There appears to be a whiff of James Rule in the building.
Paulie xx
This was always going to be little more than a maths exercise. All you had to do was study the criteria, fill in your numbers and you could quickly work out that this would not work in Widnes favour. At that point you vote against it. Haven't looked at it for a while but to me a lot of it was nonsense. Its completely loaded towards the current or recent Superleague incumbents with the three year data stuff. Then there's the bandings for things like attendances which can completely negate positives for some clubs. There's the catchment which is nonsense. The digital stuff I can understand to the point it's important but the object surely is to drive attendances, merchandise sales, sponsorships etc which will show in the financials anyway. Me clicking I like a post on X makes no difference to anything. That said I was amused more than anything when I saw today's result. If there's 21 or 22 clubs better than us then they are asking the wrong questions.
Didn't expect Keighley above us
Is this really where the great sport of RL is?
Can VIPS donate towards a big screen and or some LED advertising boards for games that aren't even televised?
Doncaster got some points knocked off because one of their five television gantries regularly used for broadcasting EFL games was 40cm too small apparently. See the interview with their CEO on Twitter.
apparently some teams pixels on their big screens weren't right despite them hosting PL U21/Euros games 😂
never been as disillusioned with RL as I am today. Grim.
@frankg Many, many months ago on this forum, Paulie Walnuts urged everyone to visit the club website as often as they could, even if they didn't need to, just to increase the numbers.
Well, you can't say I didn't warn you...
The reality is Barrow and Keighley are above Widnes because they own their own ground, which not only means they get the financial benefits of having a ground, but it means that the ground is listed as an asset on their balance sheet, which contributes significantly to the finance pillar.
The biggest shambles is being below Sheffield - although they benefit from having a tiny stadium, which means they probably get 0.5 point more than us on utilisation alone.
It's a shambles of a system but the clubs, including Widnes, voted for it.
While Chris Hamilton was brought in to do the job, I think the board have got to take some accountability and be transparent with what they are doing and what the plan is, which hopefully will happen on Monday night.
My fear is that it will be a "well the attendances have gone down, the reality is we need more fans to compete" - because actually, the fans at the moment are probably one of the few assets Widnes have.
So basically, we’re screwed. So it’s shut the door, pull the shutters down & start the car.
I am no supporter of this grading either in concept or implementation.
However, if we are to build in the championship we are going to have to put up with it for the time being. Whether we have an A or a B makes no odds as far as I can see because we aren't going to SL right now, the problem is our score fell off a cliff and is heading for a C.
I get that we don't own our own ground, but we didn't with the last set of results. So something has changed and gone seriously backwards. The placing in the league has improved, the social media interaction has seemingly improved, so is it finances? fewer fans attending?
I suppose that after all the bluster we are still where we were years ago, needing 7,000 fans to make it work!
It's got to be a bit silly to require a minimal ground provision to get your assessment to stack up - and we think RL is a top rated sport !????
I wonder if a longer term 'lease' for the club would make any difference or is it essential that he ground be minimal provision? Maybe ask Widnes RU for a rental deal?
But, at the end of the day is that what Sky want on their screens, because we seem to have an increasing number of clubs chasing a reducing 'prize'!!!!!
Sounds like a script for 'Two pints of lager....'
I am no supporter of this grading either in concept or implementation.
However, if we are to build in the championship we are going to have to put up with it for the time being. Whether we have an A or a B makes no odds as far as I can see because we aren't going to SL right now, the problem is our score fell off a cliff and is heading for a C.
I get that we don't own our own ground, but we didn't with the last set of results. So something has changed and gone seriously backwards. The placing in the league has improved, the social media interaction has seemingly improved, so is it finances? fewer fans attending?
The placing in the league improvement is 0.1 of a point, so barely worth writing home about. I reckon there's about 0.6 of a loss due to the attendance average going below 3,000, and the subsequent impact on utilisation.
The remaining 1.0 ish lost could well be finance related.
My suspicion is that it is the finances, because if attendance is down the score probably gets hit twice.
York are being touted as a future SL team based on their score and they don't own their ground and I would suspect they have lower attendance than us. I think Widnes need to be looking at everyone else's score to figure out how to catch back up.
This is terrible news and Hamilton was here to do a job and has failed. Time for a new CEO and look for some proper business men who have some bollox. They expect people to join WVIPS and buy season tickets but are not transparent enough with fans all the way through the season. Get some bollox speak to RFL and the Council otherwise we won't go forwards. I disagree with the IMG rules but Widnes agreed to it when obviously didn't benefit us.
My suspicion is that it is the finances, because if attendance is down the score probably gets hit twice.
York are being touted as a future SL team based on their score and they don't own their ground and I would suspect they have lower attendance than us. I think Widnes need to be looking at everyone else's score to figure out how to catch back up.
They don't own their ground, but they do have a rich owner putting money in which is effectively replacing that (see also Derek Beaumont and Leigh)
I have no inside knowledge and just pulling this out of thin air based on the readily available criteria.
There are 4.5 points for finance. The statement from Derek Beaumont actually explains some of this well, in terms of he was able to put in extra money and write it off as sponsorship, which then counts towards non-centralised turnover.
I daresay Widnes may be struggling to make 500k in non-centralised turnover the way they've been operating in recent years. So at best it's 0.5 points if over 500k (probably 0). York may be able to push £1.25m (1.5 points) thanks to owner investment.
There's also a point for your percentage of non-centralised turnover - so given how little the central funding is now, if York's owner is putting in a bit through sponsorship, then they could quite easily achieve the 0.75 points here (whereas Widnes likely to struggling to get 0.15)
0.5 for owner investment (an owner putting in 500k+ (or 0.25 for 100k+) - so there's 0.5 to York
Balance sheet strength. Clearly if you have an owner putting money in, this helps you get to the 100k threshold which is 0.5 points (otherwise it's 0.25 if you're >£1 - Widnes could in theory be minus here) - so there's another at least 0.25 to York. Reading the terms of this, I wonder whether there are some issues with the 'primacy of tenure' and perhaps we haven't got the right agreement with the Council?
Adjusted profit. If you make a loss of less than £1m, it's 0.25. If you make more than £1 profit, it's 0.50. So another probable 0.25 to York there (taking in to account owner investment).
So of the 3.82 difference between York and Widnes, I would imagine a big chunk of that comes within the finance pillar.
We have had 12 months to do this just like every other team. It's a good job that fan transparency is not a criteria otherwise we would be out of the championship.When AC was introduced at the fans meeting the board and Hamilton stated we would be up to getting the best grading possible, the only thing that came true was team performance.My suspicion is that it is the finances, because if attendance is down the score probably gets hit twice.
York are being touted as a future SL team based on their score and they don't own their ground and I would suspect they have lower attendance than us. I think Widnes need to be looking at everyone else's score to figure out how to catch back up.
This has happened because there is no communication with the fans most do not get emails answered and they have had enough and have given up. We where promised transparency when the board took over but actually it's far worse than the JR era. They will probably blame the council and get a round of applause at Mondays meeting.
We was never going to make the promised land the points are an utter disgrace to a much loved club.
Didn't expect Keighley above us
Is this really where the great sport of RL is?
Can VIPS donate towards a big screen and or some LED advertising boards for games that aren't even televised?
Doncaster got some points knocked off because one of their five television gantries regularly used for broadcasting EFL games was 40cm too small apparently. See the interview with their CEO on Twitter.
apparently some teams pixels on their big screens weren't right despite them hosting PL U21/Euros games 😂
never been as disillusioned with RL as I am today. Grim.
😮 😮 😮 Well if anything is going to make a club look unprofessional that's it...