seems like everyone is throwing in a crazy idea, here's mine:

3 leagues of ten

within each league everyone plays each other home and away

sl1 teams play sl2 teams each once a year at ground of sl1 team with matchday profits going to sl2 team (or at least split somehow with them)... 28 game season in top 2 leagues, sl3 has northern rail cup to boost fixtures

transparent promotion and relegation sl1 to sl2 with applications from top team in sl3 to sl2

sl1 is race to top 4 playoff

sl2 is race for promotion

having the sl1 v sl2 fixtures generates pay days for the sl2 clubs and also suddenly means fans of the top league clubs will start taking notice of the next league clubs since they will be playing them once a season

sky to televise fixtures from top 2 leagues, probably best games from sl2 would be the games v sl1 teams but could be some good derbies in there eg if widnes and saints

were both down there during one season could be a top of the table clash with a big crowd

Here's a crazy idea:
A 14-team SL
14-team Championship
10 team C1

SL
- 5 year licensing with detailed, in-depth review of each club & goals for next licence period
- Top 6 playoff
- 1/18th share of TV deal per club rather than 1/16th
- GF winner and next highest placed in the league (along with Cup winner) gain entry into expanded 6 team World Club Challenge
- better, permanent league leaders trophy & significant prize money
- re-instate u20's with overage exemptions
- Salary cap raised to £2m but any spending above the current £1.8m limit must be matched by a payment to an RFL fund that distributes money to lower levels of the game, 25% to RFL development, 25% to amateur clubs, 25% to C1 clubs and 25% to Championship clubs. (eg if Salford wanted to spend £1.9m total on the cap they must pay £100k in to the fund as well)

Championship
- Only Grand Final winners can apply to SL
- Top 6 playoff
- significant prize money to GF winners
- 2 up, 2 down P&R between Championship & C1
- 1/18th of TV deal distributed directly to clubs, 1/18th put into central pot to be used for marketing

Championship 1
- application only entry
- league leader gains automatic promotion
- 2nd to 5th playoff for 2nd promotion place
- receive 1/18th of TV deal

Doesn't matter what structure Super League has people while still f**king complain because that's all they ever enjoy doing!!!

Remains to be seen, but currently, I would say that RLWC 2013 is going to need a massive influx of interest and ticket sales heading into the home stretch.........we've gone from some fluffy initial announcements regarding sales for the final and England games to 1,500 tickets sold "as a group sale" to London and St Albans youth....Wembley holds 90,000....



As for everything else, the RFL seem to be increasingly unable to figure out how to run the game.....

I am firmly of the opinion that much of Richard Lewis's time at the RFL was taken up in attempting to save club chairmen from themselves. Now he's gone, there doesn't appear to be anyone capable of continuing his work.

Left to their own devices, those running the majority of the clubs would blindly see the final nail hammered into the coffin of professional rugby league in this country

I agree. Lewis was the boy with his finger in the Dyke. That he managed to introduce licensing, fill in the hole in the game's finances, restore international rugby to pre-eminence, get a new SKY deal, land a huge Sport England funding package, and persuade/force some clubs to address their crumbling facilities, is testament to what we could achieve as a sport if we had a Governing Body of competent professionals. Instead, he was fought at almost every turn, and even parodied in the RL Press for being too posh and southern.

He's gone now. Big Nigel is in charge. Not posh or southern. How much better are we doing....?

God.

God?

He'd struggle too with this lot.

[url=http://www.loverugbyleague.com/blogpost_613-what-does-rugby-league-need--perspective-.htmlWhat does Rugby League need? Perspective.[/url

Someone collate the stats in a nice manner and I'd gladly spend a little time on that. I'm just far too lazy to go through the data myself.

Actually I just chucked the League points each year together and checked the Gini Coefficient each year (the pretty standard inequality measure) and basically:

SL1 was the most unequal (shock)
There was a very slow movement towards equality between then and SL10
SL11 and 12 were significantly more equal in terms of league points (most equal season in SL being SL12)
After this, we had year on year increases again in inequality to SL16, and it peaked at about the same level of inequality in league points we had in SL10.
Last year we were slightly more equal.


Overall, in the P&R super league era we had slow movements to equal league results, with a quick dip towards the end (around when Catalans came in I think), and under licensing the league had been getting less equal over time, but was always more equal than pretty much all the P&R years.

Although the sample size is tiny, so I'd conclude there's pretty much nothing to conclude from that.

Sadly, RL in the UK needs a lot more than perspective.