Hi Phantom. Good to see you back again. Yes, winning promotion and then recruiting a side good enough to stay up is that eternal conundrum for all championship sides.
How to do it? Well it looks like Leigh have finally cracked it this season but has it provided a necessary blueprint for other Championship sides such as Fev?
As you have alluded, it has obviously been based on a much derided (sometimes quite rightly - even on this forum) lunatic fan of an owner who has the financial wherewithal to fund a Super League quality squad whilst in the Championship and then back it even further by recruiting Super League standard players mid Championship season for the forthcoming season all on the basis that the club would be a division higher. All of this with the knowledge that Leigh were just 80 minutes away from just one defeat in the play-offs that would have seen the plan and the dream die a complete death. What a gamble! A gamble indeed but one that seems to have come off - at last
Without a similar monied owner or owners who are prepared to splash the cash and gamble this season on success and to be planning and recruiting the right level of player now for next season, for it being a Super League season, then what are Fev to do? It is a tricky one.
Assuming for one moment Fev get promoted then leaving recruitment late will be fatal. I don't know how many of the current squad you think are good enough to step-up for a SL season but I am guessing you may well consider that quite a few of the current first team squad will need to be replaced with upgrades.
Fev certainly do not want to be gambling at the end of year having won promotion on NRL flotsam or voided contract Wakey players (they are a desperately poor quality bunch - there is not much meat on the bones there).
There is also the issue for you of going full time. Surely Fev cannot hope to survive in SL with a part-time squad. On this point perhaps you can shed some light. Last season there was much sympathy in the rugby press, albeit a predominantly Yorkshire based rugby press, that played to a narrative that it was plucky little part-time Fev who were taking it to the full time juggernaut funded by Derek's millions. This did not sit well with some of us here who suspected that a good part of Fev's team last year were to all intents and purposes full time professionals with the remainder part-time - in effect a hybrid squad.
I am guessing that something similar is happening this year but again, stepping up to a full time squad surely cannot wait for the pre-season to next season.
It's not easy, Leigh have failed miserably and worn the tee shirt - several times. The odds are just stacked against the newly promoted team staying up and the majority of SL team owners give the distinct impression that they just do not care a jot about changing the 'club' rules - so long as the team threatened to go down is not their team.
From your post you indicate that the money is just not there at Fev to recruit SL quality players now but surely at some point some money will need to be found and the cheque book is going to have to come out.
Maybe you can unearth another Jackson Hastings or a Brodie Croft, a star player in a key position who can just add gold dust to lesser standard players and where that star player just ignites the team to be better than the sum of its parts and Fev just have a brilliant season on the back of it and stay up.
Maybe, just maybe....... but I do not envy you the poison chalice that is otherwise the prize for promotion. It certainly will not be easy but as a fan is it not better to live the dream with the team struggling in SL than having (yet) another year running away with the Championship.
