Salford Red Devils

[The Parksider]

Now that would make for an interesting ' middle 8 '

 

Well you said everyone knew the score and how the game works, as you've found out above there are those that simply don't know or don't wan't to know.

[Wellsy4HullFC]

1. Which means that the positive changes at Wigan are entirely irrelevant to P+R

The that of relegation forced the actions that led to the outcome. You can keep saying it is irrelevant, it doesn't make it true.

2. Not if it is relegated it cant no.

Just as a team that are excluded from licensing can't. It works both ways.

3. or that they couldn't make the changes they needed to make under P+R, and instead of the improvement over the last couple of years, we would have seen relegation

Why couldn't they make the changes under licensing? They had 4 years of safety and achieved very little under the management they had.

4. Great, so it 8 years time the next team to come up can start investing in their young british players, unless of course they are replaced by another team from below and the whole cycle starts again of course.

Or if the funding and opportunities were there, teams would be able to afford to invest in youth and keep it?

5. Them, Less. The game as whole, nothing.

So the game doesn't lose credibility by carrying the same side at the bottom year after year? Does that not affect sponsorship? Viewing figures? TV deals?

The game loses nothing? Yeah right.

6. Yes.

Can you back that up with the figures for Castleford in SL during the P&R era and during the licensing era? The ones I've seen have Castleford ranging between 6,500 and 7,500 pretty much the entire way through SL, and that Wakefield's significantly raised the season after the relegation match.

7. I didn't say I proved myself unequivocally right, simply that there is wide ranging evidence from ourselves and different sports which proved the claims you made in favour of P+R unequivocally wrong.

When you're ready to share this unequivocal evidence, I'll be here to read it. But other than "That's not true" and a load of objective opinion, I haven't seen anything to prove me wrong.

Your best argument in favour of P+R isn't that P+R is proven to do x, y, or z, but that there are some things we can't unequivocally disprove and you like it.

The main difference between my argument for P&R and yours for licensing is that I'm not arrogant enough to claim that what I'm saying is right. I believe it to be right based on my discussions, experiences, the very few actual facts we have and opinions of the people I've spoken to in and out of the game, but because there are so many variables, there is just no way to prove it.

You, however, not only believe you are right, you think you can prove the other to be unequivocally wrong. Your "proof" is not actual proof, but subjective opinion. Having more opportunity through a safety net doesn't mean you have a better chance. There are many more variables after that. If I go fishing every day with the wrong bait, I could still catch less than fishing every other week with the right bait.

[The Parksider]

Your best argument in favour of P+R isn't that P+R is proven to do x, y, or z, but that there are some things we can't unequivocally disprove and you like it.

 

The attempt to judge licensing on the stuff Rimmer wrote in his 2008 RL & LE express article is naive. Licensing was about keeping Catalans in SL, and it helped protect London who were in the bottom four every year of licensing and also Crusaders who surprise surprise were licensed into SL when a place was created for them after they failed to beat Salford in the CCGF.

 

Rimmer's main message was licensing would allow clubs lower down SL the time and security to "build" rather than take "short term decisions". However all the clubs that were supposed to be building all had problems badly leaking money (Rimmer would have known that) and their half rich benefactors like Hughes, Wilkinson, Fulton, Richardson & Samuels had it all on to keep the clubs afloat let alone build. Four of those failed, and Cas survived only just.

 

Licensing served the purpose of giving expansion a chance.

 

If you look at the clubs who were queuing up crying about not being allowed in SL because of licensing these were clubs like Fev, Leigh, Halifax and Barrow all of whom were even less capable of finding the £Millions to compete in SL. Sheffield never applied but had even less resources and a history of SL failure like Halifax and Leigh who were laughed out of the RFL's accountants office whilst Barrow's application was just binned .

 

That somehow the joy of seeing SL "refreshed", the wonderment of the "unpredictability" we could have had with P & R instead of those six years of licensing is the usual fanciful denial of the realities. Licensing couldn't work for clubs who were struggling for money, but nor could it ever have worked for clubs who had even less money than the SL strugglers. Conversely P & R would have seen this lot "predictably" just yo yo up and down anyway.

 

Even Widnes who had O'Connors money and did get a license still came bottom, good old P & R would have downed them first go. No "refreshing" SL there. Meaningless slogans

[John Drake]

This was the opening post of this thread:

 

With high expectation for the coming season, how are Salford coming on.
Are season ticket sales going well? There seems to be an increased advertising presence in Manchester.
Heard they had a tough army pre season training camp, will be interesting to see how they go.
I for one hope they do well but Rome wasn't built in a day.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how, if left long enough (sometimes not even that long at all) any thread on any subject on here seems to end up in a repetitive, never-ending discussion about promotion and relegation.

 

I'm locking this one now.

 

Don't worry, fans of never-ending discussions about promotion and relegation, I'm certain there'll be another one developing soon enough in a thread that begins by having nothing whatsoever to do with the subject.

 

I'm thinking of creating a sub-forum called 'promotion & relegation' where the minority who want to go on and on and on and on and on repeating the same old points at each other can do so to their hearts content without feeling the need to drag unrelated threads up the same old blind alley.