But were they arranged at such short notice?

How much time did both players and supporters have to try and book it off work?

They got months and months of notice. Especially for cup replays, they were always agreed well in advance

Well apologies, then. It's clearly fine, not an issue and certainly not a problem to the players and spectators it affects.

I repeat again, just because it's happened before, it doesn't make it right. But hey, what do I know?

That was a necessity though due to the amount of fixtures in the season, not because of the whim of some TV company.

The BBC Floodlight Trophy.





I rest my case.

The Barrow v Fev game could be called the "nonfloodlight trophy" Speaking with others who went up to see our win earlier in the season, they said the flood lights up there are appaling.

Widnes have been on Sky 4 times this season, with trips to Cumbria and Yorkshire. Despite what people think, Widnes are not full pro and most players have jobs, and so do our fans. The same can be said for Halifax.

Why do you think Thursday evening games only affect Fev?

They were in the same position as every other club in this competition. They knew the semi-final would be covered by Sky on Thursday so it's just tough luck.

Barrow have had no coverage so far, so it's only fair that they get it now. It's the luck of the draw.

The only alternative would be to scrap TV coverage of all lower league games.

Bit tenuous, people in widnes having jobs...........

The rounds of that were several weeks apart - the BBC sometimes showed multiple games from each round at the rate of one a week and it extended for many months. No-one had to do a midweek trip to Cumbria at short notice.

It's still a poor excuse, though. The clubs all knew that one of the two semi-finals would be on Thursday and that there was going to be less than two weeks between the ties and maybe players would need days off at short notice. Can't be helped unless someone thought about the problem up front when compiling the fixtures and spread the northern rail knockout rounds out a bit more.


Long way wide of the mark. I was doing some investment research last month and had to look at average incomes in individual towns & cities in the north of England. Warrington's population has the highest average income of all the "tradtional" M62 corridor RL towns, Halton (Widnes/Runcorn) is 2nd. Away from the M62, York & Copeland (Whitehaven) are the places up north which come closest to matching London incomes.