It's not the top side that gets promoted. There is a top 5 play off system like in SL so anyone in that top 5 can gain promotion.

I think Toronto would naturally be the favourites to finish as league leaders, but it's early days and there is a whole Autumn and Winter of personnel changes that are about to happen.

Widnes are an interesting one. I don't see anything there that would particuarly excite me - morale at the club seems to be rock-bottom and I can see some of their better young players being looked at closely by some Super League clubs.

It will be interesting to see how heavily the likes of Bradford and York back themselves, and Toulouse will be a team worth watching.

But when promotion comes down to an 80 minute play-off, I don't think there's much to choose between the top teams.

Is this "promotion series" going to be shown on Sky ?
There should be some cracking games in there, especially if Leigh and Fev can be competitive.
Unless the wheels come of a Toronto, you would have to expect them to dominate the league but, play offs can certainly produce a few upsets and there is no guarantee that that the club finishing top of the pile will gain promotion.

I would like to think so. The qualifier games were far more entertaining than the majority of the super 8 games this season.

Agreed.
Thankfully, it's all been consigned to the history books and we wont have to try and explain the system to anyone, ever again

yep and by finishing 5th you still have a chance of being promoted into super league who's going to put his name to this one

Yes I'm aware of that and I worded my question wrong by saying 1 up and 1 down.(instead of 1 up via a play off series) although the point still remains that only 1 side will be promoted.

IMO 2019 is the best opportunity for certain sides like Widnes to gain promotion as they will find it more difficult the year after funding wise to push again for promotion

This situation is ridiculous. We need both Toronto and Toulouse in Super League. The new system makes that impossible for 2020. Until we go to licensing and a 14 team Super League the game will not reach its potential.

But if they're not good enough to get there on merit, why should they be given the leg up over clubs that are?

They won't have £1.3m less.

They will get their share of the Championship money (i.e. what London would have received) plus the £500k parachute from the SL clubs. All in all they'll be around £600k worse off.

What happened with Championship funding ?
Did they keep the top heavy situation, where the top 4 get a decent share and the rest get diddly squat or was there a change made when the new structure was introduced ?

Supposedly a meeting with The RFL today to confirm funding amounts for 2019. Maybe why there aren't a great deal of movements being announced until firm budgets can be set.