Blogs

Anyone who thinks that introducing a franchise system to Super League would prevent clubs from overstretching themselves must surely have had a wake up call after the recent plight of Doncaster Lakers. The South Yorkshire club are in meltdown because of their overreaching ambitions to be given a franchise in 2009. [Read more…]

On the evidence of Saturday’s Powergen Challenge Cup final it looks as though the Saints will keep on marching through to the engage Super League Grand Final at Old Trafford. The Knowsley Road side saw off Huddersfield Giants in comprehensive fashion; and it doesn’t look as though their impressive form will dip between now and mid-October.

This Saturday is the biggest day in the domestic rugby league calendar – for many people the biggest day in the rugby league universe. It is Powergen Challenge Cup final day with Huddersfield Giants and the giants St Helens going head to head for the magnificent old trophy.

The past two weeks have seen six engage Super League clubs found guilty of infringing salary cap regulations. Bradford and Wigan were, if the punishments are anything to go by, the two worst culprits – with Wakefield, Castleford, Hull and St Helens guilty of minor offences.

The reaction to the weekend’s Powergen Challenge Cup semi finals which saw Hull Kingston Rovers suffer a 50-0 drubbing at the hands of St Helens is that the game proved LHF National League clubs cannot hope to compete with their engage Super League counterparts, some people even hinting that it isn’t worth promoting the NL1 champions at the end of the season. 

After the classic engage Super League clash between Leeds Rhinos and St Helens on Saturday many people are saying that the end of the 2006 rugby league season will be a two horse race between those clubs. And, at the moment, there is little evidence to suggest that that won’t be the case.

If this time last week someone had suggested that Hull Kingston Rovers might not be the team that makes the step up to Super League I would have wondered what they based such a belief on. The Robins topped the LHF National League One table undefeated, had reached the semi finals of the Powergen Challenge Cup and the final of the Northern Rail Cup.

Saturday’s engage Super League game between Salford City Reds and Hull FC ended in controversy as Hull were awarded two contentious tries on the nod of the video referee to ensure that they edged out a Salford side who were in control for the better part of the eighty minutes. Not surprisingly a lot of debate has centred on the effectiveness of the video referee system.

Whatever your views on the matter you have to say that the notion of moving an entire round of engage Super League XII lock stock and barrel to Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium is an interesting one. To my knowledge I can’t think of anything like that being attempted before in rugby league history.