Disenfranchised

There may be two blog entries today, because I need the whole of this one to vent my splenetic juices at the Rugby Football League.

Today the game's great leader made it's long awaited announcement on the 14 teams who will comprise Super League from 2009-2011 inclusive. Surprises were not forthcoming as all 12 existing clubs earned a license or 'franchise', with the two additional places going to Celtic Crusaders of Bridgend and the Salford City Reds. All of which meant no place for Widnes Vikings, Leigh Centurions, Halifax and Featherstone Rovers, or the emerging force of Toulouse in France.

But that's not my problem. Perhaps these teams don't deserve a place at present. I don't know, I haven't seen the bids. What I do know is that if Widnes have missed out based on their recent financial difficulties (the club were placed into administration after losing last year's National League One Grand Final and thus missing out on Super League for 2008), then the Super League must hold up it's hand and accept some responsibility for their plight. After all, who was it that took the decision to unfairly throw Widnes out of the dance when Super League kicked off in 1996? The powers that wannabe decided that Paris St.Germain would be a better bet for their new venture, a decision that in terms of foresight was comparable to Alan Williams' decision to let Brian Epstein take over the management of The Beatles.

Widnes were never going to draw the same crowds once they were playing in a lower level, and although they enjoyed a brief revival under Neil Kelly some years ago, have never recovered.

What the RFL fail to realise is that this kind of fast-track expansion of rugby league is both unnecessary and unworkable. The much vaunted success of Catalans Dragons over the last three years has come on the back of their ability to sign big-name Australians and New Zealanders. Men like Stacey Jones, Casey Maguire, Clint Greenshields and Alex Chan have considerably bolstered their playing strength, and it has had little to do with home-grown talent. The French national team's recent demolition at the hands of England in Toulouse shows that their success is doing little for the international game.

So what if the vast majority of England's best rugby league sides reside in Lancashire and Yorkshire? Who cares if it is perceived as a 'northern game'? That's just paper talk. A quick look at rugby union's Premiership shows a similar southern bias. Are they falling over themselves to set up a team in Barrow or Blackpool? Super League is a thriving product in it's current form, and is so because it contains teams from areas where we know that the people will back the game by coming through the gates. Catalans Dragons are performing well on and off the field this year (thanks in no small part to the boost offered to them by overseas players), but should they begin to struggle don't be surprised if interest dwindles and attendances suffer. Similarly in Wales, the Celtic Crusaders will struggle to carry out their 'business plan' if it turns out that they can't compete with St.Helens and Leeds after all.

To try to ensure that these expansion teams are not on-field flops the RFL brazenly moves the goalposts in terms of overseas quotas and other Super League criteria. How laughable is it for clubs to earn a point on their application for having no other club within 20 miles? Are the RFL seriously suggesting that local derbies are A Bad Thing for the game? Tell that to the people of Hull, or those for whom St.Helens v Wigan or Leeds v Bradford is often the be all and end all of their season. At a certain point the decision to spread the clubs as far and as wide as the geographical boundaries of Europe allow is only going to make the game unaffordable for the very same fans who have been supporting it for generations.

Expansion of the game is not totally undesirable. It is just that it needs to happen at lower levels before you can foist it on the top flight at the expense of proper rugby league communities. If the RFL want teams in Wales, the Midlands and another in France then fine, have them start at the bottom and prove that there is a genuine appetite for the game in their communities. Widnes, Leigh, Halifax and Featherstone fans would turn out to see their team if it was playing in the Sunday pub league. The same cannot be said of these expansion outfits as yet, which is exactly why the RFL perceive that they can't afford to take that risk. They know full well that four or five years of toil in the lower leagues spent developing their own players to the standard required would kill off the interest of those in Bridgend, Toulouse, Perpignan and even London.

If all of this isn't enough to put you off the license system then consider the fact that relegation from Super League no longer exists. We are already seeing how this renders half of the season irrelevant for a number of clubs, with Castleford Tigers, Huddersfield Giants and Harlequins just about ready to pack up and go home for the year already. The same would be true of Hull but for their controversial Challenge Cup run. It's tempting to suggest a link between this and the decision not to throw the black and whites out of the cup for fielding an ineligible player, but that would be to credit the RFL with far more nous than they possess.

The awful truth is that, far from inspiring all 14 clubs to believe they have a chance to win Super League over the next three years, the new arrangement merely serves to de-motivate those at the bottom end of the table for half of their league programme. And wither now the National League? The carrot of gaining a franchise for 2009 just about maintained the interest of seven National League One clubs up to this point, but with hope gone for three years it is going to be hard for them to get excited about any league match between now and then. We're told that even those who were unsuccessful on this occasion support the new process, which seems to me rather like the proverbial turkey ballot in late December.