I was listening to dear ole Richard Lewis talking about how the SL licence bids are confidential affairs.

And actually there is no unearthly reason why they should be.

If a club deserves to be in SL, then they should be proud of the fact and be open to showing the rest of us why....
their youth development, their stadium, their on-field performance and so on.
There may be an issue over financial performance, but publicly quoted companies have to show their accounts, so why not RL clubs?

Also, if there is some "secret" that makes a club stronger, then we should all benefit from it for the good of the game.

The RFL also gets money from central government (our money) so we have a right to know what they do with every penny.

Without transparency, we get cynicism, disillusionment and general all round p***ed-offness.

What have they got to hide that we can't handle??

We need transparency in the bid process to stop the farce that we have seen today.

I thought it was a fair and transparent process? How does that work then if results arnt accessable?

the whole franchise afair is very transparent!

we can now after todays events, and months of debate see straight through it!

as we all suspected, they make the rules, and they do what they want.

When Lewis was asked why Wakefield were in over Halifax his answer was "after viewing the bids it was agreed that Wakefields was better."

Erm... care to elaborate?

about as transperent as a septic tank...

look at the facts and not Wakey's ground

I'd love to look at the facts. Due to the fair and transparent bidding processed used by the RFL I can do so.... oh hang on....

I'm sure last time around I remember that there were summaries of all the successful applicants, with their strengths, weaknesses and things to get right over the 3 year period

Am I remembering that right?

And if I am, then why isn't the same openness being done this time?

IIRC these details were released about 2-3 days after the last licensing decision.

You must be imagining it because i think Halifax met the criteria they were asked to meet so im not sure the RFL will make that mistake again.

The full judgement wont be made public because its private information.

There was no criteria to meet to get a franchise, theres criteria to meet to be judged and best are judged.

They met the Championship criteria needed to be eligible to make a SL application.

They then had to write a business plan to show how they would be sustainable if elevted to SL.

Apparently, an unofficial commentary on that bid, described it as "appalling", ""vague, lacking detail", "very poor". The RFL are pretty ed that Fax messed up, despite being told exactly where there bid needed improvement. Word is "they had an open goal and hit the corner flag".

I'm sure "stuff" will come out to enlighten you in due course.