James Graham has a very good podcast (I prefer it on YouTube, but it is on normal podcast apps too) called The Bye Round. The latest one to drop is 1hr 18 mins with Shane Richardson, the CEO of West Tigers.


If you don't follow the NRL closely, the fist 53 minutes won't mean much, as most of it is about the current situation around Lachlan Galvin, but from 53mins onwards he talks exclusively about English rugby league, and the potential future, and it is very interesting. He makes very good points. I'm not with him on the 10-team league with 2 French clubs, because it's a different world here, but I can see a breakaway happening, trying to read the tea-leaves, and this is an Aussie who does understand the English game.


Well worth a watch/listen.

Yeah, as a Hull fan, I really enjoyed his refreshing outlook on the game in England. He has been here, so he has some basis in what he says, and like he says in the podcast, the same people are still involved in the RFL pretty much - it hasn't moved on.


As a Wakefield fan, are you worried about whether you will be included in a potential 10 team NRL Europe? I get what he says when he says that Batley shouldn't have the same say that St Helens have

If you work on the assumption that you'd want a club in the heartland area around Wakefield, because of the progress we've made off the field, with the ground development to continue, I think we're in pole position. I see us as where Hull KR were about 5 years ago.


Huddersfield maybe have the most to worry about it.

The Richardson proposals, though having traction in Australia, have several glaring issues.
Perhaps the most difficult to overcome would be that teams in this exclusive league would need to have "primacy of tenure" over their home ground.  You can't possibly have the situation where fixtures are being dictated by ground owners who want to renew their playing area in the football close season.  By my calculation, this would exclude Hull FC, Wigan, London, Toulouse, York, Doncaster, Salford, Huddersfield. Oldham and probably many others.


Next, if Leeds became the representative club for our area, who could bear to support them?  Would the non chosen clubs be left to fend for themselves in a part-time purgatory and would that be better than supporting Leeds?  The majority would just walk away.  Since the acrimonious carve up of the formation of Super League, it has taken until now for crowds across the game to start a continual upward trend.  That's a lot to throw away on a hunch.


With 10 teams playing 18 games/ season that would require massive input of TV revenue to even maintain the status quo in teems of club finances.  That in itself isn't much use as most clubs are losing millions of pounds every year.  Cost bases would increase with only 9 home games per year and having to pay increased salaries to their players.


The Challenge Cup would presumably remain in the domain of the RFL so the 8 English clubs would be excluded or it would become a mockery of a competition either because of the enormous gulf between NRLE and the rest of the game or the potential embarrassment of one of these clubs losing to an outcast club.


Would Wakefield be prepared to be a feeder club to Leeds or perhaps take the view that switching to RU would be a better option for the City of Wakefield.


As all the TV channels seem to be determined to continue to feed the voracious monster that is football, Why would this proposal have any attraction over the current product?  Surely it is better that now we are generating a more consistent, competitive product, the game continues to make incremental improvements and forces better links with a variety of broadcasters.


Lastly, clubs have followed the RFL directives and bought into the IMG vision which still has several years to run.  If these clubs are now told to disappear into a black hole with no escape hatch, then surely they would be fully justified in suing the RFL for the millions of pounds that have been spent in the pursuit of ground and facilities improvements.