Another Week another

shambolic performance from the officials in the middle.  The Friday night game was marred by a blatent mistake from the referee, when he awarded Stanley Gene a try that never was.

We are still feeling the effect of a tough encounter with Featherstone, a fortnight ago.  Richard Hulme has been suspended for punching after been sent off for a high tackle.  whilst Foul and abusive lanuage gets away pretty much scott free.  Why do we bother.

This weekend sees the start of the second half of the season.  With a reversal of the week two fixture against Warrington Wizards, who will no doubt be up for some revenge after their defeat to us at Wilderspool.

The following Thursday we play a rearranged fixture against Gateshead Storm, with an 8pm Kick off. 

Last weekend saw the debut of Robin Wilkes who had an outstanding game.  Mark is expecting big things from him, and this years other recruits.

In the super league, Wigan were shown who was boss by the Celtic Crusaders in Bridgend with the Crusaders registering their first home win of the year.  The mighty Hull KR were brought down to earth by a good performance from Harliquins RL, at Craven Park.  Leeds scored a win over the Giants, but only just and St. Helens hammered Castleford.

The international match was as one sided as everyone thought it would be.  The French were missing some of their better players and England probably unearthed a star of tomorrow in Myler, from Salford.  He’s being wowing the crowd at the Willows, but has proved that he can do it at international level.  Lets hope the promise hes showing now, continues isn’t coached out of him by the coaches at club level, or international level.  I have to be honest and say i switched over at half time as it was a poor game and after watching the Buffaloes win easily i wasn’t really in the mood for another one sided game.

Doncasters path to salvation is under way after the fans organised a meeting with the good people at Supporters Direct.  Lets hope they can get it together and run their club.  The Co-operative model is the way forward in my opinion, so that no one person can take over the club.   Now Supporters direct have a development officer, who is a nice person and up for the job, hopefully we will see more Trusts and trust owned clubs springing up.

Especially when the people running the clubs in the championship and Championship 1, realise that Super League is now a closed shop.  They should in my opinion be developing the competition as a stand alone competition in a similar way to the way the Football League is different from the premier league.

The clubs in championship one, are aiming too high, and should be looking to reduce costs and overheads and bringing the level down a step or two, which would allow us to progress and play some of the teams that we believe we should be playing at.

for us to progress, we currently need to meet the framing the future document, which states that we need a ground that holds 5000 people, 1000 under cover, with 500 seats. 

How many clubs in that competition get over 500 spectators on a regular basis?  do the total attendances in each weekly round average over 5000?

The answer to the first in not many, and the second is deffinately not.

The powers that be need to be looking at this and helping the clubs develop as proper community resources, which in turn would allow the clubs to increase their attendances.

Till next time