At the minute, yes.

doesn't anyone else just miss the pure EXCITEMENT of a relegation battle, something to keep fans interested whether your side is at the TOP or the BOTTOM?

How many "battles" have we seen though? Yes Wakefield v Cas was exciting but how many teams have been/would be relegated long before the season's out? The gulf in class between SL and Chanmpionship is just too great.

you're right, but isn't that gap just going to become greater in the current format?

It's only exciting if your team isn't involved.

really? maybe exciting is the wrong word. but isn't it something to make the fans turn up and GET BEHIND the team, something to play for - not just for the teams battling relegation, but the teams fighting at the top of the Championship who just seem to be on a road to nowhere right now?

Not necessarily, plenty of Wigan fans consider the 2006 season to be one of their most exciting if memory serves me right.

correct it was very exciting but i wouldn't want to do it again, relegation was scrapped so teams had no pressure to build for the future and put trust in youth and not just sign every experinced player you could get your hands on nvm if they had anything still left in the tank. just some clubs have taken advantage of this and been pure lazzy in my eyes.

In hindsight that season was very exciting and I look back on the escape fondly. However it didn't feel too good during the first half of the season. Our attendances went up during that season as we battled to avoid the drop so the struggles that season obviously appealed to people in the town. The battle to avoid the drop that season (and not just our battle) also attracted a lot more attention from the broadcaster as well, culminating in the aforementioned Wakey v Cas survival decider.

However I still think that we are better off without yearly P&R at the moment. More parity in salary spending between SL and the Championship is needed (as well as other things) before it should be considered to reintroduce it. Ideally we would get to a situation where moving either up or down between SL and Championship would not involve such a proportional change in salary cap (and thus salary spend) as would necessitate the complete dismantling of the playing squad (as it does now) and where dropping down did not mean a massive drop in income and moving up did not leave a club having to increase income four-fold in order to stand a chance of competing financially. Personally I cannot see the financial chasm (for that is the principal reason for the gap in standards) closing in the short or medium term if it ever does. One way to perhaps help close it would be to have the tv rights for SL and Championship sold as one package (not separately) with all clubs in SL and Championship getting money from it. I doubt that the SL clubs would vote for it though as it would initially at least see their money cut.

In any event it may be the case that by the time that such financial parity occurs and the reintroduction of annual P&R becomes viable that such a long time will have elapsed that the current system will have been in place so long that it will amongst all fans be accepted as the norm and calls for P&R will no longer be happening. After all whilst there are regular calls from some for the return of annual P&R we do not hear any appeals for a return to the single division format that predated P&R despite that having been almost exclusively the format of the league since it formed in 1895 and that single division format having been used for 4 times as long as annual P&R was.

No. As a neutral, I absolutley hated watching those 'relegation scraps' at the end of the season, with two poor teams filled with substandard Australians looking too nervous to string a couple of passes together. The competition has been infinitely more enjoyably without those embarrassing matches being given the spotlight.

i agree with this and if it happend from the start widnes would never have been out of super league . since they finished 2nd bottom when they was omitted to allow catalan dragons in who never gained promotion . we lost all them years and youth devlopment as a results of the crooked rfl

Either Fax or Fev could dominate our league for the next 3 seasons, both clubs are capable of increasing their home support, and Fax at least have a stdium worthy for SL.

however going by the current rules and regs, we wont stand a chance of getting a shot at the top league?!

Why?!

as a fan of a club with rich RL history (just like Bradford and Wakefield and the rest) can you not understand why this doesnt sit well?

The governing body are killing the sport from the bottom up.

How long will fans of Fax and Fev and the rest continue supporting without a chance of ever seeing their team compete at the top. the longer we continue without P&R the more fans are drifting away, and its gonna be very difficult to get them back!

The RFL aren't killing anything

The world has changed and small towns with small populations can't hope to support top flight professional sports. Simple, sad, economics.

Fev in SL? If the magic break even number is 10k they have to pull in 70% of the towns population to break even.

Franchising is in place to stop teams killing themselves trying to win the league when it's nothing more than a lottery.

Ah sod it, this arguments been done a million times.

and who do you follow?

Giants.

Your point being?