Wakefield Wildcats survive Super League licence cull

Halifax have not been awarded a licence to compete in Super League in 2012-14, while Crusaders have withdrawn their licence application.

The Rugby Football League announced this morning which 13 clubs would join Widnes in the elite competition for the next licensing period.

And Crusaders’ decision to withdraw their application means Wakefield, who had been widely expected to miss out on a licence, have been awarded one.

The Vikings were informed four months ago they would be elevated from the Championship, leaving the current 14 Super League teams and Halifax to contest the remaining spots.

Wakefield chief executive James Elston hailed Andrew Glover as the club’s saviour after the Wildcats secured a dramatic Super League reprieve this morning.

Such an outcome had appeared unlikely for the majority of the season, with Wakefield close to going out of business in February after two winding-up orders, until Glover, who owns a local double glazing firm, saved them at the 11th hour.

Since then, they have strived to convince the RFL that they were worthy of staying in Super League, pledging to upgrade their current Rapid Solicitors Stadium, before eventually moving to a new, purpose-built ground.

But even as the club’s staff and players huddled around a television set to hear the verdict, the writing still appeared to be on the wall for the 138-year-old club.

“When something like that happens, to sit and watch your future decided live, it’s an unbelievable feeling,” Elston said after hearing the news.

“When you have people whose families, lives and futures are at stake. When they read out Castleford and Harlequins, we were trying to work out who it could possibly be to miss out. But we’ve said all long that we deserved it.

“Make no bones about it, on a Thursday evening in February, there was possibly nobody to come in. There was a very dim future for this club and it could have been the Championship for us then.

“But you put your money where you mouth is and someone had to. Someone in Wakefield had to and without Andrew we don’t know where we would have been.”

Elston was joined at a media conference by Glover, who admitted the pair had drunk some champagne to toast the news, while coach John Kear and a number of club staff also joined in the celebrations.

“We’d been asking for a tip off all week, but the RFL told us to watch it at the same time as everybody else,” Glover said.

“We should publicly thank all the staff, the team, the fans, It just shows that it’s been worth all the work and effort.”

Halifax chairman Michael Steele questioned the RFL’s decision to keep faith with Wakefield at his club’s expense

“Wakefield’s strong point, as they have been pushing it lately, is their history,” he said. “Well, we at least equal that.

“We have a ground, they don’t have a ground. We haven’t been bankrupt, they have been bankrupt. It seems a no-brainer as far as I am concerned that if it is between Halifax and Wakefield, then Halifax are in and Wakefield should not be in.

“They have broken the terms of their existing licence so why give them another one? I would ask Richard Lewis ‘what is the point of having rules if you don’t apply them?’.”

Steele, who would not be drawn on any possible appeal, added: “There may be some method in their madness but at the moment we struggle to see what it might be.”

For the full report and reaction, read Wednesday’s Yorkshire Post.