Recently we saw Leeds Rhinos, Wigan Warriors, St Helens, Catalans Dragons, Warrington Wolves, Hull KR and Hull FC given Grade A scores and these clubs had little to complain about.
But the 17 Grade B clubs largely did. One of those were the Castleford Tigers who appealed their score due to what they feel is an error in their score.
However, they are not alone in their complaints despite the fact they are the only club to formally appeal their score.
Teams like Barrow Raiders, London Broncos and others feel that they have been given an unfair score in terms of catchment due to the councils and boroughs they have been seen to represent.
London for instance are only receiving a score for Wimbledon even though they have plenty of fans elsewhere in London and down south.
Barrow meanwhile scored for the council that they feel was incorrect.
There has been a lot of negativity around the IMG scored but IMG Vice-President Matt Dwyer underlined the focus of Grade A clubs and getting more clubs to that standard:
“The purpose of grading was to create as many category A clubs as possible, and that should be where the focus is.
“What we’re looking here is for long-term growth towards being Category A clubs. So if London has aspirations to be a long-term Super League club with Category A status, then they have to improve across all the different metrics that are integrated, and that’s what they should be working towards.
“I would suggest that in 2024, they would be wanting to perform as well as they possibly can to move along that path and that journey to being a Category A club. And that’s what we’re aiming for. This is not about B6, B7, B8, who’s going to be a different path. It’s about everyone trying to move towards that category A level.
“We’ve seen that move already because I think I indicated to you when we did a first pass of this we probably thought there was four or five category A clubs and we’ve ended up with seven. That shows that we are moving in that right direction we just need everybody else to come with us.”
Some clubs would feel that had they been given a different score for catchment they would be closer to Grade A status.
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