{"id":75376,"date":"2025-08-18T12:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T12:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/75376\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T12:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T12:06:09","slug":"james-graham-blasts-state-of-competition-amid-expansion-and-salford-red-devils-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/75376\/","title":{"rendered":"James Graham blasts state of competition amid expansion and Salford Red Devils crisis"},"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

Super League and St Helens legend James Graham has ripped into the current state of the competition, and how the ongoing situation at Salford Red Devils is \u201cembarrassing to the game\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two-time Grand Final winner took to his podcast, The Bye Round<\/a>, to make his feelings clear on the competition he played over 200 games in.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Graham blasted the current problems at Salford, and how they have been allowed to get into such a mess.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation at Salford is absolutely disgusting at the moment,\u201d he said. \u201cThe way their fans have been treated, their players have been treated is just not on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just embarrassing to the game over there that this has been allowed to happen. There are fingers to point at the club management of Salford and there\u2019s fingers to point at the game administration that they\u2019ve enabled this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

St Helens legend believes Super League is \u201cgoverned by self-interest\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve just got no idea where Super League go from here,\u201d said the 39-year-old. \u201cThere is a conflict of sporting culture of promotion and relegation, there\u2019s obviously a lot of history there with teams that are no longer in the top flight that want access to at least be able to strive for top flight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHere in the NRL that doesn\u2019t happen. In America, it doesn\u2019t happen. They are franchise-based models.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Graham believes that Super League should keep the NRL model, and stop giving too much control to the clubs that are only out for themselves and not the good of the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy observations in Super League, the plans just continue to change and revert back to the old. Unfortunately, I feel there\u2019s a lot of government by self-interest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of growth of the game and what the Catalans Dragons bring to the competition, they should be in. But, there\u2019s a lot of club owners that don\u2019t want them in because they don\u2019t bring any fans. They\u2019d prefer a York or a Bradford that may bring 1,000-2,000 fans as opposed to Catalans that bring 50, and it\u2019s like \u2018really?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ex-England international, and his co-host Charlie White, both seemed confident that the two new Super League teams would be Bradford Bulls and York Knights, with White questioning how and why those teams seem to have been chosen and why so late on.<\/p>\n

White argued: \u201cIt\u2019s like playing fantasy sports and you\u2019re mate calls you up and says \u2018we\u2019re adding two more guys to the comp\u2019. It\u2019s like they [Super League clubs] didn\u2019t even know they were doing that [voting on expansion].<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact it\u2019s Bradford and York, there\u2019s a reason that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham replied: \u201cToulouse, in terms of what they bring to that comp, they\u2019re a full time team at the moment. It\u2019s about establishing a roster. It\u2019s like \u2018are you ready for Super League?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSean Long at Oldham, he\u2019s going \u2018yeah, I think we can\u2019, Toulouse will be the same, Bradford, York, but we\u2019re in mid-August and they\u2019ve not made a call.\u201d<\/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":"Super League and St Helens legend James Graham has ripped into the current state of the competition, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-75376","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\/75376","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=75376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}