Mitch Souter and J OK both announced at the fans forum as signing for next year. Great news!!

Always good to start getting business done early too. It can be a distraction if uncertainty carried into the latter end of the year. 

Good to have them signed up.  

Some big decisions to make for next season on our more senior players.  

I guess it's difficult to decide who we sign up for next year given the desire to be in Superleague. Jayden has played at that level before and general opinion is that Mitch would also go well. So the signings make sense. However, if we re-sign players who are not seen as SL quality or can't go full time then that suggests another year in the Championship. At the forum the board seemed quite upbeat about SL chances for 2026 but I think most of us would not be quite so confident. 


I don't see how any Championship side can risk putting together a SL squad when you have little idea which league you will be in. If you have money like Leigh did then fair enough but we all know we don't have that kind of money  so surely we can't run that risk.


Will be interesting to see if there are any more early signings for 2026.

Great to see Okunbor being retained for 2026. The club gave him the chance to reignite his career after a rocky spell at Hull FC and he’s grabbed it with both hands. He arrived low on confidence but has grown into one of our standout performers this year. You can see the spark is well and truly back. A real win-win for both the player and the club.

Chances of SL for 2026?


Do the ratings get reviewed again at the end of each season to determine the 12 Superleague teams for the following year?

Think so Wigsy.   But if a club is promoted it leaves them behind the others in getting a team recruited. 

There is bound to be a super league spot when Salford finally get the chop, they are only been kept on life support to see the season out integrity of the competition and all that nonsense. 

Will that spot go to Toulouse though?  A fair few SL club owners (Derek, Ken and certainly others) don't want another French team.   Do they have a say if the IMG scoring puts Toulouse top of the pile?    After them York and London were in front of us.   Can't see London maintaining their score now they're in the championship and having to work far harder for IMG points.   So it's between us and York.   York better than us on the field and have a better ground (but whether the IMG scoring actually puts it that far ahead I don't know).  Also we have higher attendances that York (just about).   


At the end of the day we're a contender but I still think Toulouse and York are ahead. 


If we did get promoted then we'd need to recruit massively - can we afford to do that?  As mentioned above we'd be feeding off the scraps as the better players would be signed up before we got a seat at the table.

I think the unspoken truth is that the IMG rules will be flexed / amended to get whoever they want into SL.

If it's us, great.
I can't help but feel we're tried and tested, would swell gates across the board and it's a safe bet.
 
We just need to progress sensibly, accepting we'll be competing for the wooden spoon for a season or two. Then we can add quality players to the roster without the panic. 
We would also have a better chance of youth retention. And on youth, what odds are some of our talent returning....?


I'm correct in thinking many of the IMG points will naturally go up simply due to us being in SL?

When the IMG ratings first came out, I thought they were designed for a city club - whether that was London, ourselves or Toulouse. I can understand the frustration of clubs like Featherstone and Halifax when they read the criteria. The key thing would be youth retention, we would be able to offer a direct SL pathway. 
Lots of hurdles to overcome before then.