The IMG gradings are set to be made public on the 23rd of October. What are peoples thoughts on this? Does anyone care? From an on field performance perspective we will improve very slightly as our 2021 8th place finish will be replaced by this seasons 5th place. That will go alongside 7th in 2022 and a disappointing 9th in 2023. It will be another 2 years before we can get rid of our 9th place (21st position overall)
Allan Coleman has brought improvements on the pitch, have we also taken steps forward off the field as well? Both in number of points and also position. It will be interesting to see if other clubs have improved on their points totals. We could keep the same points total but still drop down the rankings.
I must say though I find the whole thing rather ridiculous and some elements seem to have been made up to pad it out. We are supposed to be growing the game but you don't get rewarded for a succesful academy or womens team? You can play in a terribly outdated stadium like Odsal but rent a digjital scoreboard and advertising boards to pick up extra points. How does that benefit the fans coming to the game.
Also its weighted well in favour of SL teams. You can have a superb season and win the Championship Grand Final undefeated but the highest playing position you score is 13th. You lose every game in SL and finish bottom but still score 12th ahead of the Championship side that's won every game. You have every game on TV in SL so can charge more for advertising boards making digital viable to pick up an extra 0.125 points. It's just not cost efficient in the Championship with no TV deal. Fandom, you get the away support from the likes of Wigan and Leeds compared to Batley and Swinton so score more when it's not even your fans! Also you get points for TV viewership, SL is on Sky and BBC, Championship isn't on TV at all. I must say was this fully explained at the time as its seems madness to me that any Championship club would vote in favour of such a system when the deck is stacked against you.
I've said it on previous threads but why not make grade A clubs exempt from relegation. Grade C clubs not eligible for promotion but then the teams in the grade B category can be promoted and relegated based on league position. So London finish bottom as a grade B, Wakefield win the Championship GF as a grade B so they swap. It's not perfect as you still have the potential of a grade A side like Hull taking the absolute mick and finishing bottom, but this should be fairly rare. It would the offer grade B sides and fans of clubd like Widnes, Bradford and Featherstone hope and breathe new life into the Championship and bottom half of SL.
Good thinking, an interesting and realistic suggestion which will never be accepted...
I think it's a shame that non-SL clubs can't stream their games for a bit of added revenue. It can't be too expensive to do, you only need a decent phone and a tripod. If HFH can do it I'm sure semi-pro clubs can manage it. Would you get more IMG points for doing this than what you may lose in attendance figures? Who knows?
Even though we have a big, modern scoreboard, it doesn't show game footage, replays etc. The framework for the old SKY screen is still in place in the NE corner. Can this be utilised for some sort of TV screen? I'm sure there are Media Studies students in the area that could use that kind of medium for their studies.
One things that annoys me is the old digital clock in the East Stand is still there, why is this not used by the official timekeeper, like the one in the West Stand at Halifax?
Paulie xx
@sunny Correct as the 12 SL sides will want to cling on to the ever decreasing pot of money. If 16 clubs all become grade A, will we have a 16 team SL? Absolutely no chance as they won't share the Sky money with another 4 teams. The goal posts will be moved.
Even if the Sky money goes back up they will say well it used to be £40 million a year between 12 of us and now with a reduced central distribution we are losing £1million per season, so let's keep it as 12 teams and share a bigger slice of the funding between ourselves.
What I would like to know is, is this 12 year IMG deal like brexit with no going back? What if the 24 Championship and League 1 sides all voted for changes but the 12 SL teams said no we want it to stay the same, would anything actually happen? I think Leigh would also vote with the Championship sides as well from the opinions Derek has expressed recently.
I've given up trying to explain it all now. No wonder the sport isn't taken seriously. If you didn't laugh you'd cry. I've enjoyed this season and the resurgence under AC even though I knew we couldn't go up. I actually quite prefer Championship away days to SL ones in half empty football stadiums! Have fonder memories of the NFP than I do SL years ago too (just missed "the glory years")
The non-SL clubs should break away, form their own 2-league semi-pro system and subscription stream matches. Let SL do their thing, Sky are slowly pulling the plug on it anyway.
The non-SL clubs should break away, form their own 2-league semi-pro system and subscription stream matches. Let SL do their thing, Sky are slowly pulling the plug on it anyway.
totally agree
Our IMG rating is really irrelevant, as we know given their parameters we will be a B grading about 16th and there is very little we can do to change that. As has been pointed out it is heavily loaded in favour of the current SL teams due to points for position and attendances - only a few championship clubs can average over 3000, which now sadly includes us.
i wonder whether the tweaks made will help London - I doubt it, but cas must be sweating a bit I reckon as wakey and Toulouse may well be above them , and if that happens cas will probably be condemned to our fate.
but our future is in the championship so ideas needed to boost the profile of that.
Just doing the maths makes you wonder why the club voted for this. Regarding the population statistic, something the club have no control over. Widnes local authority is Halton with a population of approx 128,000, thus giving us 0.5 points. Leigh which is smaller than Widnes comes under Wigan borough, as such they score 1 point. Then there's Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley (Dewsbury & Batley are similar sized towns to Widnes) which come under Kirklees, an authority that covers TEN towns, again they all outscore us. Then there's clubs in areas of over 250,000, the likes of Sheffield, Bradford and Toulouse who are all given 1.5 Points. Now a gifted 1 point advantage doesn't sound much until you realise all other things being equal we'd have to out perform them on the league ladder by NINE places just to nullify it.
It should be a simple calculation of City/Town/Authority population, divided by last seasons attendance figures. Sheffield get less than 1000 attendees for that catchment area of 250k+, always have, always will.
The system is flawed, and the clubs like Widnes should be challenging this.
Paulie xx
Perhaps if they used postcodes or dialing codes we would score more points.
Just doing the maths makes you wonder why the club voted for this. Regarding the population statistic, something the club have no control over. Widnes local authority is Halton with a population of approx 128,000, thus giving us 0.5 points. Leigh which is smaller than Widnes comes under Wigan borough, as such they score 1 point. Then there's Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley (Dewsbury & Batley are similar sized towns to Widnes) which come under Kirklees, an authority that covers TEN towns, again they all outscore us. Then there's clubs in areas of over 250,000, the likes of Sheffield, Bradford and Toulouse who are all given 1.5 Points. Now a gifted 1 point advantage doesn't sound much until you realise all other things being equal we'd have to out perform them on the league ladder by NINE places just to nullify it.
These are all excellent points, and if I may, as a fan of another club I'd add that the grading boundaries for population seem to have been set in a fairly arbitrary manner that seems to work against a fair few clubs in northern towns. As you are probably aware, the cut-off point between 0.5 points and 1 point is 130,000, which conveniently leaves Widnes just under the threshold for 1 point , as it does to my club Fev (and Cas and Wakefield) with Wakefield Borough population coming to just under 360k which divided by the 3 clubs means a total for these purposes of around 120,000. It's almost like they looked at the figures for certain clubs and then decided the boundaries...
@lord-lucan some very valid points. after watching the Swinton Hunslet game tonight with promotion and relegation on the line, I sort of wonder whether I'd be more in favour of a standalone Champ and L1 with straight promotion and relegation between the 2. Where things are decided in the field. SL is not the be all and end all. That tonight was superb and probably the best RL game I've seen all year for drama and I've watched every game on the tele SL and NRL. Let the box ticking continue for SL if that's the way they think they'll make RL some big time sport.
Halton's population is likely to hit 130,000 next year, so we should probably get the extra 0.5 point then.
Halton's population (ONS mid-2023 population estimate) is 129,587, an increase from 129,008 in 2022.