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!

The problem with a merger is that the stronger club tries to retain its identity, ie Hull/Gateshead, Huddersfield/Sheffield.

What would happen if say Hunslet and Bramley merged but played out of the South Leeds stadium?

It's not just a case that they try to, rather that one of the clubs has to retain its identity otherwise you end up with a mish mash team which neither set of supporters can relate to. The Gateshull and Shuddersfield mergers were only mergers in name, but more accurately takeovers.

Surely the biggest difference between amateurs and (semi) professionals is the funding to enable more (or full time) training which they currently don't have or can not commit too. There must be plenty of talent in some of those areas who would blossom under a professionally run trainnig regime in a competition made to test them?

the problem is that assuming expansion teams will be given preference for getting into C1, the player pools may not even be big enough to sustain a C1 calibre side. yes they will benefit from having a semi-professional side in the area but as we've seen with london and gateshead, developing a decent sized pool of players takes a hell of a long time and won't just appear before 2012.

Or it will look to make a number of stronger clubs to make the Championship as strong as possible, with clubs that may have more pulling power in terms of getting funding from external sources (i.e. local authorities).
Looking at clubs like perhaps Hunslet/Bramley to make a stronger second Leeds club, Batley/Dewsbury to make a Kirklees club, Wakey/Fev (Wakefield Rovers), etc. Or clubs in neighbouring L.A.s to make a regional club like Rochdale/Oldham (North Greater Manchester), Workington/Whitehaven (West Cumbria), etc.

I don't necessarily believe that this will be for the benefit of the game, but I don't believe it would be to the detriment either in some cases if the clubs are being doubley funded. Just depends on how much potential these clubs think they have on their own and how much they think they might have as part of a wider catchment with less competitors.

what about the detriment to the teams that don't merge and therefore don't get double funding and don't get a guaranteed place in the championship? how are they supposed to compete on a playing field more uneven than Batleys!?

If, as you say, the SC is 40% of income, the surely it wouldnt be difficult to only count half the double income for SC purposes and as such it wouldnt really have an affect on the team they could put on the field.

that, unfortunately is where the salary cap is not clear. depending on what the rfl define as "income" we could see some clubs operating on much bigger salary caps than others. if they decide to include directors loans/donations in the income, it's feasible that we'll end up with a situation where clubs are relying on directors financial input more and more to sign players and remain competitive and we've all seen what happens when the directors money runs out.

So they kept that one out of the main statement , not like the RFL to keep something controversial quiet is it ?

So Martin , what's the chances of Bramley throwing their hat in the ring ?

based on what i've read so far both in the press and on here we should be merging with hunslet and so we'd have a good chance.