Chairman Raaz relief at RFL Whitehaven 2010 decision

Whitehaven suffered relegation to Championship One in 2010

Whitehaven 2010 chairman Dick Raaz has spoken of his relief after the Rugby Football League ratified the new club's entry to Championship One for 2011.

Raaz's consortium were able to buy the assets belonging to the former Haven club and the RFL's decision to allow entry is a step towards next season.

"The stuff that allows us to play rugby is done," Raaz told BBC Radio Cumbria.

"The Rugby Football League has agreed to admit the new club to membership which is very important."

Raaz added: "All of those things have been consuming us for weeks now, but we're on our way, we've got a lot to do."

"We need to hire players, staff and coaches, all those things we've been planning to do but couldn't until we had the new club formulated.

"We are behind, the fixture list has to be finalised, I'm happy it didn't drag on any longer than this."

The old Whitehaven club was carrying a considerable amount of debt, which has now been effectively shed by the new arrangement.

"The administrators, they have to assemble the assets, some of which were included in the sale to the new club, and there are unpaid debtors to the old club which they will have to collect," Raaz continued.

"There's about £300,000 of debt, which may not sound like a lot in a corporate world but it's a big deal to a professional club like ours.

"Dealing with the challenge of competing in Championship One plus trying to service all of that debt was killing us so we needed to get out of that and carry on with the club."

Haven 2010 will begin the new campaign in Championship One with an automatic nine-point penalty for entering administration.