Without it we'd still be in the Championship though. Being in SL is the bigger issue than P&R. It isn't like we suddenly started breaking even when they got rid of it. We lose money because that is what the majority of SL clubs do. Our losses are actually slightly less than the mean average.

P&R does encourage a degree of short-termism, especially given that relegation is generally viewed as catastrophic rather than an opportunity to rebuild. Franchising was showing some [ivery[/i equivocal signs of reducing that, but they didn't have the stomach to stick with it when hard decisions were required, so here we are.

With P&R back I can see a club like hkr stopping spending on Jnr's and pumping all its money into continually signing players to ensure safety. If we went down it would likely see our jnr development dry up anyway so nothing lost.

P+R allowing HKR to massively overspend (and they do, relative to most SL clubs HKR’s balance sheet is one of the worst, a mean average is pretty misleading, especially when you consider that 3 clubs regularly make pretty hefty profits, there are some who make small losses, Salford and St’s will have some exceptional costs, and London lose loads)on overseas players, put themselves behind the 8 ball in terms of youth development and HKR still getting in to SL, is if anything an argument against P+R

You have to have 8 club-trained players in your top 25 earners though, so you'd risk having really poor depth. There's a balance - there's no point pumping loads of cash in to producing talent just to see it poached, so you need a decent first team too, but without a good pipeline or cash to pay fees you're always going to be scrabbling about to make up numbers.

Well, for you obviously.





The fact that a minority of clubs make 'hefty profits' actually makes our position relative to the mean better, within the loss making majority. Our losses are not in any way exceptional, and a mean average could only be considered misleading in this instance if we were a long way from the median, which I don't believe we are.

We had one season in SL under the P&R system, so it is difficult to judge its impact on us - at worst is cost us a year of 'building' bottom up. But making that leap, there was a pretty compelling case for a bit of top down anyway.

Whether SL would have been better off without us - well, we came up in place of Cas, who you once presented as the example we should follow, but you now seem to think are cack, but they're long back irrespective. Once we stabilised we've gone 7th, 4th, 7th, 7th, 10th, (currently) 6th. Middling, I think it is fair to say. We've so far avoided the all too common ignominy of going bust, and a few players have started come through our youth structures. Our problems apply widely throughout SL. P&R won't solve them, but it didn't cause most of them either. Clubs that are arguably too big for the competition, but not numerous enough to form their own, and a widespread willingness amongst others to run losses is what makes most clubs unsustainable - not subtle adjustments to strategy brought about by league structuring.

Do you mean like Huddersfield who were relegated in 2001 but bounced back much stronger in 2002 ?



Admitted they knew they were ' gone ' very early, but the examples you couldnt find are actually there ,if you genuinely want to find them

Would you like to quantify ' Hefty ' ? , and also ' regularly ' ?



Or do you just mean Leeds and whoever wins the Challenge Cup ? , providing it isnt Leeds?

What month did the 2002 NFP season start in?

That's the decision that's been taken, don't ask me why. I've already said the licensing experiment has not been given long enough for us to really know whether that works.

A couple of hundred k, 3 years out of 5 or so, Leeds, wire, hull FCC, and Wigan.



HTH

Do you have a link for that? , last time it was much less and tied in to Wigan and Warringtons Cup wins

Same for my club (Cas Tigers). We might as well pack in developing our own juniors. All we do is prepare them for Hull. We might as well cancel our youth teams for next year and use the money to sign a boat load of mercenaries.