DUBIOUS PROMISES
THE acknowledgement in the revisions to the IMG grading criteria that community engagement will now be recognised in them can be seen as a step towards recognising the vital role of the game being played at grassroots level (although how well measuring the turnover of a foundation measures that is another issue!).
Whilst this does represent the RFL and IMG listening to the clubs' concerns on the issue, I think it goes too far for RFL Chief Executive Tony Sutton to say that "...this process remains democratic as well as informed and transparent."
I appreciate the RFL and others could have taken the decision to not communicate the details of the grading proposals at all to fans until some time after the proposals had been voted on and were coming into effect; that is a degree of transparency at least.
But we have been told repeatedly about the amount of work that has gone into the research that IMG has been doing, including last year's fans' survey. So why haven't we seen that, or at least a summary of their findings, as opposed to just being given the recommendations?
Then there's the question of who makes the decisions on this, which would be the RFL Council. Whilst this does include seven voters outside the ranks of the professional clubs, from various aspects of the amateur game, the votes of the Super League clubs on the one hand, and the votes of the Championship and League 1 clubs, are equally weighted, which means that the votes of Super League (only the eleven UK based clubs) count for over twice those of those clubs in the lower leagues.