Quote: Wellsy13 "The Western Conference would be weaker initially, that is correct. They'd have the last license additions (Crusaders and Salford) as well as the next license additions (Widnes and Toulouse). I think the benefits of grouping on geography outweigh the negatives of an initial competitiveness though (in terms of local interest and crowds, etc). Plus, it's not as if the other teams won't be playing these less established sides anyway. They'll play all of them at least once.
All in all, I'd say it's more of an advantage for the teams in the Western Conference, as the top teams should have more games they'd consider themselves able to win (and thus making a play-off spot) and the lower teams would have winnable games. There may be a divide at first, but there was a divide in SL for how many years...? '"
Yeah, but I'm not sure having a two-tier competition in the West would be the best start, even moreso than SL now, having Catalan/Wigan/St. Helens/Warrington dominate, and also making the layout of fixtures play a large part - a team having to play the other hardest teams in a row would be disadvantaged somewhat compared to a team alternating between the newer teams and the stronger ones, for example.
However, I do agree geography should be a boost to crowd figures, in the same way I am glad about the Crusaders' move to Wrexham.
There is also the fact that some of the big attendance pullers would only be happening once a season in the SL, for example there will only be one Wigan/Leeds match per regular season, which generally pulls big crowds either way it is played, which again could reduce overall attendances. Just a smaller thing to consider.
Quote: Wellsy13 "For the travelling, teams in the Western Conference would have to go to France away twice, and half of them would have to go to London once (so 3 long trips, remembering that Wrexham is right on the NW's doorstep). Eastern clubs would have to go to London once and France (either Perpignan or Toulouse) once. So it's only 4 clubs that will be at a disadvantage of having to travel one extra game at a long distance. No matter how you set the conferences out, there will always be one extra trip for someone as there are 3 outpost clubs, so it's better to have the two French ones together.'"
I do agree having the French together, if they were both in, would be the most obvious way to split the groups. However, unless fixtures were made intentionally to force every team to make a trip to France, there is the possibility some Eastern teams would never go there, if they had their French games at home, 2 English/Welsh at home and the rest away. So this means that there can be much more of a split than you seem to have said. Just pointing this out.
Quote: Wellsy13 "The same as usual. If there is/are new club/s entering, you replace them with the weakest clubs. If you need to rearrange the conferences, then do that.
If you added two more clubs to make 18, you could split to three conferences of six, sticking to playing your own twice and everyone else once would still make the same number of games (22).'"
Splitting the competition into two is contraversial enough, three is too far for certain!
Quote: Wellsy13 "If you brought back relegation, you could either drop one team from the bottom of each conference, or you could have a relegation play-off between the bottom team of each conference and have them replaced by the winner of the Championship GF. In fact, that doesn't sound that bad an idea, as relegation wouldn't be decided until the last game of the year then.'"
A relegation play-off should not happen, as over time this would lead to either manual re-arrangement of clubs, or the two comps get well and truly mixed up with each other.Eg an Eastern team gets relegated then promoted the next season, but this time it is a western team that goes down, where does the original eastern team go?
I am hoping in the future after a while clubs will be more stable, and over a very long period of time we would have two professional and reasonably competitive leagues, the franchise system may be removed, but under this system this could not really happen without causing a lot of trouble.
Quote: Wellsy13 "I thought about the Eastern vs Western origin thing as well, but don't think it would be too much of a puller (not until the conferences are established anyway).'"
Indeed, which is a shame. I would personally quite like this sort of thing, it would help decide selection for internationals like in Aus, however I really don't see the support elsewhere.
Quote: Wellsy13 "You could always have a 5-week break in May and expand the Challenge Cup to group stages. 8 groups of 5. 1 WCSL, 1 ECSL, 1 CC, 1CC1 and 1 other. At the same time have an international series, so the SL clubs are slightly weakened to make it more competitive (sort of like The Observer was saying earlier with RU).'"
Personally, I'm not for changing the Challenge Cup, it is our only simple knockout for SL clubs, and I personally wish it to stay that way.
Another competition (7's/9's/just another comp?) would be welcome, and also perhaps have a European cup at this time, with the top 8 teams in Europe fighting it out for spots in the 4 nations at the end of the year? England, France, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Lebanon, Italy and Serbia(?). Split them into 2 groups of 4, play 3 matches within the groups, then have 1st of each group play 2nd of the other in the 4th week for qualification to the 4 nations, then have a final the next week anyway. It could be a good runout for England and a good way to measure the success of the other nations year on year.
Just maybe inputting how it could work in this system
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