Cuts the rubbish from the wheat


Bye bye Castleford & Bradford

Short-sighted appeasement of a small number of Championship fans who want automatic P&R, whatever the cost the clubs involved.

Andy, I don't think it's a 'small number' though

Yet again the sport shoots itself in the foot. No doubt we'll look for radical change again in 5 years time just for the sake of being 'innovative'

Any money London are one, everything about the club is oozing that they are preparing for something different.

The other space is between the Calder clubs and KR, no way will Bradford go down, Salford have been the most lucky club club in the world and saved at the eleventh hour.
My money is on KR and London.

The bottom 2 teams next year will be axed. Personally, if they insist on changing the structure I would get rid of 3, and bring in Toulouse.

14 teams was always too many and to be fair the RFL never implimented the Franchise system properly imo too many teams were given places on if's buts and maybe's and then the RFL threw away £££ trying to save face that it's new idea was a failure.
12 Teams is right enough imo with p+r but i'd also say that the play offs should be top 5 or 6 max ,the CC should revert to May and that ALL SL teams run an open age reserve team aswell.
I don't like this 3 sets of 8 teams BS it's another gimmick imo stick to 12 and with a top 5/6 play offs.

That split into 3 sets of 8 would be a joke

Horrible idea for me too

Reducing numbers in SL must mean reducing the playoffs to the most 5 hopefully 4

I've never really understood why the SL chairman get such a big say in how the game is run anyway. Surely most of the clubs will try and serve their own self interests. As far as the chairman are concerned all axing 2 SL teams means more money for the other 12?

I don't particularly mind if the league is 12 or 14 teams, but no less or more than that.
The split into 3 sets of 8 is and is the worst option possible in my opinion. It extends the threat of relegation from 2-3 clubs to around 5-6 therefore encouraging more short-termism at clubs. The last thing RL needs is more short-termist decisions. Plus it doesn't really offer that much hope of promotion for a Championship team with the current respective funding and salary caps.

My choice would be a licensed 14-team SL with a top 6 playoff.
I'd rather we went with a 12 team SL with straight P&R rather than the 3 sets of 8 rubbish.

I think they will go back to top 6.But i hope its just 5.

The problems for me with P&R are the financial chaos that ensues when a team moves up or down a division, and how you seek to make sure the likes of Catalans remain in the top flight.

The financial issues are down to the vast difference in finances required to run a SL team vs a Championship team.

Unless you enable relegated teams to operate on a vastly higher cap than the rest of the league they are sent down to, they will lose almost their entire squad overnight. All the players will have 'opt-out' clauses in the case of relegation, and the club would have to ditch players anyway due to the cap. Then you see existing SL clubs pick like vultures at the 'better' players in their squad, and the dross signs for whichever club replaces them in the top flight.

Alternatively you allow the relegated team a year on a cap way out of sync with the rest of the league they are in, which will most likely cause them to run in cricket scores on a regular basis.

The only solution to me would be to allow Championship teams to operate at a cap very close to SL levels, so the gap isn't so large, but the danger of bankruptcy from failure to get promotion is huge.

The promoted team has the opposite problem - a short period in which to build something like a competitive squad. As the best players from the relegated side would prefer to play for a better team, they generally miss out on them, and end up having to scrape around for players. Basically Widnes last year - every season.

This is now a far bigger problem than it was when we last had P&R because the promoted club - like Widnes found last year - is unable to sign half a dozen reasonable NRL players to fill in the gaps and help make them competitive.

Neither scenario is good - IMO all we'll see is one really cr*p team every year and a couple of familiar names yo-yo between the leagues - and quite possibly bankrupt themselves in the process of trying to stay up/win promotion (see Widnes, Halifax, Leigh, Cas in the past).

The other problem is that unlike football, not all RL clubs are equal. It's always been a nonsense to suggest that the likes of Wigan are somehow similar to Batley, Fev etc. The latter clubs will never, ever generate the interest, spectator supportand therefore cash of the big name clubs. Does anyone seriously think that it would be 'good' for the game for Wigan to be relegated and Batley to be promoted?

Then you have issues like Catalans. The whole point of having them in SL is to protect and grow the game in France and its appeal to Sky. A similar rationale has been behind various attempts to prop up the London side. Make no mistake about London - unless that team is supported centrally it will probably end up relegated and a virtual non-entity in a short time. If the sport believes a presence in London doesn't matter, then fine - but clearly that hasn't been the view to date.

Anyway, I think moving to 12 teams is fiune, but straight P&R is frankly stupid.

So we're effectively going back to what we had (giving that playoff spots are reduced back to 6). We had this before and people complained (because that's all some RL 'fans' do). Again some couldn't just have patience (especially in a tough economic time) to see the current format through......they wait about half a season and complain their isn't enough positive change.

What I've found laughable is how in last 18 months some people have forgotten the flaws with the old structure and called for it to be reintroduced (similar with calls for a reintroduction of Yorkshire v Lancashire match, we tried ten years ago, people moaned and didn't care now suddenly they want it back). Complaints about teams at the bottom getting beaten to easily and by big scorelines......erm that was happening just as much with 12 teams.

People saying that teams hitting trouble during the licensing period is proof it doesn't work, conveniently ignoring the current economy. What is annoying is the same people that have been asking for a change to 12 teams/top 6/ p & R will be the same ones complaining in a few years wanting yet another format change.

Unfortunately some RL fans have zero patience!

The bigger problem is not the structure or the number of teams its the p*ss poor effort by the RFL to sell the game meaning there is a chronic lack of money in the game. whilst this continues the sport will carry on being run by the chairmen changing to the structure that keeps the most happy at that time.

A closed off super league with either 12/14 teams is imo the best option for the game, however its impossible to justify this to all the clubs when the RFL are reducing the centrally distributed funds because it can't get sponsors & just bows down to accepting peanuts from sky. The currently licensing system should have seen a more stable league with improvements across the board i.e. playing standards, number of fans, increase in money, etc in both super league & the championships.
what has actually happened is
The standard of games in super league has dropped off at the bottom of the league, I'd say 4/5 championship teams have a very good chance of beating Salford & London and competing with the likes of cas & widnes despite having a salary cap of just 1/6th, before the licensing system it was 1/2 teams had a chance of beating the bottom 1/2 teams in super league despite the salary caps actually been closer to each other at the time. (the lack of skill in monday's sky game was fairly painful to watch and this is two teams who have a good chance of making the play offs)
The number of fans in super league has possibly increased but the number in the championship has dropped off (massively in some cases)
The sponsor situation has been well played out in the press.
Some clubs still carry on spending more money than they have.
The number of community coaches has dropped massively.
and the list continues

so whilst I don't think changing the structure again is a good thing for the sport, not changing it could lead to much bigger problems; the top 8/10 superleague clubs thinking bugger this, supporting the lower superleague teams its clearly not working lets start our own league/sport. Championship clubs thinking bugger this we're getting less support/money from the rfl than before, our fans are getting feed up we can't get in the top leagues so lets start or our league/sport and/or lets just give up.