Be interesting to see how little Sky offer for the next TV deal.

I don't see too many other broadcasters fighting for the rights. The game has become a bit to Parochial i suspect for most & this decision does nothing to address that.

One of the selection criteria was supposed to be maximising the value of the TV deal !

Im Shocked.....(Im not). RL really does deserve to disappear up its own backside. Im glad we never made it, we would have been battered week in week out, but what a farcical situation and farcical choice. Small minded northern sport.

Was it not part of our submission, players were ready to be signed if we were promoted?

Ive no idea, ive not seen it. But unless we are talking 8/9 SL Quality players, we wouldve been in trouble. In the same way we are in trouble if we do not bring in 6/7 Championship quality players now.

RL has to be the poorest run sport out there.

Easy option to give it to Leigh.

We need to look forward now and push for promotion and a full funding when we go up.

What I found interesting from the announcement was that the Lord said they had met 4 times, in total 8 hours. How long does it take to read a 400+ page submission before you move to the other 5?.

I'm still working through my Janet & John book so i'd say Leigh's 460 page novel would have taken much longer than 8 hours. Maybe they saw the size of it they thought they can't be bothered with the others. In any event even if they took them home to read in bed, i would expect far more time to be spent considering it including talking to each club to check out what had been written was true.

Haven't looked to see but i suppose its too much to hope the process is transparent enough for a public explanation of the decision. Is it still a secret as to what weighting the panel were to give to the various criteria?

From watching the announcement, Im not sure I would trust the panel to run a bath

Honkytonk wrote.
From watching it. It sounded like it was being broadcast from a bathroom.