If this was the case then I am fairly sure that clubs would target specific games to "rest" their main players and it could easily work. The problem is though the Magic weekend which would either add a game on, or else half the teams would have to forfeit one home game.

Personally, I would just do away with it as it has never really been much of a success anyway.

As for internationals? Do we really play that many anyway? And, further to that, England would only face two or three "tough" games a season as there are only three teams who operate at the top level?

How's that different to what the current format is? They currently already play 30 league games (23 in first stage and then 7 in the Middle 8s).

We would? Hmmm..... { [sizelooks suspiciously at the league table[/size }

I'm not sure I buy into this burnout stuff. What we need is vbfg to do a graphic showing how many minutes of actual physical play your average first team starter plays in a season.

Games are 80 minutes but a large slice of that is stoppages in play. Then many players are interchanged and don't play the full "80" anyway. Plus, not that many players are ever-present in the starting 13. Plus, most players have enforced rests through injury, form etc. I know vbfg can do this.

Or alternate who loses a home game each year.

Should be pretty easy to work out!

Tend to agree - 30 games a year should be doable - yes it's a physical sport - but they are full time athletes!

What is clear though is that the present format does not work, nor is it ever likely to. I have stated before that it is just a way of keeping SL a closed shop whilst still offering the "chance" for teams to be promoted, as unlikely as it is.

For example, I am sure that there are plenty out there having a good laugh at Leeds this season, but it is hard for me to care too much as they are not going to go down anyway, as we all know. As it stands, despite the way they want to market it, the current set-up does not punish failure or reward success in the league. This has been proven more so this season with Salford-gate and their meaningless punishment. As far as I am concerned, it simply allows SL clubs to earn a bit more cash as there are less "meaningless" games for them with the middle eights.

Before anyone starts this is not because we are where we are that I am suggesting this. We deserve to be where we are because of past mistakes but we should not be continually punished by being pretty much denied the chance to return. (Which has not been a consequence for rule breakers during the "franchise" era or nowadays when points deductions do not even have an impact on relegation whatsoever.)

Quote: Ferocious Aardvark "Games are 80 minutes but a large slice of that is stoppages in play. Then many players are interchanged and don't play the full "80" anyway. Plus, not that many players are ever-present in the starting 13. Plus, most players have enforced rests through injury, form etc. I know vbfg can do this.'" vbfg can do minutes on the field for SL for 2007 to 2015. But not this year, because as part of the wholesale improvements to reporting on Rugby League online somebody somewhere erroneously decided that less is more. Go rlhererl. Scroll down to "Match Report" / "Commentary" and click on the Commentary tab. Before this year that had all interchanges in it too. Who went off, who came on and when. (They also used to differentiate between conversions, penalty goals and drop goals. Not any more. (And they also changed their API and hid it behind more layers of Javascript, presumably to stop people like me. Unlucky.)) Sporting Life have a go, but it's clear they've built their backend around soccer and re-purposed it to other team sports. As far as they're concerned if a player goes off they don't come back on. But thanks for bringing it up: https://www.facebook.com/rlfanalytics/ https://twitter.com/RLFanalytics Fill yer boots

Quote: Ferocious Aardvark "Games are 80 minutes but a large slice of that is stoppages in play. Then many players are interchanged and don't play the full "80" anyway. Plus, not that many players are ever-present in the starting 13. Plus, most players have enforced rests through injury, form etc. I know vbfg can do this.'" vbfg can do minutes on the field for SL for 2007 to 2015. But not this year, because as part of the wholesale improvements to reporting on Rugby League online somebody somewhere erroneously decided that less is more. Go rlhererl. Scroll down to "Match Report" / "Commentary" and click on the Commentary tab. Before this year that had all interchanges in it too. Who went off, who came on and when. (They also used to differentiate between conversions, penalty goals and drop goals. Not any more. (And they also changed their API and hid it behind more layers of Javascript, presumably to stop people like me. Unlucky.)) Sporting Life have a go, but it's clear they've built their backend around soccer and re-purposed it to other team sports. As far as they're concerned if a player goes off they don't come back on. But thanks for bringing it up: https://www.facebook.com/rlfanalytics/ https://twitter.com/RLFanalytics Fill yer boots

This I get, but if P&R was re-introduced on a 2 up 2 down basis there would be two different sides in the Magic weekend, season on season.

However, this is minor and could be worked around, but this is the RFL we are relying on here.

I don't want to go up on the bounce. I want to get promoted. It is the only thing I am missing from my list of supporter experiences.

We will be the most experienced Rugby League fans in the world when this inevitably happens.

We were promoted in 1974, so it wouldn't really be new. That was straight P&R though, so somewhat different from what we have today.

It's strange really, for a sport with such a long history, but due to most of those years being played with Yorks and Lancs leagues and all shown in one division, there are many clubs which have never tasted either promotion or relegation.

I'm not claiming newness, it's just new to the majority of us. I was one year old in 1974. I can claim to have been at the 73 cup final one month before my birth, but I do not recall promotion.

Besides, that wasn't really relegation in any traditional sense. It was a split in the league into the divisional system we've largely had ever since and Bradford just didn't make the cut.

What about the bottom of SL playing the top of the championship in a one of game?

Or a one off game over two legs?

Given the discrepancies between salary caps this changes little to the current situation TBH.

Isn't that far off what it already is. Just without 7 games to waste inbetween just to put people in more or less the same order anyway.

That's true. The way the game was devised previously would be unbelievable to most folk today: two separate leagues, each with its own separate fixture list and the results compiled into one division. It's hard to imagine the sort of brain which came up with that idea - and even harder to imagine how, and why all the others, agreed that it seemed a goer.....