GH was the major sponsor and supporter of Nigel Wood - no one can seriously suggest Mr Wood took the game forward in any way. In fact the game went backwards so I am unsure as to you comment about sustainability

You have little time for Leneghan - his club produce as man youngsters for his own club and the wider game as a whole. If we consider participation/quality of the player pool to be one of the biggest challenges of the sport then Wigan have/are done/doing a pretty good job.


If the game is going to get a new boss man it needs to be from outside of the sport e.g. Richard Lewis who comes without affliations and is left to get on with the job without interference from the likes of Leneghan or Hetherington. Sadly I suspect Ralf Rimmer - a failure at club level and part of the Wood mafia that failed the sport.


There are two issues for me - The game as a whole has two real challenges - how do you increase participation and how do we get more money into the game. The RFL can deal with the first challenge but the elite competition is what is going to drive the second. Both parties should be left to persue their own strategies seperately. The premier league in soccer shows what is possible financially when you seperate the elite competition from the game's governing body

so you would be happy to have say 7, profitable clubs, 4 or 5 who make the numbers up at the top level and the rest go part time or bust?
Salford, Huddersfield, Widnes and to a degree Wakefield offer nothing to the competition off the field. nothing at all

As I have said I think a 14 team SL - locked in minimum 5 years that covers all the areas the competition wants to include:

West Yorkshire - Leeds, Bradford, Castleford, Huddersfield/Halifax
Lancashire/Cheshire - St Helens, Wigan, Warrington, Leigh/Widnes
Humberside - Hull and KR
France - Catalans and Toulouse
London - Broncos
Canada - Toronto

All other clubs are linked to one of these - say Featherstone to Leeds, Wakefield to Castleford etc

Home and away once no magic weekend unless its part of a regular fixture and each seven lose a home fixture the following year the other seven do likewise

Top 5 playoff for place in GF - no hub cap - prize money based on place in table to encourage competition towards the end of the year. CC to be played for by the top 8 each year.

No other games on the day the televised matches are on if this is practical - would a Saturday afternoon be attractive to a BBC?

why should bradford be rewarded after what they've done?

yes, let's stick to the M62, it's worked

In fact, merge Hull FC & KR, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield,.Wakefield and Casrleford .Warrington, Wigan and St Helens Bring back Sheffield Eagles and Whitehaven (what was the point)

5 teams, 10 matches, abandon the CC (no prestiege in winning it), Have the magic game at Hogwarts?

Top 5 top 6 either way - just the top 5 seemed to work really well.

I just cant see the point of endless rounds of the CC to basically end up with same result i.e. 2 SL teams from the top 8 lets just cut to the chase.

The hub cap has been shown to be almost detrimental - how many teams win it and go on to win the GF.

London is impoertant - it has a huge populas to go at in terms of participation - I think it has more value than a team in Cumbria when it seems the pro game is not widely supported.

The Bulls still have a significant latent supporter base that SL needs - they also produce a lot of youngsters for the pro-game.

If you move Wakefield to Sheffield then yes I would agree but there doesn't appear to be huge support for RL in either Doncaster or Sheffield.

Exactly half in SL history, a figure skewed by Leeds winning so often from unlikely positions. It's hardly a rare event however and if teams can't cope with that little bit more pressure/success then they can hardly claim to be a champion team.

As Leeds have shown the real pressure isn't winning the hub cap but being able to perform in the playoffs, that's the measure of a champion team - would you not agree?

There would be even less for a combined team. Unless it was particularly successful & could attract a new fan base.

They've done? As if it was done on purpose. If by any stretch of the imagination we get remotely close to being a super league club again I would like to think it would be done on the right way via success on the pitch and not any form of licensing or back dooring. Our chairman now though has put structures in place with the academy and reserves that should be the envy of a few super league clubs. Sal obviously sees the value though in what a successful Bradford could bring to the table

successive owners simply robbed the club so yes, it's self inflicted

For me (coming from the north east originally and then living in Leeds 12 years) the issue is the size of the towns / clubs. I now live in Ponte and it isn't a huge town, yet has one SL team 2 miles from it one side, and one Championship team 2 miles from it on the other. Consequently a small town of 31,000 is split between two teams in the top two divisions. Cas has about 40,000 people and Fev has 15,000. Wakefield is 8 miles from my door. Wakefield is a town of 100k. So that is 3 clubs in the top 2 leagues within 10 miles of one another, with only 185k residents.

This would be fine if the next nearest SL / Champ clubs were 30,40,50 miles away, increasing your catchment area. But they aren't. Within about 20 miles there is Leeds (2.6m) , Batley (38k), Dewsbury (63k), Halifax (88k). That is about 3m people, across 7 clubs across 25 miles. Taking Leeds out - 6 clubs with 400k people between them. And because they are all so close, it goes more inward so people in Shettleston support Wakey, people in Fev will only support Fev, people on the Cas side of Ponte support Cas but wouldn't support Fev. Now presume 1 in 10 people in those towns actually regularly attend rugby league games (ie are your target audience) - you then have 6 teams (discounting Leeds) in competition for about 40k rugby fans to support and attend their team's games.

In contrast, I was raised in Durham (an in-between town for Newcastle and Sunderland - a la Ponte for Cas / Fev but on a bigger scale. Football wise, Durham is / was split between both those clubs largely. The thing was though, there are like 750k people in Newcastle, 175k in Sunderland and 50k in Durham so 1m people to split between 2 teams. If 10% of those people were to attend games, NUFC and SAFC would still be sharing 100k fans between the two of them.

It's saturation with RL. They should focus on bigger towns - either start new teams there or get near-ish teams play games there. Put Shef games on free after Shef Wed / Utd games when you have 25K people already there - put Salford games on after a Man Yoo FA Cup games when you have 70k there - put Sts on in Liverpool after a LC game when you have 50k there.

It's just saturation and everyone is making everyone else thirsty as there are too many trying to grow to close to each other.



Simi

Yes what they've done spent above their means cheated the SC then fleeced the goodwill of fans who donated to the 500k "save us" fund.
Self inflicted 100%.

Probably the best post I have ever read on here.