We have had a solid season in the Championship, with the win at York consolidating our place in the play-off places with nine games to go.
The club has made no secret of its ambition, shown by our continued progress on and off the pitch, and we believe that we can become Cumbria’s representative in Super League.
For that to happen, we are offering an open invitation to any partners who want to get involved on our journey.
At present, our current facilities do not meet the minimum standard criteria for promotion to Super League. The fact that we are engaged in these sorts of discussions with the RFL signifies the progress we are making.
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We have a number of areas where we fall short, with the main issues being less than 2000 seats in the ground, with us currently only having around 900 in the main grandstand, our floodlights not being at the required lux levels, lack of suitably sized TV gantry, lack of media facilities, and we need to add in the lack of stress tested crush barriers that severely restricts our capacity
We can ask for dispensation from the RFL but we must need a plan in place to rectify all the shortfalls. We need to be honest with our supporters and concede that we do not have the finances in place to rectify these shortcomings overnight. It has been a massive financial challenge this season to improve our squad fit for challenging for a play-off spot, increasing our commitments in the community, introducing additional ladies and LD teams and increasing our staffing levels so that we can run and govern the club to the required standards mandated by the RFL.
Equally we accept that winning the play-offs is probably out of our reach. Based on current positions we would have to win in consecutive weeks away at York, Leigh and Featherstone. Not impossible, but given the respective squad strengths, pretty close.
The mere fact that Super League is a topic for discussion, together with a possible league restructure on the horizon, means we must now start to seriously consider improvements to our facilities, be that at Craven Park or elsewhere.
It is unlikely that we will gain promotion this season but the boardroom is ambitious. We shouldn’t be shy in saying that we want to be Cumbria’s representative in Super League, just as our Ladies currently are. We want to make it clear to the rugby league world that we are serious in our ambition to reach and maintain a formidable team in Super League.
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It would be cruel if the lack of investment in our facilities over a period of decades was to halt our progress.
We intend to put plans in place and we would like to offer an open invite to partners who would like to support our progressive club. The journey we are on is exciting, the progress visible and this could be the perfect vehicle for the right investor to gain real-life satisfaction and quicken the process.
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