{"id":219309,"date":"2025-10-23T03:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T03:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/219309\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T03:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T03:00:10","slug":"senior-figure-at-championship-club-says-super-league-new-boys-not-ready-for-top-flight-as-recruitment-update-given","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/219309\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior figure at Championship club says Super League new boys ‘not ready’ for top flight as recruitment update given"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Following the announcement that revealed which teams would be promoted into Super League next year, some clubs were full of delight, whilst some were met with disappointment.<\/p>\n

Bradford Bulls<\/a> were the first new team confirmed to be in the top flight, after finishing 10th in the IMG rankings<\/a>. It wouldn\u2019t be until the following day that the 14-team league was confirmed, as York Knights and Toulouse Olympique made up the competition, meaning that there were four other Championship teams that applied who were left waiting at least another year.<\/p>\n

One of those teams to miss out on a place in the top flight was Oldham, who\u2019s meteoric rise in the last couple of years has seen them go from League One winners to the Championship playoff places in just two seasons, and they aren\u2019t stopping there.<\/p>\n

Their climb up the English divisions has been incredible, however a back-to-back promotion proved just too much for them, with both timing and the strength of other applicants playing a factor.<\/p>\n

Despite their Super League rejection, both Chairman Bill Quinn and Managing Director, Mike Ford, have said they remain positive, and are proud of the progress they have made during their time at the club.<\/p>\n

As part of a wider interview<\/a> for the club\u2019s social media channels, the pair sat down to discuss last week\u2019s proceedings, with Quinn believing that whilst it was the correct choice of teams to go up, the rapid nature of the decision\u00a0 means the trio will be on the back foot.<\/p>\n

When asked for his feelings on the decision, he said: \u201cYou have that slight disappointment because you\u2019re in it to win it. You\u2019re in it to be in it and you want to progress. So from my point of view, you get that slight bit of disappointment, but at the same time, I do think personally that the three teams that have gone up are the right teams to go up and that was pleasing, and I wish them all the best for next season.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I\u2019ve always said, none of us were ready. I don\u2019t believe they [Toulouse, York and Bradford] are ready. We weren\u2019t ready, but obviously we would have jumped at it and I\u2019m sure they\u2019re going to jump at it as well. For me, there\u2019s a slight bit of comfort in the fact and knowledge that we will now progress this season. We will go forward as we always have done. It will give us another year to put plans in place and we\u2019ll be in a better place and better standing for what we need to do to go up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ford, who agreed with his colleague over preparation and timings, revealed what the process for the two extra teams to be added looked like, and said just how close Oldham were to securing top flight status.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cBasically, they had five rounds, and I suspect clubs got chopped along the way. We were in the last round, so my understanding is that we were with Toulouse and York and that\u2019s phenomenal in the short space of time that we\u2019ve been working together on this project at Oldham to be in that position.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think it shows the ambition of the club, and the smartness of the club\u2026 and what we\u2019re doing on the rugby side of things. To be able to be in that position and get to the last round after two and a half years, I think it\u2019s phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding on to Quinn\u2019s point, he said: \u201cI\u2019m not too sure we were ready. Bill\u2019s already said that the other teams are not ready, but had we have got that slot then we would be in chaos right now trying to sort things out. We would have done it and it would have been exciting, but we\u2019ll just keep building slowly, taking our time and possibly look to go full time next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Championship club give recruitment update after prior \u201cpause\u201d.<\/p>\n

Oldham revealed last month that they had \u201cpaused\u201d their recruitment<\/a>, as they waited to see which division they would be competing in next year.<\/p>\n

Now that has been revealed, and they can start to build ahead of the upcoming season, with announcements set to be revealed as early as this week.<\/p>\n

Ford has said what the current state of affairs are in terms of incomings and outgoings, and confirmed some players will leave the club to take up opportunities in Super League.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe had a list of players, but some of those dropped away on Friday because they had Super League offers. They wanted to stay with Oldham, but they obviously wanted to play in Super League as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got other options that we\u2019ll be announcing soon \u2013 hopefully a couple this week if we can get the timings right. Before they start back up on the 10th November, we\u2019re going to look to have about 25-26 players in or squad that we can announce. We\u2019ll have our media day again, where we announce our squad and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oldham brought in former Salford Red Devils duo Ryan Brierley and Jack Ormondroyd at the back-end of the last campaign, and those two signed a two-and-a-half year deal at the time, keeping them at the club until the end of 2027.<\/p>\n

Serious About Rugby League has launched a brand new podcast which can be watched in full on our YouTube channel here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the announcement that revealed which teams would be promoted into Super League next year, some clubs were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-219309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}