As a fellow Viking I feel your pain. What happens to us is a matter for another time but, in terms of the future of RL I would say the sport must look after all of its family and, to do this, realise that;
1. Franchising works if you are the right side of the fence but is a slow death (if you're old enough you will remember the years) if you are not.
2. The current structure is tremendous for the game in terms of publicity and excitement (give me the middle eights every time over the tedium of the super eights) but it encourages the perpetual problem in the game, that is clubs running themselves into the ground in search of the holy grail.
3. The real cause of all of the worry for any team in the lower divisions, or heading there, is not the prospect of playing against the 'lesser' clubs (from our years there the trips are better, the banters better and you tend to win more) but the prospect of the RFL clowns pulling up the drawbridge while your down there and removing all hope of getting back up.

So my hope would be that we remove the need for Championship sides to be better than at least one SL side in order to get into the promised land and return it to how it should be. That is, the best team in the Championship deserves to go up and the bottom team in SL deserves to go down, but we need to avoid the yo-yo of an unprepared side coming up, buying all the failed players from the team coming down and repeating the cycle. I would throw in that the Championship needs to grow a pair and recognise that, while it's the club that practically no-one wants to be in, it does have some power and should use it or forever sit in the shade. So, if I had my way;

1. Keep the league structure the same, but return to one up one down promotion/relegation, with the team promoted from the Championship given £500,000 more than the other SL sides. This will provide them with funding for the upgrade in infrastructure they would need plus some real heft when it came to tempting quality players from other clubs rather than relying on the cast-offs as currently happens. They should also get a one year exemption from relegation to establish themselves. After that they're on their own. The RFL should guarantee that this structure will be in place for a minimum of ten years so that Chammpionship sides can get used to the fact they don't have to throw money they haven't got at poop or bust attempts to get promotion.

2. The Championship should form its own body (akin to SLE) to fight its corner. This body should insist on its TV rights being sold separately from those of SL, as currently happens, or even sell the rights themselves. For those who say "who would buy rights to second tier RL", I can tell you that when Championship RL was previously televised on SKY it was shown on one of the minor channels but regularly attracted up a quarter to a third of the viewers of SL on the main channel. If the RFL and SL refuse to go along with that they could take some peaceful but meaningful action. I would start with boycotting the Challenge Cup (its not like a Championship side likely to win it).

What are France's plans for RL, you have to admit that if you want to saturate SL with superstar laden French teams it isnt really saying much for your adopted country in terms of expanding the sport there.

In the words of good old Stevo; “it’s as simple as that”!

And it really is. I don’t know why the RFL make it so difficult.

Well it would be interesting to see the criteria, because based on anything like the previous franchise system I wouldn't think we have 14 acceptable teams

Until the game gets on its feet properly why not.
Rugby Union has no issues with multinational competitions only fickle RL types with head in sand syndrome.