haha oops i included playing yourself aswell, yeah i guess that messes up the whole magic weekend, if it was kept at 14 teams there would be one week less for the top 4 teams to prep for the world club challenge so the SL grand final will be on the same weekend as the NRL grand final.

I'll let you off , at least you haven't argued the case for several pages as some have in the past

The playing each other both home and away should be scraped, you could have 18 sides playing 24 domestic games.

Yes , but an odd number of teams requires an even number of games , that is the point being made

Reduce the quota to 2 and introduce a compulsory squad rotation system, thereby forcing all clubs to invest in the development of young, domestic players and crucially, to actually give them some meaningful game time. It would require more strategic thinking by coaches in terms of working out which players to play against which opposition, but I don't see that as a particular problem; it could even be argued that the number of blow-out scorelines would be reduced?

To go forward, we would first have to go back; in the short-medium term, it might result in a perceived drop in quality of some matches but in the longer term, should create more virtuous behaviour from clubs and improve the overall health of the whole sport, from grassroots to elite level.

At the moment, it's not helpful for a few representatives of the more fortunate clubs to be spouting about reducing the number of teams in the league; if we were having this conversation a few years ago, we'd be talking about cutting adrift Warrington and Huddersfield for example, both of whom could be argued to have added value to the sport at elite level - the former, without question.

In my view, the RFL should be working to a ten year plan that makes clear to all stakeholders what their intentions are and crucially, what the desired outcome will be - talk of cutting adrift several clubs without any steer from the governing body has a destabilising effect on the sport that we can ill afford; as someone else has mentioned, they'll be rubbing their hands together down at Twickers.

An interesting ' term ' for clubs outside the ' Elite '

Haha we are all a bunch of dreamers when we want to be. I'm not sure we are ready for a conference system, nor are we ready for the idea of watching a merged team. We have a different culture in the UK whereas in the USA and Australia the people don't seem to care as much. I like the idea of a conference but there are too many problems. At the moment crowds are generally on the up, viewing figures are on the up and we are seeing a lot of young English lads breaking through. We don't need radical change at this time, I think Widnes' inclusion to Super League is great for the sport, hopefully Leigh and Halifax can put the hard work in over the next couple of years and get themselves ready for Super League. Dumping Toulouse or another Welsh team in SL is not the way forward.

One of the real problems is the Championship clubs though

That'd be a biggish cut to the cap, iirc. The SL grant is something like £1.1/£1.2m, [uI think[/u.

9/10 home games just isn't enough. Clubs would be waving goodbye to something like £200-500k. You'd need a League Cup type comp to make up the fixtures.

I think conferences is a good idea, but only if we could get 2 of 8 (22 fixtures). Even then you're losing 2 home games. Conference champs would feel like a proper prize, rather than the hub-cap which is just the poor relation of the SL trophy.

I've not got a plan for raising more cash, but player burn-out could be limited by capping the number of SL rounds any player can be involved in to 20. Stop 'em playing busted, and mitigates the impact of injuries.
Only danger I can see, is weaker teams resting half a team against the strongest in games they don't feel they have much of a chance in.
Players might want fewer games, and that would allow it without fans missing out and revenue being lost.

The gap between tiers 1 and 2 is massive and not bridgable through normal evolution and simple hard work, IMO.
There are strong arguments for this being necessary, but it certainly isn't desirable.
SL was and is about concentrating the wealth - going to 10 could either partially reverse that by creating a genuine SL2 whose teams would be given a SL grant (albeit a smaller one), or it could extend the process by just keeping all the cash in a ten-team SL1.

A small, genuinely elite SL sounds good if you put the stress on 'elite', rather than 'small'.

You seriously think we can double our fan bases in a couple of years ? , and draw any kind of meaningful ' corporate / sugar daddy ' support in the Championships ?

Not going to happen

Dont be too harsh man, Fax think they are ready now and they will certainly be wanting a spot in 3 years time.