if it increased to 14 or even left as is then all teams in SL must be made to have an academy and also look to setting up a reserve team league in the near future. We really need to increase the player pool and not just jettison the players over 19 yrs old who are not quite ready for 1st team rugby week in week out

How about up to 14. Top 8 in a playoff system similar to the NRL. Bottom 3 super league and top 3 championship, similar to the current middle 8's. Top 3 of mini round robin take super league spots the year after.

It means 11 of the 14 teams are involved all the way through and 9th, 10th and 11th are going to be in the mix right up to the end. It also gives those teams in the lower league a good chance to build as does the middle 8's now and give them a good chance to step up as Leigh have.

The ideal is for hopeful Hull KR and laudable London to get promoted to Super League in 2018 at expense of lowly Leigh and witless Widnes.

Then in 2018 end P & R and reintroduce licencing.

Finally in 2019 it will be necessary to promote terrific Toulouse and turbocharged Toronto into Super League and make it 14 clubs.

Leeds
Huddersfield
Hull FC
Hull KR
Wakefield
Castleford
Wigan
St Helens
Warrington
Salford

London
Catalans
Toulouse
Toronto


Then in 2019 put woeful Wakefield and silly Salford on notice that unless they get a modern stadium (Wakefield) and average home crowds over 5,000 (Salford and Wakefield) they will be relegated in favour of Montreal and perhaps Avignon or Sheffield. At least one of those clubs will have to go to make way for Montreal by 2022.

Personally, I would prefer a 12 team league producing 22 games plus Magic Weekend, a six team play-off system and more breaks for international breaks. As for relegation, I'd need to be satisfied that we won't simply end up with a promoted team picking up the voided contracts of the team that comes down, as happened under the old one-up, one-down.

I must be honest and say that I don't have a lot of sympathy for this "we need 27 games a season to be viable" argument. We shouldn't be looking to put more pressure on our players by making them play more games and reducing the quality of the competition - we should be pressuring the clubs to make more from the fixtures that they currently have. A tiny fraction of Super League games sell out, so the effort should be on filling that spare capacity, rather than creating more capacity to be filled by the same people.

Since Super League was introduced, we've increased the number of games, we've got more central funding, the real-terms cost of talent has gone down (by account of a salary cap that doesn't keep pace with inflation) and yet we still have clubs complaining that they need the thick-end of 30 games a year, to cut their academy systems and to scrap their reserve grade teams to remain viable because they are incapable of marketing themselves on both a supporter and corporate level.

No changing of the structure is going to save clubs from problems of their own making.

ER I think your team has had a few hammerings just lately and you playing in 12 teams so what would be different

You may be right about Catalans Toronto 2019

Personally I have never liked the Super 8's. I prefer straight forward relegation / promotion.

RFL - please stop messing around with the structure of the game.

Best or very good players going to NRL or Union because we aren't paying players enough to stay, and thus don't entice Aussie stars to come over.

Thursday night games.

The constant changing and changing and changing and loving changing of the format of the game is getting beyond tiresome.

Getting rid of the shoulder charge has had a big effect on the excitement for me as well.

Also players diving and pretending to be injured like wendyballers.

The rucks - although a little better this season - have been an absolute mess in SL for a good few years now making the game very ugly to watch and slow.

All contributing to lower crowds

When you think about it - having Toronto in SL would be the perfect foil for the RFL to go to 13 teams. When it's your turn to have a "bye" weekend this is filtered into the fixture list to accommodate to additional travel time, jet-lag, climatisation and so on.

For effect, you will have between 10 and 14 days space for the Toronto away fixture considering the "bye" weekend.