Seven Betfred Super League clubs awarded Grade A status

[Dr Zaius]

We cant be that far behind Leeds in terms of followers on social media

Currently a bit more than 200,000 behind, 535,000 vs 328,000 so there's work to do.

[buttmonkey2]

Here's a suggestion to improve our utilisation score: take 5,000 seats out.

That's a "yes" from me. Take the lower rung seats out all round the stadium to reduce capacity. Should mean more sell-outs due to a more "limited" (if that's the right word) demand and also creates a better IMG grade at the same time.

As for social media, easily ask those pesky foreign interlopers that keep spamming our social media with dodgy links to follow and retweet and "jobs a good 'un"

[DaveO]

.....has there been any breakdown of the scores published or do we just get the final result?

The grading criteria are set out in this document: https://www.rugby-league.com/uploads/do ... 202023.pdf

The only one we be sure of is we got 4.75 points for performance.

We will have received 4.75 points due to winning the GF (4) and the league (0.75) out of our 16.87.

Which means all else remaining the same if we ever finished 12th we would be grade B. For finishing 12th a club gets 2.7778 points and so we would have 14.8978 points (16.87 - 4.75 + 2.7778).

Leeds with 17.49 (they finished 8th so received 3.2222 points for performance) can basically never be relegated as even if they finished 12th they would still have 17.0456 (17.49 - 3.2222 + 2.7778) points and would remain a grade A club despite finishing last.

Taking performance away we scored 12.12 points out of 15.25 so lost 3.13 points somewhere.

Is it a yearly thing, I thought on field performance was averaged over 3 years?

The crowd average is three years but I thought performance was each season.

[DaveO]

When Danson fully integrates the the rugby and football into one business when he takes over we will then also own our own ground and should pick up some extra points.

We cant be that far behind Leeds in terms of followers on social media and that would massively improve if we signed Farrell. Besides, social media followers can be manipulated.

Cas are already whinging. Such a a shame that Wakey, who are actually trying to update their ground, despite financial restraints, and are thus higher rated than Cas are getting relegated while Cas are staying up, despite recently stating any up-grades to their dump of a ground have again been put back two years due to planning issues.

Why would Danson integrating both clubs into one business solve the ownership issue? Wigan RL can’t own it 100%.

It won’t solve the primacy issue because it’s in the Football League rules if a soccer club shares with another sport that can only happen if they have primacy.

[Dr Zaius]

Ownership isn't one of the criteria anyway, the only one that's related to control of the stadium is primacy of tenure.

But we shouldn't get too hung up on stadium - stadium facilities and control account for only 2 out of the maximum 20 points available.

[nathan_rugby]

Why is everyone quibbling over this, we got an A grade?

Granted there are question marks on missing academy, the utilisation rule and the weighting of some other criteria but we got an A grade and we knew the rules just like everyone else.

Did the RFL or Super League clubs have any say in the criteria at all?

One think we can agree on is that the sport is stagnated and going backwards, something new needed to be tried and time will tell if IMG have what it takes.

[the pieman]

Why is everyone quibbling over this, we got an A grade?

Granted there are question marks on missing academy, the utilisation rule and the weighting of some other criteria but we got an A grade and we knew the rules just like everyone else.

Did the RFL or Super League clubs have any say in the criteria at all?

One think we can agree on is that the sport is stagnated and going backwards, something new needed to be tried and time will tell if IMG have what it takes.

i think some is perhaps because people think we are the best at everything, and in some cases we are.

Grade A, ,absolutely, but we know we can get better.

I think most of the issues were debated when the criteria were released and the massive omission in regards to club structure below that of a SL team including reserves, academy (at whatever the current defined levels are), ladies, disability etc. As we all know, Wigan a significant %age of players in SL, but we get no credit or recognition for all the investment we put into our other teams, and that for me is a massive own goal by IMG, without players of the future, there is no future

We have along with Hull and Hudds, the biggest capacity in the game, but get punished because we arent utilised as say Cas, who get average 8k in a 12k capacity stadium, so approx 67%. Wigan who average approx 13k in 25k stadium is just over 50%, so despite having a better average, and a better capacity, under the current grading we may potentially get a lower score than Cas (used for illustrative purpose), and that doesnt feel right

the issue i have (i could be wrong on this), is that it appears to be a sneaky way of increasing the league to 14 teams, to include Bradford. There appears to be a distinct gap between 14 and 15th ranked clubs, with very little between 12 and 14

i would however applaud London, Salford and Widnes as they have all come out and confirmed they are happy with the rankings and gives them stuff to work on, which is what i suppose the whole thing was about. This is where you are, and if you want to be classed as an elite club, this is what you need to do to achieve it. I see the usual suspects of Cas and Keighley, have also had their usual moans about the whole thing, and there is no shock there

[Mike]

The grading criteria are set out in this document: https://www.rugby-league.com/uploads/do ... 202023.pdf

The only one we be sure of is we got 4.75 points for performance.

We will have received 4.75 points due to winning the GF (4) and the league (0.75) out of our 16.87.

Which means all else remaining the same if we ever finished 12th we would be grade B. For finishing 12th a club gets 2.7778 points and so we would have 14.8978 points (16.87 - 4.75 + 2.7778).

Leeds with 17.49 (they finished 8th so received 3.2222 points for performance) can basically never be relegated as even if they finished 12th they would still have 17.0456 (17.49 - 3.2222 + 2.7778) points and would remain a grade A club despite finishing last.

Taking performance away we scored 12.12 points out of 15.25 so lost 3.13 points somewhere.

Is it a yearly thing, I thought on field performance was averaged over 3 years?

The crowd average is three years but I thought performance was each season.

Might be. IMO that's too reactive to single outlier seasons. For a borderline B club one bad year on the pitch at the wrong time could see them relegated.

[Raging Penguin]

Maybe if Keighley focussed on developing within the criteria rather than pushing an ideology...

[DaveO]

We cant be that far behind Leeds in terms of followers on social media

Currently a bit more than 200,000 behind, 535,000 vs 328,000 so there's work to do.

Bradford have published the breakdown of their points. They got 3.95 out of a possible 5 for “fandom”. I am guessing we must be worse then them on that score.