They come across as rich men phoning the newspaper to talk about how unfair it is that their train set is broken.

In fairness to Davy, his despair looks to be in a letter to their supporters' organisation. Although at least he took the trouble to thank them properly for what was nevertheless a fairly modest sum.

My concern is that the recession is showing no real signs of ending and that is the reason for low crowds. Clubs have got to be incredibly imaginative to get bums on seats and it's going to be a real struggle. The RFL also need to be understanding of the situation and bend over backwards to make it as easy as possible for clubs to survive.

Every club has a limit to the number they can attract. In the good old days it was around 14k at the Bulls but those days are gone.

I'd say we're doing alright all things considered. I just hope our owner was aware of this situation before he got involved.

The letter is very interesting in that it references what is a golden era in the club's history by comparison with the previous decades. I know the last two or three seasons have started well and ended poorly but the level of cynicism around the club and its messageboard is extraordinary.

When Davy refers to the club winning a trophy it seems that the vast majority of the fans simply don't believe him anymore.

There is debate about a 2-tier SL, 10 in each tier, come the next Licensing round.

Which IMO would soon become a 10-team SL, hogging the Sky money. Not that there are any precedents, of course...

I am increasingly thinking this may turn out to be more than a mere debate.

If so, which tier we would end up in would seem to depend a fair bit on the answer to Bullseye's last question.

I don't see how a 10 team SL would make clubs better off. Fans aren't going to have any more money to spend on going to games until we come out of recession in about 2024.

Sounds like an exercise in hogging what meagre money the RFL secures in sponsorship in order to survive. Not sure that's any more sustainable than the situation we currently have.

Would increasing the overseas quota not help, as the issue alot of people mention is that the standard is dropping, so getting a few more aussie and new zealanders over here could add some excitement.

But due to the high salary cap in Aus would we get any decent players?

I think you've partly answered your own question there.

The long term path to success is to bring on your own players rather than go for short term fixes from overseas. However that's not to say that there shouldn't be any overseas players. I think the current quota is alright.

Just mean it in terms of quality of player, but therein is another problem that the big teams will monopolise the good overseas players and leave the rest with the scraps, so to speak.

A 2 tier league wont work as the teams with the large fan bases, wigan, leeds, sts etc will end up in the same league to make it competitive and they will take the huge share of cash and viewers.

Would conferences not work similar to the NFL?? Would be 7 SL teams in yorkshire, 5 lancs

I think it was about 40 years ago but there just used to be one division and the teams were split into Yorkshire and Lancashire/Cumbria.

There was a play off at the end too I think to become league champs. It's before I started watching so I'm not too sure of the exact way it worked.

It was that way up to '73. Sometimes it was one conference, sometimes it was regional. I think the move to the divisional system was so that there'd be a one home / one away fixture system.

Before my time too, '73 being the year I was born.

Didn't you get a few games in during your first few months?

I guess that depends on how Sky want to play it. The defining point about SL clubs to me is that they are full timers, so on that definition it would mean two divisions of full time pros under the SL umbrella.

To be honest, I'd have very serious doubts that Sky would want to underwrite it, and right now you can't see who else could and without that backing I can't see the RFL, or the bods running SL, going down that particular route.

And before. My parents were at the '73 cup final against Fev' a month or so before I was born.