{"id":402529,"date":"2026-01-09T18:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T18:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/402529\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T18:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T18:51:07","slug":"featherstone-rovers-troubled-rugby-league-club-denied-rfl-membership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/402529\/","title":{"rendered":"Featherstone Rovers: Troubled rugby league club denied RFL membership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Financially-troubled rugby league club Featherstone Rovers will not compete in the second-tier Championship in 2026 after the Rugby Football League (RFL) denied them membership.<\/p>\n

The club went into administration in December and one takeover bid submitted did not meet the required criteria set by the RFL.<\/p>\n

The West Yorkshire club faced a winding-up petition over debts and previously said<\/a> it had no choice but to enter administration as it would be “unable to trade its way out of the present situation due to the level of debt it currently has”.<\/p>\n

Rovers had been set to begin their 2026 campaign with a Championship fixture away at Batley Bulldogs on 18 January as well as kicking off their Challenge Cup campaign a week later.<\/p>\n

Their fixtures will now be settled via a win percentage system as used during the Covid pandemic, the RFL said in a statement., external<\/a><\/p>\n

“The RFL will continue to work with the administrator and remains committed to supporting a sustainable return of professional rugby league in the town of Featherstone moving forward,” the statement continued.<\/p>\n

“The RFL is acutely aware of the financial impact to member clubs of losing a home fixture. Accordingly, it will ensure that some level of compensation is made available to all clubs suffering the loss of a home fixture.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Financially-troubled rugby league club Featherstone Rovers will not compete in the second-tier Championship in 2026 after the Rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-402529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}