Its not the best score, but if you look at the clubs who've managed to increase their scores since last year only Bradford, Leigh & Hull KR are ahead of Widnes in points gained
Truly disappointed with that score and position. The club have continued to push the narrative that all was well and we will launch ourselves up the league BUT that is so disappointing!!!!!
I am sickened to see Bradford get into SL, but fair play to them, they knew how to work the IMG system. No doubt aided and abetted by Nigel Wood.
Their score increased mainly on finance - 4.25, the same as Leigh - and improvements to the ground - really!!
Their most recent published accounts show a profit of £22,000 on a turnover of £2.1m. Who is going to fund their £2m loss in 2026?
Surely, the improvement in relation to the ground is a joke. Yes they own it now, but that was with the help of RFL. The ground is below SL standards, but I see plans for a multi-million pound investment to develop the ground, with Government and Council support. Where have we heard that before?
I would suggest that the independent panel takes a good look at the background to the RFL buying Odsal to bail out the Club in 2012 and then selling it back to Bradford at a fraction of what they paid for it.
Jealous that it is not us - YES. Suspicious about how Bradford have managed to get into SL - YES. Will SL survive in the way that it is being run - NO. Will the SL become a closed shop - YES. Will RFL provide support for the game below SL - NO.
Even the NRL have given up on them and the Commercial Director's answer is to sell a stake in SL to a private equity firm. Good luck with that as a short-term fix that will not end well.
Anyway, rant over. Will I continue to support Widnes - YES.
Come on the Chemics!!!!
Owning your own ground is 0.25 points, hardly a game changer. We must be desperately poor in other areas.
You can get those 0.25 points even if you don't own the ground, as long as you have primacy of tenure - which the club said last year they could get from the Council.
It's more within balance sheet strength and turnover that owning your ground can make the difference.
Regardless of that, I'm not sure what's worse - the rating and 19th itself, or the statement that followed.
Owning your own ground is 0.25 points, hardly a game changer. We must be desperately poor in other areas.
You can get those 0.25 points even if you don't own the ground, as long as you have primacy of tenure - which the club said last year they could get from the Council.
It's more within balance sheet strength and turnover that owning your ground can make the difference.
Regardless of that, I'm not sure what's worse - the rating and 19th itself, or the statement that followed.
There should be some easy gains for next year if cash can be found, eg boards & big screens> Bradford didn't have them permanently in place but got the points apparently. Its bonkers that we have to do this, however with the likes of Bradford you'd assume they've squeezed everything they can do out of the stadium now, we've still got gains to be made
We need another 4 points lol that's miles off obviously we will go back to the 5 year plan but in that case we need nearly 6 points as super league will be all grade A clubs by then so either way super league is a no go and looking at the rfl they don't seem to be interested in the championship at all
The gradings are obviously a farce just look at the fact Bradford have gone up!
But how can the club not have made any progress in the years since IMG has come in? We went backwards last year and are just in the same position from when the first ever scores came out there’s literally been no improvement. How are barrow and fev ahead of us? It’s just poor management from the club again.
My guess is that RFL will now ditch IMG grading system and bring the shutters down on entry to SL, now that Nigel has got his dream.
Having said that isn't the contract with IMG until 2036? Apparently to provide branding and marketing services. How much are the RFL paying for this service?
What I hope happens is that the spreadsheet will be abandoned and there will be a two and two down promotion/relegation between SL/Championship., based on performance on the pitch. The Club winning the play-off promoted and a play-off between the bottom three in SL and the remaining three teams finishing 1-4 in Championship, to determine the second spot.
@James
Yes, income streams from the ground are almost absent in our case. But it's also the ability to make our own decisions like 'let's have a big screen' (points), 'let's have electronic advert hoardings' (points), 'let's have less embarrassing media facilities' (points), and dare I say it 'let's have a stadium that isn't 5x the size of our average attendance' (even more points)....
@James
Yes, income streams from the ground are almost absent in our case. But it's also the ability to make our own decisions like 'let's have a big screen' (points), 'let's have electronic advert hoardings' (points), 'let's have less embarrassing media facilities' (points), and dare I say it 'let's have a stadium that isn't 5x the size of our average attendance' (even more points)....
Maybe it is the relationship with the Council that needs addressing, not the ownership of the ground. Wigan Council owns the Leigh Sports Village and they have not done too bad.
Whether or not we have a big screen, electronic advertising or luxury media facilities should be based on need and cost, not trying to meet the requirements of a spreadsheet. Maybe we could do what others apparently have done, is give false data to meet the spreadsheet requirements. As for ground capacity, Odsal has a 22,000 capacity, with crowds of around 3,500, It has not done them much harm on the spreadsheet. Neither has the fact that they only bought the ground from the RFL earlier this year.
Actually owning the ground did us no favours when we ran into financial problems, other than to get the Council to bail us out by buying the ground.
Well I am sat in the same seat as I was last night before the IMG gradings announcement - not surprised mainly, as I don’t think we played the game like other clubs did. To see barrow above is is interesting to say the least - also if you look at the asterisk against 3 clubs they are facing possible insolvency, obviously not taken into the grading.
so await tomorrow for the big announcement 📣
what do people think ?
really Toulouse and York should be in there but my suspicious mind thinks London will be one and one of the other 2
it would not surprise me if Toulouse do not make it they will pull back to the French league
so makeup of championship or whatever they will call it will be totally different - fax,fev on shoestrings Salford ? Who knows but burnham is behind them so expect them to be in there
We need to manage the things you can manage ,get 3k crowds you gain,get too finals win trophies etc they are things a rugby club can manage do we feel we aim for that ? We failed in our objective to get in playoffs we are further behind now than when img came out you need 14 points to secure super league we are miles away some are obviously bad management but if you only win 4 home games you can't expect the crowds to come if your successful the rest can be done but without a decent team your stuck in quicksand
Forget last year as we messed up, in 2023 for the indicative grades we came 16th, in 2025 we have been graded 19th so we have gone backwards.
@dan1 I know mate but reading today's tweet makes it sound like a success ,the way things have been spun we were all expecting 14/15 ish maybe 11/12 points so to be further behind is a kick in the guts and they're obviously not shocked by our score so 19/35 is where we actually sit in the game these days very sad
Hopefully the promised investment will still be there and we can actually make progress.
signings now will obviously be important
if Matt gee comes about that is a plus, but we need at least one big prop and another winger
will there be a squad update post on here ?