THE RFL have a Championship fixture list ready to roll.
It will have all 21 clubs playing in one competition, each club having 24 fixtures over a 26-week period.
The league structure to be implemented will see each club playing ten other clubs home and away based on finishing positions in the league, with the top team having the hardest fixtures and the bottom team having the easiest ones.
Each team will also play two other clubs home and away and those opponents will be selected on geographical criteria where possible.
So, for example, Dewsbury and Batley won’t play each other as opponents in the graded fixtures, but they will play each other as derby matches in the geographical element of the fixtures.
And there will be plenty of other examples of derby matches being played between clubs that, purely based on finishing positions last year, wouldn’t otherwise have played each other.
The only thing the RFL is now waiting for is some clarity in relation to the status of Salford.
The club directors will be back in court this Wednesday as HMRC seeks a winding-up order in pursuit of unpaid debts.
The directors have claimed that they will have enough money to pay off the debts, with around £5 million mysteriously appearing in their bank account. But we’ve heard that one before.
And if the money isn’t there, then the company could go into liquidation, freeing up some other party to form a new Salford club that would continue playing at Salford Community Stadium.
If it does go into liquidation and a new club is formed, the logic would be that it would enter the league as club number 21, with Newcastle Thunder effectively moving off the bottom.
It would give Salford a very different fixture list when compared to the one it would have if it came in as club number one.
I hope that on Wednesday we’ll have a firm answer.
I hate the prospect of a club being liquidated, but in my view this would be the best solution for Salford, given that there is someone in the background waiting to form a new club.
Apparently Salford City Council have said that it would agree to a new club playing at the stadium, given that it is fully aware of who is prepared to step in to create a new club.
That would clearly be the best solution.