Alice's Phallus wrote:
Several of the clubs, especially Wakefield and Castleford, were given licenses on a kind of informal probabtion. Richard Lewis warned clubs that they had to satisfy certain explicit criteria, including an adequate stadium, if they were to have their licenses renewed. Wakefield will fail the stadium criterion, and possibly other criteria, in 2011. This will ease the west Yorkshire saturation of the Super League roster, and make room for some new, commercially attractive expansion clubs, like Toulouse, Sheffield/Doncaster, Newcastle/Gateshead, East London etc. in 2011 and subsequent years.
That would seem to contradict the whole franchising process. I don't believe he can do that.
If Wakefield don't build a new stadium but achieve 7 or 8 other marks out of the ten available how could they not have their license renewed? It's not a very fair process if Richard Lewis can arbitrarily decide pet criteria that must be achieved, is it?