I completely agree with you, Without SOC, Widnes wouldn't have had a cat in hells chance of going up, but, hey such is life.



I'm not saying both Halifax & Barrow boards didn't put the effort in, I'm saying they didn't follow the criteria properly.

Whilst Widnes were being quite poor on the pitch over the last few years, Halifax & Barrow, with their better quality & more expensive players, were fighting it out for the honours.

Oh dear.



Im sick of it all now, be glad when were gone.

Halifax met the criteria thats why they are still in the process.

And when you get knocked back you'll get told to improve your yoof and probably boost your attendances.

So will I! Gone gone gone...



...to super league

And that didn't happen with P&L?

Why does being a competitive championship team mean the above?

get rid of the NRC....





bring back the lancashire & yorkshire cups for championship,championship1 & super league under 20's sides

So, are you saying everything we now have in place, which got us a SL spot, is entirely due to Steve O’Connor?



Didn’t we have the biggest attendances in the Championship/NL1 before the O’Connor era?



Didn’t we already have a ‘World class’ academy set up before the O’Connor era?



Didn’t we already have a new stadium before the O’Connor era?



These are all aspects which have been talked about as being the major assets that help bring SL, and we already had them before Steve O’Connor arrived.



All Steve O’Connor has done is bring us on even further, after an initial large investment of £1.2 Million, and negotiate advantageous agreements with the local council. He has brought in a plethora of excellent sponsorship and runs the club far better than we have ever been run before. This ensures that, what we have always had in place is now sustainable and not likely to drag us into administration again.



The fact is, it would have been far more difficult for him to have done this, for the money that he has spent, at any other Championship level club, including Halifax. Because they do not have in place, the things Widnes had when he took over. You could probably include some current Super League clubs in that too.

Weren't you about to go titsup before the O'Connor era?

Yep. And they forget that. Good things in place or not they wouldn't be doing any of it if SOC hadn't bailed em out. Fair play to em but I don't get the point of pretending otherwise!

nobody is pretending otehrwise. the annoyance comes because statements like that are often wrapped up in the implication that we ONLY got a franchsie because our chairman IS rich and therefore influential, as if he is applying pressure to the powers that be through his financial clout.

yes its true we probably wouldnt have existed without him, so wouldnt have been around to apply in the first place. but many of us rightly feel its a bit misleading and disingenuous so say or imply (which is often the case) we only gained a franchise BECAUSE our chairman happens to have money.

No, we still EXIST because a rich guy bought the club. We gained a place in superleague ON MERIT.

Thankfully the SKY commentary team yesterday didn't go overboard with the ' tick ' , maybe it was because it wasn't Eddie,Stevo and Phil



Hopefully a sign of things to come , then again it's looking like we won't be on the box much anyway so we can all hopefully get back to watching it live