Why? No Leigh fans are arguing that we've done enough on or off the field over the last 3 years to warrant a franchise at the moment.

The problem is that too many people view things with rose tinted glasses.

Promotion and relegation is the ideal and when licensing was first banded about I hated the idea of it but slowly I came to realise that modern Rugby League cannot sustain promotion and relegation.

We are a regional sport that needs to expand for it's survival, it also needs to ensure that it's strongest clubs are playing at the top level because the sport isn't strong enough without them. The biggest problem is the drop between Super League and the Championship. It had become something of an abyss that had the potential to ruin a club. As soon as a club was relegated from Super League it had basically one year to get back up to the Championship before it faced years of potentially damaging years in the Championship from which they may never recover (Workington, Oldham etc).

Then we had expansion clubs that because of their fragile state needed to be ring fenced meaning that the bottom club may not be relegated. We also had minimum standards that prevented many clubs from being able to be promoted meaning that there was often no P & R anyway (Hunslet, Dewsbury). The situation was far from proper promotion and relegation. It was a bigger farce than we have now.

Licensing is not perfect and I dislike the effect it has on certain clubs but it ensures that the strongest clubs are ring fenced for a time and given the chance to develop as clubs. It also promotes things other than simply a good team, forcing clubs that have neglected youth and facilities for years to develop them for fear of being removed. It is working already, would Fax have finished their ground, would Wakey and Cas be doing everything for a new stadium, would Saints have got a new stadium without the threat of licensing?

Rugby League needs its strongest clubs to be strong and licensing focuses on the clubs rather than just teams. It of course doesn't neglect on the field by any means. Phil Clarke made a rare good point the other day when he said the P & R had failed to drive up standards and spread the game and that licensing needs to be given a shot.

I see your ' goggles ' have arrived

Despite this they are still easily better than everybody elses!

So much is made of how well Fax have done on the pitch for the last two years but during this time they would need to have improve their attendances by nearly 50% to match 'mid-table, falling crowds' Widnes.

This tells you a great deal about the gap between the two clubs.

Without doubt , however I am correct that your actual attendances ( yes I know thurs night TV against your biggest rivals affects it badly ) have been dropping the longer you were outside SL , you were/are the only option , it wasn't ever even a contest

I don't think you will have a problem , you are in SL to stay , until 2068 , when P and R starts again

I know they were, most of my family had stopped going regular. Worse than the sheer numbers was the difference in atmosphere, it had become a chore and a procession. People were going out of loyalty rather than watching a decent RL game. The potential support though is easily greater than the other clubs in the mix and this has been proved in Super League.

This is why I know the difficulties that come with licensing and I think tweeks should certainly be made to allow for more regular chances for teams to come up from the Championship if they meet certain criteria.

How ?

When the idea of stopping auto P&R first came up, I questioned where the game thought it was going with the expansion. There are actually very few top flight rugby league clusb in what is the "European" SL, we let in Catalans (great move), but then while we've dipped the tip of a finger in Spain, there has been no real effort to become more European, unless you count Toulouse.

I don't think the RFL had a plan then, and I don't think they have now. Whilst a European Cup might be a vague future possibility - if a million miles away - the finances of having a truly European LEAGUE make the very idea laughable. As well as leading to ever fewer of the current SL clubs being at the party. So what else, then?

I suggested the idea of slowly moving towards the NFL conference style system. That is, they want to have a lot of clubs at the same top level, but that is more than can all play each other twice, and so there is a clever method of restricting the total number of games each team plays, whilst keeping a large degree of interest in the season for pretty much every club, given the play-off structure, until late in the business end of the season.

It would be a way to (very) gradually increase the size of SL, without losing major clubs, and slowly adding further clubs to the party, and at the same time, ensuring that players do not have to play an excessive number of games because you don't play every team twice.

I still believe that this would be the only sensible way to expand. I think an SL with 16 teams, meaning 30 games per team, is the maximum, some would argue 30 games is too much, but this way, in decades to come, you could grow a SL of many more teams than that.

In the medium term, this would be a way to let the Halifaxes and Barrows join the club, without demoting other clubs.

The only downside is I hate the word "conference" in this context, you couldn't call it a "minileague", so we'd have to come up with a suitably grand new term.

I've always said teh franchise system has some very good aims, I just feel mainly it's very poorly implemented. Though over the last few years the noises from the RFL maybe they are getting better at it.

P&R is a massive miss due to atmosphere etc, but I think Barrow may well have shown why it was brought in at one end and maybe Castleford at the other on the field.

Starbug may like to start throwing his 'SL goggles' about but that has always been my view and the view of a fair few others. Just because people don't agree that Franchising is the worst thing every doesn't mean they have been tainted for some reason.

The long term view IMO is that P&R will return but under strict conditions and it will return because their are 5/6 clubs outside SL that would offer a lot too the top flight.

No there aren't , there aren't even 12 clubs in SL that offer a lot to SL

How , and how long

How long will it take for Quins,Catalans and Crusaders ( plus any others ) to be in a position to be relegated and not cease trading or for SKY to not be bothered about it ?

Licencing is purely about protecting expansion , and the RFL don't want Championship clubs to be strong enough to challenge for a SL place , as that causes embarrassment

Franchising really only works when done the proper way, the way American sports & NRL do it - you get your core teams to start with, in SL's case this would be the current 14 clubs. Then you add teams and expand, not replace. The only time you replace a team would be if they go bust - this ensures the league is healthy and continues to grow because the league expands as it can cope with more teams, and not change up every 3 years.

No it wouldn't , proper franchising is what the super 15 s are in RU , totally new clubs all based in large population bases , with all existing clubs still playing in lower tiers

The top RU club in Wellington NZ was the ' Lions ' , when the ' super ' concept started , the Lions continued , but the Hurricanes were formed to play in the new competition

That is proper sports franchising