Didn't find it to be dying in Sydney.

The professional game with no P&R?

Premier League Soccer here is doing reasonably well - with teams from Stoke, Wigan, Sunderland, Norwich, Reading, Southampton, Birmingham suburbs etc. They've got three up, three down. UK RL only needs one-up, one-down to sort things out. Or, tt, are you one of those guys that gets paid to sit in the smoke-filled rooms trying to plan everything?

if people are worried that a team that is promoted spends heavily and then get relegated and goes out of buisness then an easy solution is the promoted team is exempt from relegation until their 3rd season, this gives them time to put in place a youth structure and a decent playing squad and attract crowds with better results. If they finish bottom in year 1 and 2 the next lowest team that is not exempt gets relegated. Stops the yoyo effect of teams being promoted only to go straight back down

They are huge conurbations &/or sugar daddies keep them afloat. There are probably a 100 times more kids to choose from for talent & seemingly no end of billionaires from dictatorships ready to fund the next promoted club. They don't have automatic promotion in some other leading sports. We've tried it before, it didn't work.



Simples. Why did no-one else think of it?



Quite handsomely, but smoking has been banned in work places for a while if you were not aware. Not that I see the relevance.

I was thinking this myself. Seemed to work for Catalans when they first joined SL

The last time Great Britain was good enough to give the Aussies a real good hammering (Melbourne 1992; ' I was there') was at a time automatic promotion and relegation between the leagues was operating very successfully.

We also had P&R in 2002 when we were thoroughly hammered down under and we still had P&R the following year when we were whitewashed by an under strength Aussie team in the ashes. There doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between P&R and success against the Aussies

There is NO correlation between P&R and a successful international side. Look at the NRL, there's no P&R there yet the Aussies consistently dominate the international scene.

There's so many things that DO have a correlation mind, there's the fact that in Australia RL is a major sport on a par with football in this country and hence attracts a hell of a lot more interest, both from the public and from sponsorship, than our little northern game does over here.

As it is one of the major sports down under, it also attracts the best athletes, again something that in this country RL is not able to do as the best young lads tend to gravitate towards football and really only those from certain schools/areas where RL is deeply engrained have any real interest in pursuing a career as a pro RL player.

Agree with 2 posts above.

That's my point - whatever you might think was good or bad about RL in the past probably had a combination of a mllion and 1 things behind the circumstances at the time.

No point people re-writing history as a way of supporting their arguments.

I'm just looking ahead from where we are now. My view is that one-up, one-down automatic promotion/relegation between the leagues (which has never been tried in RL) would be a very positive step for the game in this country.

This was mainly down to the great Wigan side of that era, nothing to do with P&R.
Oh, I was there too.

I think a major factor in GB's decline was when football clubs started to place a premium on pace. When I was a kid games teachers would encourage faster kids to play rl rather than football. Then we used to have better backs than the Aussies. That changed around 1980. We can often match the Aussies in the forwards, just don't have any pace in the backs. All the quick kids are directed towards football

While this has some merit you could end up very easily with the promoted teams from 3 successive seasons ending up in the bottom 3 with protection from relegation, hence the fourth from bottom (Salford currently 5 points clear of third bottom) being relegated. Something tells me that wouldn't go down too well. For me the franchise system gives the necessary stability & opportunity to plan for the future.

Didn't produce much stability for Bradford Bulls!

No. Put one-up/one-down automatic promotion/relegation between the leagues in place and leave it there. Ten years later - I predict a much more thriving game in this country in general and also a more stable and successful future for Bradford Bulls.