See that london have dual reg with Wakefield and Widnes & potentially all three could end up in middle 8's when the league splits. Surely there is conflict of interest with the potential of players playing against the club that pays their contract and clubs influencing outcomes by deciding who they send out or hold back during the 8's. Has the rfl got set of regulations in place or just winging it with fingers crossed.

I think that once the middle 8s start anyone that's with another club stays there for the duration.

I expect the SL clubs to recall all their dual reg players before the first middle 8 game.

It could leave some championship clubs high and dry.

That's correct I think, if they stay out on DR, they cannot be recalled by their parent club for the duration of the 8s. Alternatively the partner club would lose any DR link up for the duration of the 8s if the DR players were recalled. So Widnes help to get London into the top 4 with 5 DR players. Widnes finish in bottom 4 and duly recall the DR players thus disrupting/weakening London for the whole of the 8s. Another well thought out rule......not

That reminds me of the 90's.


All the clubs will know this, it's not like they'll get to the Qualifiers and suddenly they realise they're screwed. Any club who realistically want to be promoted shouldn't be using 5 DR players anyway. For other clubs, just making the Qualifiers would be beneficial, even if they're not in a position to properly compete for promotion yet.

This.

No one is forcing the Championship clubs to accept a DR link or to accept any DR players.

How about this one:
Just before the deadline Hkr make a DR agreement with one of the better championship clubs. In the end they scrape 8th but fc are in the middle 8s. Hkr knowing they've no chance of making top 4 send 5 of their players out on DR to try to get fc relegated.

That is the case, the parent club chooses at the start of the split to allow each player to play for the DR partner or not and they must then stay with either parent club or partner club for the rest of the season.

I would imagine most players but not all will be withdrawn by the SL clubs. I think that rather than in the Qualifiers the biggest impact could be seen in the Championship Shield where some clubs like Workington and Whitehaven having relied upon support through DR players to try to stay above the relegation places could suddenly face dropping like a stone towards League 1 once those players are withdrawn.

With the return of promotion and relegation, the dual reg. system is just not right.
IF clubs gain promotion with a number of SL players (from another club) it their ranks, other clubs will , quite rightly, cry "foul".

For instance, IF Leeds, Warrington, Wigan or Saints (I use these clubs as examples as they probably have the deepest squads) players were to "help" any of the Championship clubs gain promotion, especially when the "qualifiers league" is under way,
it just makes a complete mockery of the game.

The system wasn't right to start with, never mind if it skews the final league standings.

In which case you have to ban loans too.

Beat me to it on the loans issue. Though there would not be any example of a SL team benefitting from a player on loan from another SL club and winning the Grand Final? If there was that would demean the whole competition wouldn't it?

Getting into the mid 8's has huge reward for the championship club no matter what happens next, DR could have an impact on that and is simply wrong eg Widnes may be out of the cup and have a free weekend but London play say sheffield, Widnes DR Brown Tickle Hanbury etc for that game, London win Sheffield miss the 4 by 1 pt and it costs then £250k

DR is joke. It benefits no one except the bottom line of clubs who won't run second teams, and would rather import players than do the hard yards of training them properly.
It dosnt help the game in any positive way IMO, at best it devalues the clubs who enter DR and the competitions themselves.