IMG Grading timetable explained as rugby league clubs prepare to find out scores next month

Aaron Bower 12 Sep 2024 11:20 AM

The most significant six weeks rugby league has known for quite some time is now officially underway: but it will be a while yet before clubs can reveal their 2025 IMG gradings to the world.

September marks the period when all clubs in Super League, Championship and League 1 begin to submit their data to IMG and the Rugby Football League. Each division has its own separate deadline; essentially, the Monday after the conclusion of their regular season.

That will entail clubs submitting everything from finance to digital and community for IMG to consider – but there is still a long way to go before any club in any division is aware of their official grading.

The RFL are engaging in an informal process to avoid a repeat of the situation with Castleford last season, when there was an error in their submission which wasn’t spotted until it was too late, leading to them being awarded a lower grading score than they should have.

But this process, Love Rugby League has been told, is purely advisory – and no scores of any kind are being shared yet. That appears to be where the confusion over scores being revealed this week has stemmed from: but no side will know an official score yet.

That is because, simply put, scores cannot be finalised while there are still rugby league games ongoing that could decide what a team ends up on.

As of the time of writing, every single side except the four who missed out on the League 1 play-offs do not know where they will finish – with IMG’s performance aspect of the gradings determined by how far a club gets in the play-offs, as opposed to their actual league finish.

So there are still plenty of moving parts, meaning it is essentially impossible for any club to know their official score yet.

After the RFL have consulted with clubs, the data still needs to be submitted for an external audit. The RFL and IMG held a tender process this year to find a third-party quality assurance partner to help with that audit, meaning everything is completely independent. That process has not yet started.

Clubs will then only be notified of their score when the final competitive match of the season – the Championship Grand Final – has taken place. It is expected that over the weekend of 19 and 20 October, they will know where they sit: but not anyone else.

Two days after that, clubs are given the information of every other team’s score and where that puts them in the rankings before, the following day – Wednesday 23 October – all scores are made public.

So while we are getting close to finding out exactly what clubs have scored, there is still some work to be done yet.

Timetable for 2025 IMG Gradings Process

Monday 2 September: Deadline for data submission for League 1 clubs
Monday 23 September: Deadline for data submission for Super League clubs
Monday 30 September: Deadline for data submission for Championship clubs
October 1-18: Tender process with assurance partner to ratify all data and scores
Weekend of 19-20 October: Clubs informed of their official score for the first time
Tuesday 22 October: Clubs informed of all other clubs’ scores for the first time
Wednesday 23 October: IMG gradings for 2025 made official for the first time

Championship IMG

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