If they've no place in SL, then Catalans certainly haven't.

The French have had a semi-pro league for as long as i can remember. They deserved a chance, and they've took it to be fair.

Would have been more up for it, if it had been Widnes.

They have no place in the professional game .....as has already been stated ...the latest "go national" venture chasing something that will never be there for our sport (not that it matters a jot....some folk want to be careful what they wish for!)

Typical of what's gone on in the last ten or twenty odd years ....Gateshead Thunder et al......many of us older farts remember Kent Invicta and Cardiff Blue Dragons .....the Mansfield Marksmen anyone ?

They let clubs that were the bedrock of the game fend for themselves like Oldham....Swinton and others.........and look what they did to Keighley a few years back.....So they can chase Wales or London or somewhere else where it just can't/won't "take"

Eleven years on from a Wembley win and a once regular berth in Super League ....and where are Sheffield Eagles ?......just another failed experiment.

Concentrate on teh heartland of the sport and do everything they can to make it prosper in towns that have always supported a RL club.....It isn't easy to try and make everyone competitive but anything has to be better than this "made up" clubs nonsense

Eh son that wont go down well in high places, RL- TRUTH-REALITY dont mix in this century.

There has to be a compromise for both the heartland and the expansionist ideals.

Just favouring one other the other is doomed to failure IMO and unfortunately I feel expansionism is being favoured over the heartlands at the moment. We need the likes of Catalan, Harlequins and Celtic to perform and grow as a team in order for Rugby League to survive especially with such a close rival in Union however this should not be to the detriment of the Cumbrian, Yorkshire and Lancashire sides that have played the game in some capacity for over 100 years.

The lower league teams need to be given more help and more infrastructure by the RFL to turn the Championship into a successful and rival counterpart to Super League and help nuture youngsters through the Championship sides who can pick up the experience they need and eventually move onto SL with the better organised sides in the Championships eventually making the grade and being accepted into SL.

The greater the player pool is and the better youngsters are coached, nurtured and allowed to progress within the game can allow for expansionist ideas to have more credence, improves our national image & offers more to other towns and cities without RL and removes the over dependence on antipodeans.

Oh....and the Celtic game today was boring and like somebody said earlier was like a Challenge Cup game against lower opposition - hopefully Celtic will improve over the coming seasons.

Celtic need the kind of players Les Cats were able to land the problem is it will be hard to attract players like Jones given the exchange rate and tightening up of tax laws. I think they could make a go of the game down there with a following wind. People should not be so quick to criticise.

As to the game today the reason the atmosphere was dead was because from a Wigan point of view it confirmed we are not a very good team. Given the quality of the Celtic side we should have scored 60 or 70 points. For every try we scored one it was after one had seemed to go begging beforehand.

So I think the general ineptitude on attack despite the score was not lost on most fans.

That said my son enjoyed the tries we did score. Particularly the one from Feka's break (he was going mad about the Celtic player who held back the player running to the right of Feka) and the one that came right after the penalty on the left that went through three players hands quickly.

For a young lad who does not over analyse the game like we tend to do on here he was just pleased to see Wigan win and score some nice tries (despite the errors).

Dave

Surely you didn't think the atmosphere when you played at Barrow was THAT bad ?!?

My four year old was sat with a few rows in front of me, just after kick off she shouted; its quiet in here.

The quietness did give me a few giggles though, the bum count (going on behind us) when Celtic head trainer came on. Patted six bums after one try.

Someone else shouting, Bloody hell bring mathers back.

I have genuinely never heard south stand so quiet in my life.

To be fair, it was a very relaxed atmosphere. It was a Sunday afternoon, the weather was sunny, it was an easy opposition and people were hardly on a high from the past weeks performance so the foundations to create a bit of atmosphere weren't exactly planted.

Let's face it...a decent, consistant atmosphere will never happen at the JJB/DW stadium. It hasn't for the first decade anyway.

It was relaxed yes, having decided to give the game a miss as i was in Dewsbury overnight it got to 2pm and i just had to be there, i jumped in a taxi to wigan £60, worth it i quite enjoyed the feel of it, the last time we had a nice day like that was the stains game on good friday 2007... or so it seems