There are only two teams that can win the Championship: Leigh and Fev, they will both spend c£200k more than the other teams. Brian is no fool - he went to Toronto when most coaches could have got that team promoted and in Fev he has a 1 in 2 chance of promotion

Hopefully he doesn't park his car close to the chairmans!!

No chance Frosties. Fev or Leigh in a 2 horse race.

You may be right but looking at the recruitment announced so far I can't see any of these challenging Leigh or Fev next season.

I hope York go well. I've thought for a while they are probably the most sensible strategic fit for developing the game in Yorkshire.

I would agree with that - sadly they have a coach who has a game plan and finds it very difficult to deviate from the plan when other teams have worked it out.

He is from the John Kear school of coaching i.e. if you concede less points you win rather than if you score more points you win. His emphasis is on kicking deep in corner and trying to contain the opposition. One of the reasons they struggled last year was this plan didn't work with a host of older players. Teams have worked him out so they know what's coming so rigid is plan

Please stop promotion and relegation.
Would love to see York, Bradford plus a non heartland team in SL but done strategically, not by spending cash on the best sub-SL players. Could you imagine NRL letting Fev or Leigh into their competition??
I know we have less players to choose from than the Aussies but this shambles just keeps us further behind them. You only had to see our panic buying in 2019 to see why it's harmful to the sport.

This issue sparks strong views, but I agree with you.

Fine if you want to do it strategically, but you would need to start by booting at least three or four current SL teams - the likes of Wakefield, Castleford, Huddersfield and Salford, for instance - out of the top flight if you're going to do it fairly, because they have less long-term self-sustainability than a team like Fev.

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

Would you say that if you supported Keighley, Swinton or Hunslet?

Can you name any other sport in which a segment of the fanbase is absolutely determined to kill off a bunch of clubs for "not pulling their weight"?

It's gone beyond some sort of strategic thinking (which generally shuffles mythical clubs and mythical fan bases around) to genuinely believing that the problem with British RL is that we have too many clubs. It's insanity of the highest order. The big clubs have failed to grow their audiences and revenues and have taken that out on the smallest ones, which in turn offer the most pound for pound value in their communities.

Presumably people who propose such things either think the sport doesn't need these fans (because we have plenty to spare) or bizarrely thinks they'll start watching another club.

It's an attempt to apply market based solutions to a sporting environment and it simply doesn't work because people don't interact with their sports teams in the way they choose which supermarket to go to.

But there aren't an elite 12! There might be an elite 4 or 5, at a push, and there's NO difference between a handful of the current SL clubs and one or two at the top of the Championship other than possession of that precious SL place and the 7-figure gift from Sky each year.