What is the point?

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I will start this blog with a simple question that has a not so simple answer. What is the point?

After just two years, Rugby League in this country has decided to effectively junk the IMG-endorsed idea of a grading system to make up Super League and simply hand pick the top flight teams.

Leave the semantics aside and ignore the rhetoric suggesting a grading system remains. It doesn't. 

Arguably, hand picking the teams was the point of the ‘IMG’ system all along. We are now just being more overt about it.

And it is clear this was long planned. Gary Hetherington didn't just take a senior role at London by chance. Paul Vaughan has not signed for York thinking they are going to be a Championship team. Bradford have friends in very high places.

So what was the point in sides contorting themselves and expending time and effort to fit to the ‘IMG’ criteria? There was none.

Rugby League’s obsession with change prompts lots of similar questions.

What is the point in investing in an academy when we increase the overseas quota?

What is the point of a Championship side carefully curating a squad when others over-rely on dual registration and short term loans and the anti-tampering deadline means your players can be pinched from under your nose?

What is the point in winning matches and a league and then you hit a glass ceiling? Or no matter how poor you are, you are allowed to continue burying your nose in the trough without consequence?

What is the point of the regular season when all of that work can be cast aside due to one poor performance at an inopportune moment?

What is the point of trying when all your efforts can be reduced to zero by the stroke of a pen?

What is the point when a cabal of men control the sport and meritocracy is a mere fallacy?

What is the point in spending money on a club when it is a near inevitability that you will make a financial loss?

What is the point of trying to grow a sport which has long since been ruled by self-interest?

What is the point of standing up to groupthink when by doing so you can simply be kicked out of the competition, have your central funding reduced or, in Catalans’ case, be given an ultimatum of pay for everyone else’s travel costs or else?

What is the point of taking responsibility when nobody else will?

What is the point of a governing body which has no power and is controlled by Super League clubs?

What is the point of doing the right thing when those who are proven to be incompetent rise through the ranks at the RFL and sport more widely?

What is the point in highlighting conflicts of interest within the sport that stymie rational decision making?

Sometimes I ask, what is the point of Rugby League? When the sport formed, it was so that players could be paid for taking time off work when sustaining injuries playing our sport.

In a more simplified manner, it was looking out for everyone, not just yourself. In 2025, we have performed a volte face.

You can but wonder what those pioneers of 1895 would think of what they saw today.

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