{"id":686969,"date":"2026-01-10T15:14:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T15:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686969\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T15:14:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T15:14:17","slug":"featherstone-rovers-troubled-rugby-league-club-denied-rfl-membership-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686969\/","title":{"rendered":"Featherstone Rovers: Troubled rugby league club denied RFL membership"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Financially-troubled rugby league club Featherstone Rovers will not compete in the second-tier Championship in 2026 after the Rugby Football League (RFL) denied them membership.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The club went into administration in December and one takeover bid submitted did not meet the required criteria set by the RFL.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The West Yorkshire club faced a winding-up petition over debts and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/ce8n6lmm2ngo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">previously said<\/a> it had no choice but to enter administration as it would be &#8220;unable to trade its way out of the present situation due to the level of debt it currently has&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rovers had been set to begin their 2026 campaign with a Championship fixture away at Batley Bulldogs on 18 January as well as kicking off their Challenge Cup campaign a week later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Their fixtures will now be settled via a win percentage system as used during the Covid pandemic, the RFL <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rugby-league.com\/article\/64464\/rfl-statement-%E2%80%93-featherstone-rovers-rlfc\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said in a statement., external<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The RFL will continue to work with the administrator and remains committed to supporting a sustainable return of professional rugby league in the town of Featherstone moving forward,&#8221; the statement continued.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The RFL is acutely aware of the financial impact to member clubs of losing a home fixture. Accordingly, it will ensure that some level of compensation is made available to all clubs suffering the loss of a home fixture.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Financially-troubled rugby league club Featherstone Rovers will not compete in the second-tier Championship in 2026 after the Rugby&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-686969","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"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115871460177708657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}