in his journalistic armory. Bradford and Derek Beaumont. Just so incredibly boring with no intelligent debate.

Hunslet v Featherstone Rovers by 54 Halifax Panthers v Toulouse Olympique by 18 London Broncos v Doncaster by 8 Barrow Raiders v Batley Bulldogs by 10 Oldham v Sheffield Eagles by 26 York Knights v Bradford Bulls - York by 20 (We're playing rotten at the moment & York look unstoppable)

Maybe I'm being naive, but surely in this day and age we can do better than estimates. Surely organisations have players' registrations?

I wonder if they've slapped this on to trigger IMG points deduction? I'm sure if you receive a certain penalty for breach of operational rules you are deducted 0.25 IMG points.

I felt I've seen enough in Mcguire to at least be given the tools to show what he can do. I mean he's a couple of wins off Catalans, who, when you include marquee players, aren't far of spending double what Cas do. You look at Joel Tomkins and you can tell he's never going to be a coach. Mcguire had some shoots you could build on. Cas just seem to be floating a long at the moment sadly.

Cutting the league again and making the league smaller and smaller will see the demise of the sport. I always stand by the point that no matter how many teams you have, the top team will always be better than the team at the bottom. Even if we cut the teams to 8, Catalans are still ###### and got battered by 60 against the top team a couple of weeks ago. Also this myth that if we cut now, then a in a few years time we'll be able to grow the league is just false. Why does anyone think cutting a Castleford from SL for example, losing over a million pounds in central distribribution, sponsorships etc, that they'll suddenly be stronger to expand the league in a few years time. Look at strong traditional clubs who spent more than 1 year out of SL. Bradford. Halifax. Widnes etc. They are clearly some teams who have plodded a long in SL, particularly player development. But those teams who are talked about coming up will improve this. Toulouse - exposure to more better French players coming through Bradford - still one of the best at producing players. Give them SL money that will get even better London - Again, a hot bed of RL talent down there. I don't disagree, that the first year they'll be some lopsided scores, but in a couple of years, I'd wager a Toulouse, London, York etc would be stronger than the likes of Hudds, Cas are at the moment.

Of all the things to question if you should carry on, this really isn't it. I'd may question why a player would be so thick to do it. We all know the rules. Whether we feel he's faking it or not is irrelevant. I'm sure Cas have feigned injury or done an exceedingly slow play the ball to wind the clock down. All clubs have done it. The rule is there to try and prevent a catastrophe of a player who may genuinely be injured, and someone moving him because he believes he's feigning injury. I don't know how people are still struggling to understand this.

Fair play to Barrow. 100% deserved the win. We're in an absolute rut at the moment. I know nothings won in June and it's September you want to be playing well, but the team are lacking some serious mental toughness in these big games and it should have been fixed by now. I honestly don't think they have the bottle to achieve something this year. We haven't won a single big game. Toulouse (A), York in the semi. York at home after they'd been on the pop all week (That was a real alarming defeat) and now Barrow away. Saints must be having a right laugh that we're dumb enough to bring Hurrell in on loan. Nice guy but he's absolute crocked.

I don't think things are worse, but the fact is we lost A LOT of experience in a very short space of time.

Fair play to Widnes. Backs to the wall performance. One person doesn't make a team. But I feel Toulouse are so much weaker without Ashall-Bolt in their team. Lost count the number of tries he's scored from kicks behind the defensive line. Best player in the league for me.

About 12 months out of date! We've a squad of about 26 including a few academy players. Anyway. Toulouse, Barrow, Batley, York, Oldham, London. Out of all the teams on the champ, Barrow has to be one of our worst loss ratios.

It's good news in the way a payday loan company covers your mortgage payment so you don't get your house repossessed. As Dboy said earlier, Salford are effectively in MORE debt with this loan. So why wouldn't these millions of pounds worth of funding be released to pay off the debt to HMRC when it's at £600k. Rather than waiting for a loan to pay it off and then owing £610k.

Hasn't he been the one who was "apparently" only able to transfer £5000 a day to cover payroll? Maybe he wants those funds back now that he's unable to acquire the stadium.

Kind of feel this whole bridging loan is another Paul King tactic of delay delay delay and hoping a miracle happens. Starve off the thing that could finish you (HMRC) and try get to the grading process at the end of the year to try and keep in SL by some miracle. They don't lose as many point as people think. As people pointed out on this thread, Salford scored zero on their spreadsheet score anyway. Apart from a 12th place finish losing them a very very small amount, i can't see where they're losing a significant of points from this whole saga. Don't forget Toulouse lose an SL season in their score, the likes of Bradford London & York have a significant amount of points to make up.

I think this is a really important point. Any successful organisation isn't about 1 person. They need a team around them. RL is a notoriously difficult sport to run and make successful. Just listing Toronto going under as a failure is just pure lazy journalism. Can you imagine if Wood blocked Toronto from entering. Paying for everyone's flights? They were on SKY every week playing in the champ. Multi-Million pound investments in the squad. The likes of Davidson & Mascord would have been crying with derision and hastily tweeting to get likes of how Woods a backwards, inward looking northerner. Then they get criticised. when it al goes belly up. It needed a Lewis there to put in a bit more strategic thinking. But even then, Lewis got it wrong. Celtic Crusaders? Given a place wrongfully ahead of Widnes (who could have suffered massively those 3 years being out of SL) Then one year later after been given a license, they up sticks nearly 200 miles away. And then went bust 12 month later again.

Except no one mentioned York not deserving to win? Also the ability to bring a club you clearly don't like into a topic is quite funny.

To be fair to Widnes, sounds like they lost 3 key players on Gilmore, Owen and Johnstone in first 10 minutes.

Good. I remember in the original write up, the independent tribunal stated something along the lines of "it wasn't reasonable to expect the RFL to have a live database to flag up if a player doesn't have return to play protocol signed off" which was total nonsense. It's pretty basic stuff nowadays. In fact was pretty standard 15 years ago. While the focus is on Aston for his complete unwillingness to accept any responsibility, I think there were some flaws in the system that hopefully have been addressed and extra support for clubs.

I'd see it as a good thing if neutral fans are starting to dislike you. Neutral fans always side with the underdog. If you're getting neutral fans saying "Aww if we don't win it but I'd be really happy for team X to win it" then you're doing something wrong. Successful teams aren't usually liked.

I know the captains challenge has its critics when it takes too long or a players makes a bad challenge, but I think that's shows it can work well and is important. Poor call from the ref (not sure why he didn't check with the Vid ref) KR could have gone 22-0 up, instead Cas have a penalty 30metres out. These calls can matter.