agree with support Donny.....the tough one is Sky as i love my darts too much......the latter point i agree i could do....just i dont want to...i want to love super league....i want to see if Warrington can finally do it this year etc etc.....

Mate, you love rugby league. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Keep loving it.

The game rarely lets us down, only some (a relative few) of the people involved in it.

The same way we break even...

Widnes, Workington, Doncaster will do for a start.

your right..i shall,,,but i blame you if the Dons lose their next game

They'll avenge the home defeat by the Cougars to make it 8 wins out of 9. Have no fear.

The current licensing system that the RFL is merely a modified system from that which has run for most of the RFL's history.

In order to become a professional RL club you had to be accepted in by your fellow peers. To do this you had to satisfy them that your proposed club would offer a positive contribution to the code of RL.
There was no pyramid in place guaranteeing promotion and relegation. Instead there was just one big league of affiliated teams.

Some clubs decided that they were better served elsewhere eg Stockport County who withdrew from the Northern Union as it was then called, and became instead a professional soccer club.

Other clubs however were formed at later dates and have made lasting contributions to the development of the sport. I'm thinking here of the Cumbrian clubs along with Castleford and Featherstone. These sides are all expansion franchises. Though i doubt their fans would describe themselves as that.

There were also some failures for example St.Helens recs , Runcorn, Lancaster, Blackpool borough

So historically what we see is that licensing has an historical precedent of producing a mixed bag of success and failure.

One of the negatives of the original licensing system was that once a club was in the RFL, it could sit back and pretty much get away with doing very little, as there were no proper checks and balances in place to get rid of failing clubs. Runcorn being a classic example of a side that did nothing other than exist.
Hence most RL clubs spent most of their time being quite content to potter along without doing anything to develop themselves or the game, preferring instead to parasite off the small number of big and successful clubs.
The end result of this was that the game stagnated and crowds started to fall.


The RFL's solution to this was to ape Soccer and bring in promotion and relegation. One of the aims being no doubt to shake things up in an attempt to create a more entrepreneurial spirit, with clubs striving to aim for the top division.
What happened however was that an arms race developed between a small elite of clubs who would literally buy themselves out of any league difficulty. This resulted in increased financial insecurity throughout the league, and increasingly a concentration of the best talent amongst just a few clubs.
Arguably as a result of this, the league became uncompetitive, and standards dropped . Its no coincidence in my book that the last time we defeated the Aussies was just prior to the introduction of promotion and relegation.

Relegation became almost a nail in the coffin for successful but not prosperous clubs, one bad year on the pitch sent great clubs like Swinton, Leigh and Huddersfield out of the top division and into the wilderness.

At the same time many of the smaller clubs, rather than attempt to grow themselves, merely became content with their lot and just did what they always did, and merely exist off the back of their richer peers.
As a result what developed was a small group of yo yo clubs who would each year swap places in the top division, while the majority of the sides in the lower league just got on with playing the season out.
This yo yo syndrome sapped at the finances and confidence of these ambitious clubs and arguably also damaged their ability to draw crowds as fans became sick of the constant cycle of boom and bust.

Promotion and relegation also effectively killed off the games ability to expand, because there was no ability for a new club to make any long term financial projections and plan ahead. Without security, clubs like Fulham had brief moments in the sun before getting relegated and then imploding.

As discussed earlier, the big clubs entered into a furious "arms race" in order to avoid the dreaded chop into the lower divisions. The consequences of this were that these big clubs became financially insolvent themselves as they outbid each other for the signatures of the best players. This then diverted attention away from developing young talent. Clubs knew that merely by buying up a smaller clubs talent they could weaken them and ensure they were the ones relegated. The ultimate example of this arms race, was Wigan in the late 1980's and early 1990's who created a super team by buying up most of the best British RL players. Widnes were the only team to try to compete with them. The end result for both teams was financial meltdown. Wigan got bailed out by Dave Whelan but were forced to sell their home Central park as part of the takeover. Widnes had to sell all their star players and ended up being relegated, and as a consequence have spent the period since the mid 1990's out of the limelight.

The recent reintroduction of licensing rather than the destructive P&R is in my book therefore a move to greater stability within the game both from a financial and playing point of view. It isnt a perfect solution as seen both today and in the past, However IMO it is a lesser evil than Promotion and Relegation.
The move to assessing clubs under set measurable criteria, is also one whose aim is to prevent stagnation as happened under the original licensing system, as it gives the game a big stick to threaten clubs that are engaged in a parasitic rather than productive existence.
Similarly by offering the prize of promotion to SL for ambitious and well run championship clubs, the RFL is trying to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit amongst the smaller clubs, without exposing them to the lottery of P&R.

I've got an idea......just lower the overseas quota, then youth development becomes necessary and we can do away with stupid licensing.....simples

No , we broke even without tipping in hundreds of thousands , in fact a slight profit was posted

I don't remember Doncaster and Workington getting promoted to SL , and Widnes didn't come straight back down

Awesome post mate!

The majority of sides that cam up went straight back down and did it with poor overseas players and by getting into financial trouble as has been said.

A 3 year franchise system gives every club the chance to improve on what they have and keep their place. Wigan for example went from a Grade B to a Grade A because we now earn the right amount of revenue which we never did due to our Marketing contract with JJB. Widnes improved their licence and so they got in. Crusaders went the other way and it's au revoir to them.

I do think however that Halifax should have been in for Wakefield. Wakefield have gone into admin which is against the licence rules, their ground is a mess, they won't have a new one by the end of 2014 and they don't really offer THAT much on the field. They finished 5th in 2009 but instead of building then finished 11th and this season will probably finish 13th. Halifax have reached two GF's winning one and improved their stadium to the point that SL rugby has been played there.

Whilst not everything should be made public, I think the RFL need to make this public so that each and every RL fan knows what is needed to stay/get in SL because apparently it isn't what we thought it was.

Once again , which teams went up and straight down and got in financial trouble ?