Interesting piece written by Andrew Chalmers on the T & A website today, on the subject of self interest of larger rugby (union) clubs www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/s ... our-sport/

Interesting piece written by Andrew Chalmers on the T & A website today, on the subject of self interest of larger rugby (union) clubs www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/s ... our-sport/

The votes of Toronto, Toulouse & Widnes are key.
If the proposal goes through, it makes next years SL clubs more secure and next years Championship clubs would have a more difficult path to promotion.
Self interest and crystal ball gazing will be utilised...

Toronto & Toulouse don’t actually get a vote as they are not full members. This goes some way to explaining why the superleague clubs don’t want them in superleague, as it would dilute their collective voting power to a point where the lower divisions have a clear majority. There are 7 additional votes too given to community organisations apparently, no idea how they’ll vote.

I agree that the change would make superleague clubs more secure, but I don’t entirely agree that it makes promotion harder. From what I’ve seen relegation is automatic, and one of the top 2 from champ will be promoted, through a one match playoff, without having to beat any SL clubs. It guarantees promotion, whereas there is no such guarantee now. Assuming there are no strings attached off course...

I can never really see where people who are in favour of the middle 8s as a way of promotion are coming from. I always thought it was a way of offering championship clubs promotion - and thus keeping them quiet - whilst being completely unrealistic.

It's taken a really special effort from Widnes to be so bad that a championship club will actually get promoted this year. All this against the 100% guaranteed route of promotion that the new proposal (that nobody actually really seems to know the details of) offers.

That is true enough, but that would leave the 'new' SL club as the whipping boy. It's likely to be very similar to the old, and discredited at the time, yo-yo system where the same, two or maybe three clubs, take turns to go up and down every year, with each promoted club, essentially, taking on the players from the relegated one. Any new club in SL needs security for at least three season to build and become really competitive, imo. This promotion element has a bit of 'here we go round the mulberry bush' about it.

What would be next? We don't like the yo-yo so we'll go back to licensing? I think that is essentially what the SL clubs want anyway with the P&R element only being suggested a sop to gain votes from the lower leagues.

I don't mind the new structure. The only change I would make is the promoted team is exempt from relegation for the first season. Gives them chance to build a team.

Does anyone have an actual breakdown of what the changes are? I've seen bits and pieces here and there, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive list of changes anywhere.

Essentially it's a return to exactly what we had about ten years ago. Nothing actually new at all.

The bit that concerns me is not actually the bits that have been made public, it’s the bits that haven’t. Chalmers keeps suggesting that the proposed changes empower SL to the exclusion of all others, makes you wonder what the details actually are...

This was my thinking as well. Offering the proverbial carrot of direct promotion with the stick of (much) less money......

There is a statement on the Batley website from the Chairman about P & R. Very interesting reading. Any one know how to put it onto here because I haven't a clue ?

Yeah, its interesting readinghttps://www.batleybulldogs.co.uk/2018/09/08/chairmans-statement-game-restructure-proposals/rl

That is a well argued and justifiable compromise.

And suddenly things are a lot clearer...

The Batley chairman is correct to say that the 'eights' do provide a genuine chance of promotion, though this is very largely on the back of two, independent but connected, big changes from the position when the system was first started.

The first was bringing in the change which allowed the same cap for ALL the clubs involved and the second was the new clubs, Toronto and Toulouse. As we have seen with Leigh, if they couldn't compete with a wealthy owner, it's very doubtful that any other of the current, traditional championship clubs would have the money to make use of the increased cap to even get promoted , let alone survive that first year. Unless there are other very well funded 'foreign' clubs out there, I feel the way up for most clubs would be barred under this system. So what happens to the eights next? Assuming there are no other new clubs coming through I think it will be dropped and we'll be back to some form of licensing or SL membership scheme, maybe with an independent SL, free from the control of the RFL. After SLexit, as it were.