Personally think we should still reduce the number of teams, too many teams with too few quality players. This weeks sky games sum it up wakey v widnes and Salford v castleford.

It's not often I agree with your sentiments but I'm with you on this one, although I don't think the game is quite on it's Harris, not yet at least.

Oh and bring back P&R as well - it adds an extra dimension to the sport.

I think the plan to reduce teams is short-termist. Not enough good players to fill this many teams? Why not reduce the number of teams?

It's a lot easier than oimproving the number and standard of players we bring through. There are no ready answers to that and it needs work. I suspect reducing the number of places they could get a professional contract somewhere down the line won't help.

I'd like to see promotion and relegation again. For me the first step to achieving that is growing the sport (particularly commercially, but also in the development of players) to a point where there isn't such a gulf between the Championship and Super League, so that a team promoted in September might stand a chance of being competitive with at least the bottom half of the table the following spring.

This will no doubt meet with the "how do you do that then?" response. Short answer is; I don't know. It will take time, ingenuity and effort. Shrinking the game isn't all that ingenious, and seems unlikely (to me) to raise standards in the longer term. We still wouldn't actually have more quality players. There's no reason to think that net numbers through the turnstiles would increase (the opposite seems more intuitive). You'd concentrate the available talent so that, in the short term at least, the on-field product would improve marginally. But the underlying problems would remain unaddressed.

It seems like a panic measure to me.

I don't see how reducing the number of SL teams will attract more money into the game. I'm no more or less likely to go to games whether there are 10 or 14 teams in SL. Would sponsors suddenly get on board? I doubt it? Why should they?

A 10 team SL means fewer games which means less revenue, unless the Sky money is to be shared between fewer clubs and they get a bigger share. If that happens it just shows what a pickle we're in financially. It's a short termist measure that doesn't address the real issue - a lack of money in the game.

If you think about it though, how will reducing the teams create more opportunites for young British players? I have my doubts that 14 full time SL clubs are sustainable long term, but frankly the problem isn't with structure of the league or the competency of the RFL (although they could be doing a lot better), the fact is most of the clubs aren't run well enough, and until this changes RL in this country will never reach its potential.

You do realize that your post contradicts it's self in areas?

If you cut the number of teams at top level, you push down squad players to below that level, which may actually improve those levels, but more importantly gives those players simply not getting game time at top level the opportunity go have another go by proving themselves elsewhere. Thus helping to improve the standards, rather than reducting it.

When we had Promotion and Relegation before it did the exact oppossite of developing players, as clubs were scared to give opportunities for fear of the consequences. I heard a good point on the radio the other day, which was for promotion and relegation every other year, rather than each year. That way rather than have yo you clubs, the club getting promoted as the opportunity to stabilize it's self for a season in the top flight first, then a season to see what it can do.

Until we have a large pool of standard players, then the only way to improve the game is to cut the number of teams in the top flight. Perhaps 10 is not the right figure, as Peacock mentioned. But it certainly needs to come down from 14.

I honestly think that come 2015 there will be 13 teams in the top flight, with Cas and London down and Halifax promoted (unless they go for mergers). There would be a bye each week for one team, and the magic weekend would be played with Catalans having their bye that weekend.

You have pointed out no contradictions, so I'll leave that alone until you point them out.

On your first point, reducing teams might have that effect. But there are major issues with it. SOme of the players may well decide that it isn't worth them pursuing a career at that level, they will earn more doing something else and play as amateurs. Also, many of the lower level clubs are not full time. That can only hinder the development of those players.

I said that the current system (as for the old one) couldn't support promotion and relegation. It works well in very few sports, and that's because you need a strong second tier. At this point I don't think we're in a good enough position to implement it. Either every year or every other year. You are correct, it didn't work before, and it won't work now.

"Until we have a large pool of players" - cutting team numbers (and probably thus full time squad places) doesn't do anything to ensure that such a pool ever exists.

The game seems to have everything a little -about-face at the moment. We seem to have a situation where people think that if we only had P+R, or if we only had franchising, or if we only had a 5 team play-off, or a new type of play-off, or we got rid of club-call, or we got a new CEO, that the game would be fine and all these problems will be solved. They wont, the game has some hard-work to do. Franchising is supposed to give clubs the time and space to address those issues and do that hard work. But if they don’t do it, if they don’t address those problems, then we will struggle. It doesn’t matter if we have P+R, franchising, or something amazing that we cant even imagine at the moment, none if it will matter unless we get down to the hard work of marketing the game better, bringing through more, better players, selling the game better, and using every tool we have to benefit the game as much as we can.

We need to look at the youth development systems in place and make sure that we are taking advantage of every opportunity as a game. Is this the best system for the game? People argue about the lack of U20’s and whatever but from start to finish from 5 to 19 are we using the most efficient system which works not just for some of the clubs, but for all of them, and all the players.

Can we do something as a game to improve the bottom line? Would a different off-field structure help improve this. For instance are we benefitting as well we could from Economies of Scale, would doing a deal with one website provider to provide all 14 websites mean we could pay less per club? Would we be better trying to get a better deal from one kit manufacturer? Can we work together better at marketing the games? Can we make sure this is fair and not just a subsidy for failing clubs?

Are these the 14 clubs we should have in the top flight?

How do we get more exposure? How do we expand the game?

These are the issues the game faces, The complaints about how many teams we have in the league and what Play-off system we use and the image of the game etc, etc, are all symptoms, the cause is failing to answer the above questions. We need to address the cause not the symptoms.

Even if the 10 sides have stronger teams where does the extra money come from to keep the best players in SL and stop them going to the NRL or Union?

I doubt that sharing the TV money from 4 clubs cut adrift from SL1 would go very far. Even if it did should it all go into player's wallets?

Smokey TA is on the right lines. Tinkering around the edges won't change anything, the game must be smarter about generating an income and use that income to make itself stronger and more sustainable.

If I might respond point by point:

Yup.

But Leeds Tykes are themselves a failed merger of two historic clubs are they not? Whether Headingley and Roundhay would have been sustainable in the professional era or not I don't know (I suspect they would, but not at the top level) the merger alienated fans of both (and I speak as somebody who used to go to Headingley fairly often in my youth), and resulted in a combined entity which has no heritage and means very little to anyone.

I can't see why merging it again with two more clubs would result in an entity with any more identity to command passion or loyalty from a fan base that would likely either go back to the grass roots level or just watch something else on TV.

Where do you go next when this merger doesn't work? Combine with Nottingham, Newcastle, Sale and Orrell to form "Northern Counties RUFC" to surely draw massive crowds from the whole of northern England?

Leeds Tykes/Carnegie/Whatever don't suffer from a small catchment area, they suffer from nobody in that catchment area (or at least not enough people) actually giving a c**p about them. I can't think of a single reason why the proposed 'Yorkshire RU' would be different. I also (see, I'm heading back to topic here) fail to see any positive commendation in this tale for merging Cas, Fev and Wakey. Quite the opposite in fact.

Important difference:

The Headingley-Roundhay merger was of two amateur clubs trying to form a unififed club that could make the transition to being professional. Insofar as the club is, by having a squad of local academy talent, now sustainable at the pro level, it's been a success. However, that hasn't extended to being able to compete at the top level. The club has repeatedly shifted identities & not bought into any particular self-narrative. So they neither tried to forge an independent identity using the old Headingley & Roundhay colours, or took up the white, blue & amber which is the colours of Leeds teams in two other sports. They were left floating around as some seemingly transient nonentity which couldn't ground itself sufficiently for many fans to feel an attachment to them.

The reason a Yorkshire merger would work is that both Doncaster & Rotherham suffer from similar problems-not being big enough to be sustainable at a significant level. A Yorkshire side would allow them to do that, so wouldn't compromise the integrity of their clubs. Moreover, given that RU has a much more developed national pyramid, it would be possible for locally-based sides to drop down divisions and still compete while the regional side took on the Premiership. This kind of thing is exactly what's happened in Wales where the regional clubs supercede the local ones.

As for other clubs, Newcastle & Sale are, I think, pretty doomed-as are Leeds, Rotherham & Doncaster unless something drastic happens. For all that Union types like to carp about theirs being a 'worldwide game', it's very much confined to London, the Midlands & South West of England in this country.

But back to RL...the simple response is that you wouldn't do mergers in the way that Leeds Carnegie have been managed. You'd actively incorporate the cultures & histories of both clubs to make it as much a continuation of he old two clubs as possible.

I imagine Maurice Lindsay also thought he had all the answers back in 1995 but once he'd consulted with the fans (if not the clubs themselves) he soon realised it wasn't going to fly.

My advice to Little Drummer Boy is still to go and post his ideas on the Featherstone, Castleford and Wakefield forums to see if the answer that came back in 1995 is still coming back the same in 2013?