Quote: Pumpetypump "The RFL needs a pair of balls and stop being the passive patsy to a handful of clubs. The top flight of any competition is rightly perceived as a very important thing to get right, but in British RL we fixate on the top flight to the detriment of the wider game. We have to have a unified vision for the RL pyramid led not by the owners of the top flight clubs but by the RFL. I suspect that two thirds of clubs in the professional and semi-professional RL will feel shafted by a handful of SL owners. They understandably wish to protect their own clubs, but have demonstrated that this aim is incompatible with setting a strategic direction for the whole game. Some might say say that this is the tail wagging the dog, but the SL dog is withered and has rabies, but it's tail is long, pleasant and wants a stroke.
I also think that shrinking SL due to lack of available players and funding is such a self-fulfilling prophecy. The less clubs you put in your top flight, the less money you'll get to broadcast it and the less reach it has. I don't think dropping to 12 clubs was a cracking idea, and dropping to 10 would just be absurd.'"
I think we've had this conversation before and its only until you've seen the other side of the coin that it obvious now what you wrote stands true,
it is shameful that clubs like ours don't meet to modern standards and the top clubs seem to want us to stay there at the bottom, could you imagine the tables turning and these rich clubs would fade very quickly, as your club has done.
As fans we can see it but the owners of the top clubs will always want to look after their own interests
like you say the pyramid base is declining and that is where the concentration needs to be put for it to feed upwards