Rugby League: Basement clubs face expulsion

THE fight for survival will go on, even if three professional clubs are effectively voted out of existence by their peers today, writes Dave Hadfield.

A special meeting of the Rugby League's 35 member clubs in Leeds is poised to vote for a return to two divisions of 16 clubs each, with the bottom three teams in this season's Third Division dropping out of the league.

Even if the package, which also includes scrapping the county cups, wins the expected three- fifths support, the matter is unlikely to stop there.

Chorley and Highfield, who occupy two of the last three places in the table, have joined forces to fight the expulsions.

'Our legal advice is that the League would be in breach of its own rules and of natural justice,' Lindsay Hoyle, the Chorley chairman, said. 'We have lawyers who have already offered to fight the case for us.'

It remains to be seen whether Nottingham, the bottom club, or Blackpool, just above Chorley on eight points, will fight as hard.

Perhaps the most intriguing case is that of Barrow, one of the leading names of the past but with only eight points this season. Despite that apparently precarious position, their two remaining games, against Blackpool and Highfield, may give Barrow the confidence to vote to open the trapdoor.

Hoyle predicts 'a massive embarrassment. Rugby league is going to be the laughing stock of British sport.' Even the League's spokesman, David Howes, calls the legalities of an expulsion vote 'a grey area'.

The Rugby League Supporters' Association has written to every club urging them to vote against the plan, but one of its prime movers, Steven Ball, the chairman of Batley and a member of the League's board of directors, is confident that it will go through.