The Championship is very competitive and it is no surprise that the fans are happy with that. The clubs however are not all happy with it as many struggle to keep going particularly in Champ 1 when faced with gaps as long as 6 weeks without a home tie and also having only 9 or 10 guaranteed home ties in a year. The clubs need more games and having more teams would provide that.

On your second point. That may be the way it ends up happening as nothing has been finalised yet, the statement refers only to a proposal that will go to the clubs for consultation before being no doubt amended in one or more ways before being ratified. The plan is for Championship of 12-14 clubs and Champ 1 of 10-12 clubs. At the end of this season they could promote 1 club and relegate no-one to bring Championship up to 12 teams and admit one more club to Champ 1 to make a 10 team division. Thereafter adding clubs to Champ 1 whilst promoting suitable teams to the Championship to get to 14 and 12 teams in each. Also whilst a new club may be 200 miles from say Oldham it may be quite close to Skolars, South Walesn Scorpions or Gateshead making the outpost clubs less isolated and filling the gaps nationally.

Not to mention how it would effect Championship 1 , the balance at the moment is fairly good , wholesale change isn't what is needed , add 1 club every 2 years if there is clubs out there able and willing

Yes I know , there isn't enough clubs , but what is being suggested is wholesale changes in a very short time span , the Championship clubs are all struggling from top to bottom , in both divisions , dont forget we do have promotion and relegation , which at the end of the day is what sets the level for the actual team , and at championship level we are still a sport , hopefully they dont cock it up for us

so does anyone care that the rfl seem to be promoting mergers by offering double funding and a guaranteed place in the championship?

who decides who will take the space created by teams merging? will it be an expansion club or a heartland club and who will get priority? what if there are no teams strong enough to come up?

how can other championship teams be expected to compete with a salary cap based on 40% of income against merged teams with double the central funding?

what happens if a team wins promotion from C1 (and meet the minimum criteria)? will they be told they can't go up because 2 teams have merged and taken their place?

what if the merged team doesn't meet minimum criteria for the championship?

would anyone actually support a merged club when they've been supporting their team for x number of years?

too many questions, not enough answers.

Cougars should merge with the Rabbitohs (same colours) plus share home games with free transport (paid by the RFL) to the "home" games, away from Cougar Park.


I could be persuaded by that!!!

I might be if I could see anything in the rlRFL statementrl to suggest that was the case. You've presumably seen something I haven't. Care to share it?

What? Challenge bizarre, paranoid, conspiracy theorist claptrap and ask for facts? But that would be the end to civilization as the VT knows it. The thin end of the wedge.

I've not seen it myself, but apparently it was reported in the RL papers this week

it's written quite clearly in the league express article who seem to have seen the actual proposals or wouldn't have been able to put as much detail into their own article.

second to last paragraph. "The proposals also appear to offer incentives designed to encourage neighbouring clubs to merge. Double funding would be available to any club formed by the amalgamation of two others until 2014, and a place in the Championship would be guaranteed."

this suggests to me that a) the RFL are essentially promoting mergers by dangling a pretty big financial carrot and b) the league express have seen the proposals hence the sentence "the proposals also appear to offer..."

ta – I'm beginning to think I should fork out money and sign up for a subscription to LE.

Don't be daft man

Why do they have to be neighbouring clubs, that has hardly been necessary before? (Carlise/Barrow; Gateshead/Hull, Sheffield/Huddersfield)

How many options are there for neighbouring clubs if you exclude Super League sides? Workington/Whitehaven; Batley/Dewsbury; Doncaster/Sheffield; Rochdale/Oldham are just about it off the top of my head and I can't see any of them happening soon unless one of the clubs was about to die anyway

well as long as everyone's happy their club executives are strong enough to turn down double funding for up to three years then that's okay then!

i'm sure they'll be the first to complain when it actually happens and realise they could have at the very least tried to do something about it when the proposals were at the consultation stage.

Don't get me wrong, I am not in favour of mergers at all. I do not see why 2 clubs who may be failing in every way should get the place of a team which may be ticking more boxes on it's own and with double the money to boot

Is this a back door way of getting rid of the leftover CC1 clubs who do not qualify for the new CC?
All this will do is to lower the standards in CC1 by promoting amatuers to make up the numbers.
As i see it the RFL are rationalising the league into SL and SL wanabees, and all the rest can go to hell!