ROUND 24 of Super League was not a great round of fixtures if, like me, you like to see close games.

The winning margins were 40 (Leigh over Castleford), 46 (Wakefield over Huddersfield), 36 (Wigan over Catalans) and 34 (Leeds over Hull).

The only close game was Hull KR’s win over St Helens on Friday night, which had a four-point margin.

On the same night, Salford travelled to Warrington and came up with what is arguably the shock result of the season by defeating their hosts 25-12 with a team that only had Joe Mellor, Loghan Lewis, Sam Davis, Justin Sangaré, Harvey Wilson and Jayden Nikorima from their squad that started the season.

It was a remarkable performance and result and my regret is that I didn’t see the game and can’t see it because it isn’t possible to record games that are on the red button on the Sky platform.

Nonetheless the highlights of the game made compelling viewing and it was remarkable to see so many Salford supporters cheering their side on after what they have had to go through this season.

The Red Devils face a High Court hearing on Wednesday after having had a winding-up order brought by HMRC and I fervently hope they can avoid a catastrophe for the club.

The good thing last week was that the club was able to pay its players on the due date on Thursday, although the source of the funds that allowed it to do that remains a mystery.

When you see those Salford supporters giving such great support to their team, the message is clearly that the club can’t be allowed to disappear.

A lesson for the RFL

CONTINUING on the theme of one-sided scorelines, the RFL is currently trying to decide how to structure a fixture list for the 21 clubs that are expected to be in the merged Championship competition next season.

It is likely that the clubs next season will play either 24 or 26 matches, depending on when the RFL and the clubs want the competition to start and finish while also making provision for the Challenge Cup and the 1895 Cup.

Apparently there are some people at the RFL who believe that every club should play every other club in the competition, which would create 20 fixtures, with four or six more matches to be organised probably on some sort of regional basis.

The problem with that strategy is that it would lead to an excessive number of one-sided matches, ironically of the sort we’ve seen in Super League this weekend, as this year’s Championship clubs play this year’s League One clubs.

Last week I was invited onto Radio Cumbria to talk about the reorganisation and the person who telephoned me to set up the interview asked me whether the competition would be overloaded with one-sided games next year. The obvious implication was that they wouldn’t be worth watching.

I must admit to having an aversion to watching games that I anticipate being one-sided. And I’m not the only one.

Fortunately I believe that the RFL is aware of that danger and the fixture list that we eventually end up with will be a graded fixture list to avoid the top and bottom teams playing each other.

If they can do that, then I’m confident that we could be in for a great competition next year.

Right place, right time

NORMALLY as we approach the end of the season, it is an anxious time for players coming off contract who haven’t yet secured a new deal, either with their existing club or elsewhere.

But this year the Super League players coming out of contract could be in a very strong position if and when two new clubs are admitted to Super League.

Those new clubs will need to sign players of proven Super League quality and the managers of those players still on the market should be able to take advantage of their negotiating power.

Players like Rowan Milnes, who was released by Castleford to Hull KR and then was sent on loan to Salford, only to apparently have a stormer against Warrington on Friday night.

You might think that the clubs with aspirations to enter Super League would have him on their radar.

And there is a surprising number of other players at various clubs who haven’t yet been announced as being contracted to any club for the 2026 season.

I suspect that many of them will be released by their current clubs because of the increased quota limit for signing players from down under.

So many of our clubs will swoop for players from the other side of the world, only to discover all too frequently that they are no better than the players they already have, although they probably cost twice as much.

But my advice to any player whose contract expires at the end of the season is to hang on until the announcement in October of which clubs will be elevated to Super League, at which time the negotiations can begin.

The NRL’s entertainment value

AT one time we used to claim that Super League was not as strong defensively as the NRL, but that Super League was more entertaining, with more adventurous attacking rugby.

Having watches several NRL games in recent weeks, I’m not sure that conventional wisdom still applies.

For example, the two Queensland derby games played at the weekend gave us a smorgasbord of brilliant attacking rugby, while the top game in Super League at Hull KR was much more of an attritional game, with limited attacking skills on show.

Many observers suggest the change is due to the speed of the ruck being so much quicker in the NRL.

If so, that is one aspect of their game that we need to emulate.