Brian Mac + Fev

Quote: The Ghost of '99 "Yeah let's kill off a bunch of clubs because, unlike us, they don't benefit from being in the right place. That's what sport's all about Or…we realise there’s only so much money to go around and that the game is now in a fully professional era.

If we realise that, is it reasonable to expect there to be 30+ fully professional clubs in RL? If not then aren’t we expecting a massive leap for clubs to go from semi-pro to fully pro in the space of 3/4 months?

Also why then cut off at just the 3 leagues we have now?

For me the sport cannot continue with the massive instability P&R causes. It significantly harms the growth of most clubs in the league in my opinion as they have to focus on incredibly short term decisions at the cost of almost any long term strategic growth.

Do we continue with trying to filter down the small amount of money we have? Or try and concentrate that to improve the top end of the sport?

It seems as if most sports are looking toward a model with increased certainty. Union have ended P&R, football are clearly looking for increased certainty with the ESL model and many other sports already have such systems.

I’d love to be in a position like English football whereby there’s so many healthy clubs that it doesn’t matter if a few are destabilised by P&R as I’d agree from a purely sporting point of view it’s the better system. But I don’t think we’re anywhere near that. We can barely sustain 12 teams in SL. For me we have to move to a licensed system if we’re to survive as a professional sport in the era we’re moving into.

I also understand that if I were a fan of a club in the other divisions I might have a different point of view. But I can only go with what it looks like to me as I am, and I just cannot see a future as anything other than a feeder club for many of the current clubs in a vibrant, nationally recognised, professional sport in the 21st century.