Rugby League: Charity to stop on Kiwi arrival
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Your support makes all the difference.THE Charity Shield, once regarded as the game's promotional vehicle in new areas, is the casualty of a fixture reshuffle for the start of next season designed to clear the decks for the touring New Zealanders.
The county cup competitions, themselves under threat of abolition earlier this season, are to begin on 15 August with the second round the following week and the championship programme beginning on 29 August.
The Lancashire and Yorkshire cup finals will be played on 18 September, well before the arrival of the Kiwis, but the price to be paid is that there will be no room in the schedule for the Charity Shield, which for the last eight years has been played as a curtain-raiser to the season.
The first four were contested on the Isle of Man, followed by Swansea, Anfield and, for the last two years, Gateshead. The league is contracted to stage two more major games at the Gateshead international stadium, but they will now be other representative matches rather than Charity Shields.
In the meantime, scrapping the fixture, even if only for one season, is further proof that spreading the game to new areas now ranks about 99th in the sport's top 100 priorities.
A new Great Britain manager, to succeed Maurice Lindsay, now the game's chief executive, is likely to be named today. Three candidates have been interviewed for the post.
The League's board of directors has ruled that no further action should be taken against the Salford forward, Paul Forber, over the tackle that left Wakefield's Gary Price with a cracked cheekbone last Sunday. Wakefield submitted a video of the incident, but the board decided that the sin- binning Forber received at the time was sufficient punishment.
Gary Sanderson and Paul Cullen, both injured in the Challenge Cup defeat by Castleford last Saturday, are fit to play for Warrington against St Helen's tonight. Saints can restore their six-point lead over Wigan with a victory.
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