And the winners are the Celtic Crusaders and the Salford City Reds.
As you can imagine there have been all sorts of reactions but this is pretty much what I expected to happen.
The Crusaders are the first Welsh Super League club and have had a major amount of support by the RFL to get into Super League. I don;t think they got any underhand help over other clubs, but there is no doubt that the RFL told them if they got to a certain level they would be in.
As for Salford, its more a case of best of the rest.
Of the two other teams they had to beat, French club Toulouse probably needs a couple more years to be really ready and Widnes was in Administration only 9 months ago!
Everyone knows I would like to see Salford change their name to Manchester. Its not like you’re changing a club with a great historical name, because Salford is a poor club. Its also not as if you are going to alienate a loyal supporter base, because their supporters are a bunch of whinging, fair weather bandwagoners anyway.
I fully expect that in the next round of expansion Toulouse will be next in line. After that, who knows, but I suspect that the likes of Wakefield, Castleford and even Salford will be under the hammer from French teams.
Anyway, a good day for the game, we FINALLY get a Welsh Super League club. Best of all, they have the same colours as this web site!
